Laura Koniver, MD's Blog, page 11
November 13, 2023
The Last Possible Date To Order Holiday Gifts From My Shop + The Best Holistic Healing Gifts
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My holiday deadline this year is Nov 15th because I am moving to a new office (yay!) in early December, which means I will be closing my shop to new orders for the first half of December. I need any orders that you want to gift for the holidays to be placed by November 15th please!!! Orders placed after Nov 15th are not assured to arrive for December holiday gift giving.
Speaking of gift giving, need some unique gift ideas? Want to be sure you are giving something that no one else will give the people in your life you love most?
Giving the gift of a positive, uplifting healing tool is one of the kindest gifts you could ever give someone you care deeply about. Read on to browse through some of my favorite ideas, or simply click here to peruse the entire shop full of uplifting, supportive holistic healing gifts!
1. For The Grounding NewbieThe best way to introduce grounding to a loved one is through my book The Earth Prescription. Personally autographed by me, it’s filled with tons of easy ways to get grounded outside year round, a gift that will get them directly grounding to the earth outside to improve their health all year long! Available in English, Japanese, Korean and Russian editions
2. For The ElectrosensitiveCocoon them in pure peace and give them a head-to-toe break from all the EMF exposures we are inundated with all day long. Nothing else compares — hooded to protect the top of the head and extra long to protect all the way down to the legs… their chest, abdomen, reproductive organs, bones and more are all covered. This custom sewn shielding cape is hand sewn right here in the USA. Add on a router guard (to reduce exposures from their router while still allowing Wifi to be functional) or a bedside shield (to decrease exposures from their cell phone at night) and you’ve dramatically reduces your loved one’s EMF exposures at home and on the go.
Find more resources for the electrosensitive here:
5 Crucial Steps To Protect Your Health If You Are Electrosensitive
3. For The One Who Takes Care Of Everybody Else Take care of them from head to toe with uplifting holistic wellness gift set. An organic hemp exfoliating mit, my favorite healing magnesium lotion for a full body massage and full body relaxation, toe alignment socks to slip on after a long day of work, Daily Healing Cards to inspire and an uplifting journal to encourage them to let it all out. My daily healing cards also make a great stocking stuffer, with 82 different uplifting healing activities that can be drawn daily, or just whenever your loved ones could use a fresh and uplifting health boost.
4. For The One Who Never Takes A Deep Breath We all know loved ones that take on too much stress, never relax, and never stop for a moment to just BE. In fact, maybe that loved one is you! I can think of no better way to support the body’s function in under 3 seconds flat that to simply take a deep breath. Encourage your loved one to breathe deeply by gifting them a healing chime they can keep on their desk to remind them. Simply strike the chime and focus on the sound dissipating for 3 breaths and feel noticeably more centered an calm. See how I use this chime to regulate my nervous system right here:4 Easy Ways To Use Your Breath To Feel Instantly Better — Do Them With Me Right Now
5. For The One Who Needs To Hydrate More We all know someone who just does not drink enough water. And if you don’t drink enough water, you just don’t feel well and your body is not working optimally. On top of that, the purity of the water you drink matters too. I personally use this exact water filtration system in my home and at work — it’s the only water I want in my body or in my children’s bodies. The water is so pure that now regular tap water literally smells like public pool water filled with cholrine and other nasty contaminants… and it is. Plus, having a filtration system out on a countertop is a great visual reminder to drink a glass of water every time you see it. Get more hydration tips in this article I wrote for you here:Slow Down Aging By Staying Hydrated
6. For Those Experiencing Loss Until we are reunited with our loved ones, it can be incredibly comforting to have a visual reminder of the connection we still have, to our soul mates to our ancestors we have a lot waiting for us on the other side. My artwork is a visual reminder that we are more than just the earth suits we are temporarily wearing. The artwork above is called As The Veil Lifts which is available in prints right here. Head over to my art shop full of original healing artwork that keep reminding us that all is well, even if it doesn’t feel like it right here & right now. Here is an article showing you my most recent painting:You Are Made Of Stars
7. For The One Who Is Always Cold To keep them grounding outside all winter long, all they need is some warm conductive grounding gloves and a little extra TLC for their hands! Combining this gift set with an indoor grounding throw to snuggle up with makes for a lovely grounding gift that will keep their health boosted both indoors and out! Find other cold weather grounding tips here:My Favorite Grounding Shoes + A Dozen Ways To Ground Outside When It’s Cold
8. For The One Who Travels A Lot Possibly the best gift ever, this grounding bedroll is the perfect way to gift a travel friendly grounding set for your very favorite people. They can use it at home every night, and when traveling they can simply roll it up and take it with you. Add on a silver based, antimicrobial mask and silver barrier cloth so they avoid germs while they travel and you’ve just created the sweetest gift set.
9. For The Athlete Stick these grounding shoe stickers onto any shoe, hiker, even a pair of cleats and your favorite athlete will stay grounded while working out — which helps decrease muscle soreness, improve recovery, and boost circulation. Win-win-win! Find out more about how grounding supports your favorite athlete right here:Feel Immediate Relief With Grounding: Relax Your Muscles, Strengthen Your Bones
10. For Those Who Sleep Share Whether your loved one sleeps with a favorite dog, a favorite human, or has a whole family that piles into one bed, a grounding mattress topper is the easiest way to make sure everyone is sleeping grounded and getting the most restorative sleep possible, year round. Find more support for deep restorative sleep in this article I wrote for you here:Winter Sleep: 12 Ways To Hibernate Now For A Deep Reset Before Spring
11. For The Workaholic Background noise is such an insidious health stressor that we literally don’t even realize how much it impacts us on a daily basis — from increasing heart disease risk to causing stress related weight gain. Instantly reduce stress for your favorite person by gifting them Calmer ear protection — which allows them to still hear clearly (even enhancing clarity) while reducing harmful background noise. Find out how to handle other work stressors here:How To Protect Your Mental Health From Work Related Stress
12. For The One Who Lives Too Far Away When all you want to do is grab your favorite person and hold them in a warm hug, you can gift them the next best thing: a healing tool that comforts them, warms them up, and makes them feel better. Plus they will think of you every time they use it. My grounding hot water bottle and cozy set is my personal favorite way to get grounded while I snuggle up in the wintertime.
13. For The One Who Hates The Dark Of Winter
If you know someone who tends to feel down by mid-winter, give them a boost of energy, a better night’s sleep, improved mood, even boosted libido by sending them a light box. This is the one I use every morning, to help with my own seasonal affective disorder. Brighten up your loved ones day every single day. Find out more about the health benefits of light therapy here:It’s Not Too Late To Significantly Lift Your Mood, Even Mid-Winter
14. For The Outdoorsman Brand new to the shop! Gorgeous, one-of-a-kind, handcrafted solid wood grounding sticks that use recycled copper to ground your hands as you walk. A great way to be able to wear protective shoes or orthotics and still be grounded, as well as those who are avid outdoor explores that like to hike. Keep them connected to the earth even with their hiking shoes on! Also perfect for those in a wheelchair or scooter which keeps them up off the earth, ungrounded. Simply stay seated and use the grounding stick to touch the ground, effortlessly putting your body into a healing state right through your hands, not your feet. It’s also a fabulous solution for those that want to be grounded on long car rides — pull over and walk or sit with the grounding stick every hour or two on your journey to instantly release stress and boost circulation.
Artisan hand made in Ireland using all natural materials, solid wood, even recycled copper — no two are the same and each are a work of art!
15. For When You Don’t Have A Clue What To Get When you just want to support your loved one’s health but you don’t know where to start, this organic grounding mat is the most versatile and ethically made grounding tool on the planet: eco-friendly, ethically hand crafted, locally made in the USA, using all natural materials — gentle and safe enough for those with chemical sensitivities as well as those with electrical sensitivities (EHS.)
I wanted to create an eco-ethically crafted mat that was hand sewn using medical grade stainless steel (that means you can wash it over and over and it will last for years) + backed with eco-friendly soft organic cotton, dye free & chemical free so it is sensitive enough for use by those who have multiple chemical or environmental sensitivities.
Then I wanted to make it the perfect size to use in every situation you can think of… sit on it, sleep on it, travel with it, lay it out for your pets, put it under your feet while you work… this double thick, conductive grounding mat is so soft, lays flat under foot, and is plenty large enough to use wherever you want to get grounded… on a chair, a recliner, a sofa, as a floor mat, to sleep on, you name it.
Holiday Deadline: November 15th
Remember, I’ll be closing my shop in December to open a new office space, so place your orders on or before this Wednesday to get your gifts in plenty of time for holiday gifting!
Find all of these healing tools and tons more fabulous gift ideas right here:
xoxo,Laura Koniver MD
You can browse the shop and find all of your favorite supplements and trusted brands that you already know and love, plus browse through dozens of custom made protocols I have created for you to address your top health care concerns including insomnia, gut healing, electrosensitivity, skin repair, immune boost, party detox, tick bite protocols and more.
Friday, November 24th through Tuesday, November 28th you get 25% off automatically on every single pharmacy grade supplement in the entire shop. Every single one. Every supplement, every skin care item, every part of each of my holistic healing protocols, even custom daily packs (with all of your favorite supplements in one-easy-to-remember, easy-to-take-with-you daily pouch) all at 25% off, instantly. But you have to have an account to get in on the sale. Sign up right here to get all your seasonal favorites plus stock up on all your basic wellness items (including skin care, immune support, digestive support, daily multivitamins, hormone replacement, adrenal and thyroid support, sleep support and more) right here:
The post The Last Possible Date To Order Holiday Gifts From My Shop + The Best Holistic Healing Gifts appeared first on Intuition Physician.
November 6, 2023
The Fourth Leading Cause Of Death: Your Medicine Cabinet?
I just returned from a medical conference where I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Ankur Patel, MD present on the risk of taking multiple medications.
I was shocked to hear :
that adverse drug interactions is the 4th leading cause of death in the United States, and someone dies from a drug interaction every 5 minutes in the United States alone.that if you are on 5 or more Rx medications, your risk of an adverse drug reaction is 58%that if you are on 7 or more Rx medications, your risk of an adverse drug reaction is 82%I was so surprised to hear all of this that I immediately recorded a video for you over the lunch break of the first day of the conference right after I had heard his talk.
Please watch this video below — in it I share the five questions very simple, straight forward questions that Dr. Patel said you should be asking your own in person physician to see if your medications are truly needed.
It will very easily open up the dialog for your physician to considering de-prescribing any medications you take that may be unnecessary:
How To Speak With Your Physician About Stopping A Medication:
To grab a copy of Dr. Patel’s book Age Is Just A Number head over to amazon here:
Thank you Dr. Patel for sharing this important information with other physicians at the conference — yours was by far the best lecture of the entire event!
It seems in each conference I go to, there is one topic or presentation that impresses me so much I am inspired to create a video for you right in the middle of the conference.
Here are links to the past several topics I’ve made videos about, maybe one of them will make a difference to support your health or someone’s health that you love:
How To Stick With Your Long Term Health Goals, Even When It SucksA Free Printable Tool To Give You Inner Clarity When Making Difficult Medical DecisionsWhy You Still Have Chronic Pain & 5 Ways To Truly Fix ItI hope any or all of them are helpful!
If someone forwarded you this free healing article, make sure you sign up for my weekly newsletter where I share an uplifting holistic healing tip with you, right in your inbox. You can sign up for it here:
Dr. Koniver’s Newsletterxoxox,Laura Koniver MD
The post The Fourth Leading Cause Of Death: Your Medicine Cabinet? appeared first on Intuition Physician.
October 30, 2023
Winter Sleep: 12 Ways To Hibernate Now For A Deep Reset Before Spring
One of my main goals in writing free healing articles for you every single week year after year after year is to help link your body to the natural seasonal rhythms of the world around you — taking the seasonal variations into account in your healing journey allows you to more easily get an instant health boost — and long term being in a season rhythm is much less stressful on our body.
Similar to eating seasonally available fresh foods in rotation throughout the year for your gut health, your sleep needs also fluctuate throughout the year. In the darker winter months, it’s a natural time of hibernation and reset. So you may find you are more tired or have a pull to sleep longer — this is when you are meant to repair the sleep deficit you have built up all 2023 long during the more active spring and summer months.
So today, I have pulled together a list of 12 things you can do today to improve the quality of your sleep tonight. All based on the most current medical literature on sleep quality. Something I am very interested in because I’ve always been a poor sleeper all of my life. On nights when I am struggling to sleep, I remind myself:
You are only ever one night away from a good night of sleep.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve struggled with insomnia or how big your sleep deficit is. Every single night is an opportunity to completely turn that around. Because your last night’s sleep affects your next’s night’s sleep, when you have a really poor night just think of it as increasing your sleep pressure to make it all the more easy to repair your sleep the very next night.
Here is another thing I remind myself, when I am laying wide awake in the middle of the night, it’s something I learned at a medical conference on sleep hygiene. When you are laying there all night long, staring at the clock and counting down the hours as they dwindle in front of you and you get closer and closer to the time you have to get back up, yet you feel like you have not slept a single second… guess how much time you have actually been asleep?
Researchers in sleep labs have studied patients who are up all night, wide awake. Monitoring their brain activity on an EEG, researchers could see exactly what brain patterns they had every moment of the entire sleepless night. What percent of the night do you think the brain has gone into a normal sleep pattern, even when you feel that you didn’t sleep a single minute?
10% of the night? 25% of the night? 50% of the night?
It turns out that when you are laying there all night long, your brain is actually catching sleep roughly 70% of the night. That is infinitely reassuring to me as I lay there, sure I got zero restorative sleep. I remind myself that not only did I get a lucid, in-and-out, semi-rest where my brain unplugged for probably 70% of that sleepless night, but I also have an opportunity the very next night to turn my sleep completely around.
To that end, here is a list of my 12 favorite holistic ways to help you get back into a health sleep/wake cycle, in the exact order that you do them. Use in this suggested order and you can likely see an improvement in your first night!
12 Ways To Sleep Better Tonight:
1. Get Morning Light On Your Face
To easily correct your circadian rhythm, totally naturally, get into a habit of getting natural light on your face every single morning as early as possible outdoors.
20 — 30 minutes is ideal, but even just 10 minutes greeting the day will make a difference in your sleep that very night. Sometimes I can only have a cup of coffee in front of a well lit window for 5 minutes in the morning and even that short of a time period is still helpful to get that light on my face.
You could try sitting on a porch, balcony or front door stoop every morning, you could head outside on your lunch break to eat a picnic lunch outside mid-day, you might know which of the windows in your home are sunny and at what time of the day there is a sunbeam to sit in in the AM hours, even going for a drive is helpful, so if you have a morning commute this might be one of the perks of it! Might be the only perk, lol, but at least it helps give you morning light exposure.
Another idea that might be a good resource for you is to simply use a light box when you wake up.
In addition to spending a bit of time outside or in front of a well lit window each morning, I use my light box every day — especially crucial for me all fall and winter long — I aim for 20 minutes while I attend to my emails or package up orders.
Effective to not only boost your daytime energy levels (making you more active during the day, when it’s healthiest to be active!) a light box will also help you sleep better that night… naturally, without taking any medications or supplements at all.
Perfect for those who don’t want to risk any untoward side effects from taking pills, a light box does more than just correct your circadian rhythm, light boxes have been shown to directly treat depression as good as a Rx medication and even boost libido.
You can find the lightbox I love most right here.
2. Eat Or Take Probiotics Daily
The mind/gut connection is completely underrated. Decreased gut flora has been linked with anxiety and probiotics are now shown to be an effective treatment for both anxiety and depression, and as a bonus, they boost immunity.
Since probiotics are being aptly called “psychobiotics” because of their beneficial influence on brain function, it’s not much of a surprise to see that they also result in an improvement in sleep. Research published in 2019 in Frontiers In Psychiatry showed that after 6 weeks of taking probiotics, participants has significantly improved sleep quality. You can read this article right here.
My favorite way to reestablish a healthy gut balance is to kick start any probiotic regime with a 7 day intensive probiotic inoculation. I have these waiting for you, along with all the other supplements I suggest in this article, in one easy Sleep Restore Protocol that is waiting for you right here:
Sleep Restore Protocol
3. Get Grounded Outside During The Day
As I talked about in last week’s blog post, it is not simply exposure to light, but additionally it is exposure to the earth’s low frequency electromagnetic fields that contributes to a healthy day/night pattern. This helps to make sense of why grounding helps to normalize sleep and boost daytime wakefulness, improving our circadian rhythm. Grounding studies have shown that being conductively connected to the earth deepens restorative sleep, normalizes cortisol, helps to relax muscles, and boost mood.
One of these studies, published in Healthcare on May 26, 2022 showed that just grounding for 30 minutes a day — during the day — significantly improved sleep quality each night. So if you can go outside and touch the earth outside for 30 minutes a day, do it. If you can go outside and touch the earth even for just a few minutes a day, do it. If you have one rock outside you can touch, one leaf on a tree or bush outside, one corner of a cement driveway or garage or one square inch of sidewalk you can stand on, you can be instantly grounded.
The effects of grounding the human body start instantly, so there is no time too short for getting grounded — if it can only be 30 seconds, do it. If it can be 30 minutes, all the better. In this video I run you through all the health benefits of grounding in order of how long you do it:
As fall approaches, and fall turns into winter, it can get cold out there, so I’ve written an entire healing blog post all about how to ground outside even as the weather turns cold. I highly recommend running through all the different ideas I have waiting for you about how to touch to the earth outside long even when it is freezing cold out there:
Grounding Outside Even In The Cold
4. Move Your Body Every Single Day
Walking each day is the one of the single best things you can do to prolong your life. You have to move your body daily. Walking has been shown to do everything from predict better remission rates during cancer recovery to prolonging life span to simply helping deepen sleep at night, which is why it’s included in today’s idea list.
Tons of medical studies have revealed the power of exercise and higher physical activity levels to improve sleep at night. Ones like this study,that found that exercise improved sleep in middle aged participants with sleep issues. And this one, which showed a direct correlation between exercise and improved sleep quality. And this one, which found that aerobic exercise not only effectively treated insomnia, but also decreased depressive symptoms and daytime sleepiness as well. In fact, this metanalysis found that the ideal exercise to most effectively treat sleep issues was muscle endurance training (using weights and/or body weight to create resistance while contracting muscles) plus walking.
Exercise can do more than improve your sleep, it can also protect your brain. Published just last month in July 2023 in The Lancet, researchers followed almost 9,000 patients for 10 years and found that folks who exercised the least had the most rapid rate of cognitive decline. Any activity level was better than no activity when it comes to protecting brain health.
Interesting to note, however, is that at any activity level, sleep was more important to brain health than exercising was. Even those who exercised at high levels but who didn’t sleep well had cognitive decline that totally and completely negated the benefit of exercise. In terms of brain health and healthy aging, if you have to choose between the two — choose sleep over exercise.
But it’s not one or the other… in general, if you increase your physical activity, you boost your sleep, so the benefits go hand in hand. Having high physical activity levels and optimal sleep created the best cognitive outcome 10 years later than any other combination of activity level and sleep duration.
So if I am not sleeping well at night I have to ask myself: did I truly move my body during the day? Increase your daytime activity levels and watch your nighttime sleep deepen. Want some easy ways to get a little extra movement into your day?
Hop over to this blog post I wrote for you for simple ideas to incorporate more activity into your day today:
Easy Ways To Bring More Movement Into Your Daily Routine. Even In Winter, Even At Home.
5. Re-examine your work schedule
Of course we are well aware that night shift work is super hard on your body and creates all kinds of sleep disturbances. Swing shift, night shift, rotating shifts, about 16% of the United States works some type of shift work, particularly in healthcare, emergency response, transportation, hospitality and manufacturing industries. This can result in insomnia, weight gain, cardiovascular disease, irritable bowel issues, metabolic issues, and even higher cancer risk.
Some strategies to cope with shift work that has been found effective in reducing symptoms of shift work disorder include keeping food intake strictly to daytime hours (independent of when you are sleeping or working, just eating only in the daytime which may mean eating before a night shift and after a night shift but not during…) avoiding substance use (which was found to make symptoms worse) limiting night shifts to two nights in a row when possible, more days off in between shift work runs if more than two nights in a row are required, designing a schedule where there are a core 3 – 4 hours of sleep that are always the same, regardless of whether it’s a day or a night shift when possible, low dose melatonin 5 hours before bed on earlier nights, blue blocking glasses when commuting home in the morning after a night shift from the time they leave work until home in bed with the lights off (shown to keep brain in sleep mode to improve sleep upon returning home), exercise and/or light therapy to delay sleep, and napping for 1 – 2 hours about 3 hours before the start of the night shift.
But it’s not just shift work that interferes with sleep. Stress itself, even from a day job, can create sleep problems. Lower your stress at work in order to protect your nighttime sleep patterns. Not only re-examining work hours as we talked about above, but re-examinging job responsibilities and other strategies to lower stress loads all together. Sometimes something as simple as shifting your commute, decreasing background noise, delegating non-crucial tasks, and other small tweaks can greatly improve sleep at night.
Hop over here to read my blog post on how to decrease the negative impact that job stress can have on your life and re-consider or re-negotiate your work hours, your job load, your career path, your commute, your training requirements, and many more ideas right here:
How To Protect Your Mental Health From Work Related Stress
6. Address Hypothyroid and Adrenal Issues:
If you have been through any kind of stressful situation or big life transition or change (even fun, positive ones like marriage, a new job, a new baby!) chances are your adrenals could use some TLC.
In fact, did you know that you can actually be in adrenal fatigue from birth? It’s true. But did you also know it’s fully reversible, no matter how long you’ve been living on fumes? That’s also true, and I will help you get there.
I have an absolutely FREE Adrenal Repair eBook you can download right here, and I’ve also written a great blog post that’s waiting for you here to jump start your journey, in case you don’t want to download or read a book.
In this article I walk you through how to start addressing both adrenal and hypothyroidism issues, including a free quiz you can take right now to assess your adrenal function to see if you are even in adrenal fatigue:
Addressing Subclinical Hypothyroid And Adrenal Fatigue
7. Block Blue Light From Reaching Your Eyes
Ok I’m a mother of two adult children (oh my how the time has flown) and it’s just completely unrealistic for me to expect them not to use their computers to complete homework assignments in college or at work. Or to use their phone to stay in touch with friends or communicate with co-workers, or to use their televisions to catch up on their favorite TV shows or movies or sports games.
That said, you can make the glow from these screens less disruptive to circadian rhythm simply by the compromise of wearing blue light filtering glasses, like these. Ideal for shift workers (as we talked about in #5 above), those who work on computers, those who watch TV or look at cell phones in the two hour window before bed, and anyone who wants to boost their natural production of melatonin should seriously consider wearing blue light blocking glasses.
You can find blue light filtering glasses almost anywhere, but make sure they are dark yellow to orange, not light yellow, in order to block enough blue light that it actually makes a noticeable difference in your ability to fall asleep. Put them on for the two hours just before bedtime and you absolutely will notice a difference in your sleep quality.
Here are the ones I recommend.
8. Take Melatonin At Dusk
I hear all the time from folks who say that melatonin doesn’t work for them. The most likely reason why is because they were taking them at the wrong time. You have to take melatonin as the sun is setting, not at night. This is the key!!! It must be at dusk, not 1 hour before bedtime (as instructed on the bottle of most melatonin supplements.)
Whether dusk is at 4 pm or 10 pm or any time in between, no matter what part of the season you are in or where you live, take melatonin as the sun goes down. Even if you plan to be up for hours and hours longer! Take it when it is natural for your body to have rising levels, and you will naturally relax through the evening and be ready for bed whenever you are able to hit the hay.
I always get emails from folks who have heard that taking melatonin decreases their own body’s production of melatonin. There are many medical studies looking at this, and it just isn’t true. This important study, published in the Journal Of Pineal Research, found that even doses up to 50 mg of melatonin nightly (50 mg!!!) did not change the exogenous production of the body’s own melatonin at all.
This study found that by taking melatonin for 6 months and abruptly stopping it, not only was there no rebound issues with sleep but actually there was continued residual benefit from the sleep correction that melatonin helped create.
And this fabulous overview of the recent medical literature on melatonin, just published in August 2022 in Nutrients suggests that melatonin is so important for the body that it is literally as important as Vitamin D — melatonin is a powerful antioxidant and has been found to help support eye health, cognitive health (helping to treat dementia) help with treating migraine, ADHD, tinnitus, autism, boosting reproductive health and fertility, protecting cardiac health, metabolic health, gut health, protecting against autoimmune disorders, and even cancer prevention and treatment. I highly recommend reading this medical literature review to see how important melatonin is to your health:
Is Melatonin The Next Vitamin D?If you want to give melatonin a try to help correct your sleep, just don’t forget that the very best time to take melatonin is at dusk, as the sun starts going down. It doesn’t matter if you don’t plan to go to bed for several more hours, still take it at dusk, as that is our natural rhythm of melatonin production.
This one simple tweak can change everything for people who think melatonin doesn’t work for them. Take it as the sun goes down and you will find that no matter when you finally go to bed that night, you are so much more aligned with falling asleep than you would every have been only taking melatonin an hour before bed. If you take it at bedtime, your body has already missed the window of the natural circadian rhythm signaling that night is approaching.
I’ve found that patients can take a much much smaller effective dose of melatonin, sometimes as small as only 0.3 mg as long as they are taking it right at dusk. My favorite melatonin supplements, along with all the other supplements I’ve recommended in this article, are all waiting for you in my Sleep Restore Protocol here:
Sleep Restore Protocol
9. Take L-Theanine To Help Decrease Intrusive Thoughts At Night
If one of your sleep issues is overthinking or intrusive thoughts at night, then I have a supplement that will really help you. It’s a chewable tablet so that even if you are laying in bed and don’t want to get up to get a glass of water, you can chew it right in bed and start feel those worries release.
How? By giving the body a dose of L-Theanine at bedtime. L-Theanine crosses the blood brain barrier and converts to GABA (the brain’s soothing neurotransmitter) to help relax over active thoughts. A supplement called GABA Trex is my favorite L-theanine supplement, because it is a chewable tablet and doesn’t require water, which means you can leave it on your nightstand and chew one right before bed if it is just one of those nights where your brain is feeling restless… or chew one if you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep.
Like all the supplements I mention in this article, you can find my favorite GABA Trex in my in my Sleep Restore Protocol here:
Sleep Restore ProtocolI keep repeating the link to the Sleep Protocol because I get so many emails asking where to find these supplements and which supplements to take (as well as where to purchase them, since there are so many places, like Amazon, where they don’t properly store supplements so that by the time you get them in hand they are deactivated and a waste of money) so that’s why I want to be sure you know a reliable source for supplements in case you don’t already have one!
If you have a different online supplement shop you love, you still view this protocol and then find all the same supplements in your preferred shop.
10. Sleep Grounded Nightly
To take your sleep resonance to the next level, you can combine your brain’s healing alpha sleep state with the Earth’s soothing Schulman frequency (as talked about in #3 in this list above) by grounding the body when sleeping with in indoor grounding tool.
While we sleep, we cycle through alpha sleep states and REM sleep states and each time we do we are held in beautiful resonance with the Earth’s healing energy. This is one of the reasons why getting a good night’s sleep impacts our entire body from head to toe… because high quality sleep does everything from preserve our brain volume and function to enhancing weight loss!
If you want to read more on how to set your bedroom up for grounding indoors while you sleep (in addition to grounding outsides on days when you can as mentioned above) read this article I wrote last week for you:
Everything You Need To Know About Sleeping Grounded This WinterOr hop over to my Grounding Boutique for immediate sleep solutions. I have invested a great deal of time and research creating the highest quality, most reliable, eco-friendly and ethically created grounding tools, crafted by hand right here in the USA. Tools like my eco-friendly Grounding Mattress Topper for full bed surface area grounding (ideal if you have multiple sleepers — including pets you want grounded — in one bed), or sleep curled up with the warmth of my Organic Grounding Hot Water Bottle on your tummy or by your feet… warm, comforting, reliable grounding… complete with a machine washable cover.
During the day, ground outside, and during the night, consider sleeping grounded. You can find all of my grounding sleep solutions in the Indoor Grounding section of my Grounding Boutique right here.
11. Decrease EMF Exposures In Your Bedroom
Decreasing the disruption to your sleep at night by decreasing your EMF exposures in your sleeping area, removing those you can remove, decreasing those you can decrease, and shielding from those you can’t do anything about — this will help your body truly restore it’s health during sleep.
I have a free guide to walk you through how to start protecting your health from EMFs right here — even doing just one thing, like turning your WiFi router off at night for a few hours can make a noticeable difference in your sleep. On this page I walk you through tons of ideas on reducing your exposures as well as guides on how to discuss EMF sensitivity with your in person physician, labs to request, supplements you can take to reduce the neuroinflammation that EMFs create (on reason you get insomnia and brain fog, so these supplement can really help!)
If you’ve done those things and still find yourself too wired to sleep, the next step would be to consider sleeping in a shielding sleeping bag or between a shielding cover above you and a mattress shield below you for 360 degrees of protection to all of your internal organs. I show you in this video here how this dramatically decreases the radiation to your body all night long, for hours on end.
Ahh… the relief is immediate. You can feel your entire autonomic nervous system relax and appreciate the break from the onslaught of EMFs that are pervasive across the globe and in every corner of your life. Even though it’s nearly impossible to fully remove EMFs from our environment, it’s really helpful to at least get an 8 hour break from them at night.
You can find all of my favorite shielding tools right here:
Eco-Friendly Shielding Tools
12. Use Magnesium To Relax If You Still Can’t Sleep
Magnesium is a natural muscle relaxant, and because it helps your muscles relax and release, it is a wonderful nighttime drink, as well as the perfect topical massage.
On nights when I am feeling tense (especially helpful for anyone who grinds their teeth at night, has neck and shoulder tension, or has restless legs!) instead of laying in bed growing more and more frustrated, I break out of that rut by making myself a hot cup of water with a teaspoon of powdered magnesium drink mix stirred into it.
There are lots of different magnesium powdered drink mixes, of course I’ve put my favorite one in my Sleep Restore Protocol right here. Just get up, take 10 minutes to sip your warm magnesium beverage, then settle back in and literally feel your muscles relax as you sink into bed more deeply.
The other thing you can do is apply magnesium lotion to your body before bed (or whenever you are struggling to sleep, simply keep the bottle of lotion by your bedside, give your feet a relaxing foot massage with magnesium lotion and feel your whole body relax.). My favorite topical magnesium is this all natural, GMO-free, made in the USA lotion packed with 72 ionic sea minerals to fully hydrate and re-mineralize your skin, while boosting conductivity naturally (great if you are sleeping on an indoor grounding tool as discussed in #10 above!)
USA made, this magnesium is harvested through solar evaporation from Utah’s ancient inland sea, the Great Salt, which is naturally high in ionic magnesium chloride. Get a boost of muscle relaxing magnesium along with conductivity enhancing, 72 ionic trace minerals to nourish and balance the skin. Each 2 fl oz of lotion contains 6,000 mg of magnesium. Infused with Aloe and Vitamin E to nourish and hydrate and citrus Oils to firm and brighten.
» Non-GMO »No artificial color or scents » Ph-balanced » No known allergens » Gluten-Free
Drinking a cup of warm magnesium drink and relaxing muscles with a topical magnesium lotion… ahhhh, isn’t that so much better?
Bonus: Keep A Dream Journal
There are so many benefits to your body and mind and spirit from getting deep restorative sleep. And one of the very best benefits is that you can process and release stress while you sleep!
If you find dreams fascinating, keeping a dream journal is a fun project to undertake during winter, a time of hibernation anyway. I encourage you to sleep with it right by your bedside, so that you can wake up and — while you are still in that open, groggy, free flowing, intuitive hypnogogic state — record any feelings, thoughts, images, memories, impulses, sights, sounds, topics, ideas, etc… that you got from your dreams the night before.
There are lots of different types of dreams… some are simply to release old issues you are done with, some are just processing types of dreams to enhance memory and recall, some are about subconscious fears releasing… so it’s not necessary to take all of your dreams seriously or focus on ones that are disturbing or frightening. If you find yourself waking from a truly frightening dream, it’s really important to remember that this likely arose from deeply held or suppressed fears or worries or anxieties that you have held onto because of past experiences, traumas, hurt feelings, past life wounds, etc… and just to let them go.
But if you do wake up from a dream and feel it is symbolic, you might want to have a dream journal by your bedside to jot it down if there is one specific animal, situation or event that you are left with upon waking… for example, you battled a snake all night long, you were swept away in a flood, you watched a mystical creature swooping down breathing fire all around you. These dreams arise from your subconscious and they are the brain’s way of dealing with big themes that are going on in your life. While they can be informative — often full of fear or violence or sexuality or power struggles or other dynamics you are trying to sort and release in your life, I think of these dreams as more an intellectual exercise in processing and releasing. These are fun and interesting to record and might give you insight into how your mind is working on certain issues, but I would take this the same way you deal with your monkey mind during waking hours… with a bit of humor and not so seriously!
Every once in a while you might be lucky enough to get a dream that is incredibly calming and centering. These are the dreams where are you connecting with something bigger than yourself… dreams about speaking to someone who has passed away, or seeing a long deceased pet, or a conversation with a spiritual guide or teacher, dreams of flying or astral travel or falling or riding elevators or going through tunnels or attending meetings or being a student learning incredible things. What is important to remember about these dreams are the physical sensations and *felt sense* that you get from the dream… write down any directives or information that you wake with before it’s lost.
Keep your dream journals by your bedside so you can immediately record your experience in these types of dreams — they are lost very easily and forgotten, just like your intuition speaks quietly and can be easily overshadowed by the mind… these Divinely Inspired dreams are beautiful and centered and more quiet than your daily activities of life and are easily over ridden by the events of the day.
Do you want to hear about the coolest study I’ve seen in a while?
Published in Current Biology on April 12, 2021, researchers interacted with sleeping subjects and showed, for the first time ever, that during REM sleep it’s possible for folks who are lucid dreaming to perceive and answer questions — in other words, the sleeping folks had real-time communication with the researchers. They were able to answer yes-no questions, compute math problems, and express replies through intentional eye movements and facial muscle movements.
This is the first documentation of two way communication with lucid dreamers. You can read this fascinating study for yourself right here:
Real-Time Dialogue Between Experimenters And Dreamers During REM Sleep
I hope this information helps you positively impact your circadian rhythm, helps you boost your mood, remedy your sleep, even protect the longevity of your lifespan.
A good night’s sleep is absolutely crucial to maintaining wellness — one thing is for certain — your body needs good sleep to function over a lifetime!
xoxox, Laura Koniver MD
The post Winter Sleep: 12 Ways To Hibernate Now For A Deep Reset Before Spring appeared first on Intuition Physician.
October 23, 2023
Everything You Need To Know About Sleeping Grounded This Winter
I get asked every single day about the best ways to sleep grounded, and what to do and what not to do when sleeping grounded, so today I’m sharing all my thoughts in a free blog post so in the future I can direct inquires to this article!
Here is everything you ever needed to know about sleeping grounded.
Benefits From Sleeping Grounded:
What do we know from the medical literature on the health benefits of sleeping grounded?
Getting into the relaxed but alert alpha brain wave pattern, which is seen in deep meditative states and healing sleep states, is one of the hallmarks of grounding. Deeper, more restorative sleep at night puts us in a zone of healing, while lack of sleep affects everything from increasing your risk of dementia to accelerating weight gain (did you know that medical studies show you have a 9 times more rapid weight gain when you carry a sleep deficit?!?!)
We’ve actually known for many decades (over 50 years) that the earth’s energy helps support healthy sleep patterns. Experiments in the 1960s and 70s have helped elucidate how the energy output from the earth helps human beings maintain a healthy circadian rhythm.
Test subjects who lived for a month in an underground bunker, completely removed from exposure to natural daylight, were able to maintain an internal synchronization to a day/night rhythm, even with the complete absence of sunlight. But test subjects who lived for a month in an underground bunker that was additionally shielded from the low frequency DC energy of the earth (effectively shielding over 99% of the earth’s natural EMFs) became internally desynchronized, unable to maintain a consistent day/night rhythm.
In repeated experiments of over 100 test subjects, the only test subjects that became internally desynchronized were the ones that were shielded from the earth’s DC energy pulse, but never the ones that were shielded only from the sun. When a low frequency electromagnetic field was re-introduced to the earth shielded test subject’s living quarters, they began to re-synchronize to a healthy day/night rhythm once again.
Because of these experiments, we understand that it is not simply exposure to light, but additionally it is exposure to the earth’s low frequency electromagnetic fields that contributes to a healthy day/night pattern. This helps to make sense of why grounding helps to normalize sleep and boost daytime wakefulness, improving our circadian rhythm.
Researchers have also found a significant coherence between the electrical activity of our planet and the electrical activity of the human brain in real time EEG/EFL studies, which you can read here, published in 2015.
This electrical activity between the planet and our brain is actually synchronized to such a magnitude, amplitude and frequency that it may even allow for information exchange to occur — a real time “ping” from the planet to our human brains, as described in this journal article from 2003 here.
For a more in-depth look at how the electrical activity of the earth impacts our daily circadian rhythm and orients us to time/day and season, hop over to this article I wrote for you:
The Real Reason Grounding Works: The Healing Power of the Earth, Finally Explained
Want more medical studies on sleeping grounded?
I’ve got you:
A study on sleeping grounded from 2004 found that sleeping grounded reduces cortisol levels and improves sleep quality.Published in 2011, this overview of the effect of grounding our our central nervous system suggests grounding plays a significant role in helping to regulate our body’s nervous system.A study from 2018 that used an EEG to record brain activity during grounding backs this up, by showing that grounding instantaneously shifts our brain wave patterns into a more relaxed state and reduces ambient stress levels.Even more interesting was an even more recent study — published in Healthcare on May 26, 2022 — looking at grounding and sleep quality. This study showed that just grounding for 30 minutes a day significantly improved sleep quality at night. This was a double blinded placebo based medical study (the gold standard) and really was helpful in defining that you do not necessarily need to sleep grounded to have improvement in your sleep from grounding — a 30 minute session every day was enough in this study to make a statistically significant improvement in nightly sleep quality.I go over the neurological benefits of grounding in an article I published in March of 2023 in the Open Journal of Neurology and Neuroscience here. In it I give seven easy ways to use the support from grounding to improve mental health. Another benefit of grounding on the health of our brain may come from the fact that our cerebrospinal fluid is an electrolytic, fully conductive liquid that provides instantaneous grounding to our entire central nervous system. I go into more detail on this in an article I published May 2023 in the American Journal Of Neurology Research, which you can read in full here as well as watch a video where I go over the medical literature on CSF and brain health.Additional Benefits From Sleeping Grounded:
Boosted Recovery:
A study from 2019, suggests that sleeping grounded allows our body to recover more quickly from exertion, reducing muscle soreness after an intentional stress test (running on a treadmill.) This study was triple blinded and therefore the results are highly reliable, because the test subject themselves, the clinician administering the stress test and follow up evaluation, as well as the data analyst evaluating the results did not know which test subjects were grounded or sham grounded. Laboratory evaluation documented decreased markers of inflammation and muscle damage on the participants who slept grounded after completing the stress test.
Boosted Immunity:
Grounding can decrease your whole body inflammation, improve circulation, decrease clotting risk, support healthy respiration, and strengthen your immune system, all of which helps to fight the different viruses that cycle through the fall and winter months when we are in close proximity to each other in indoor environments, like colds, the flu, and covid. Read this article to learn more on that:
10 Ways Grounding Can Directly Support Your Health During This Pandemic
Boosted Libido:
Improved blood flow, relaxed muscles, decreased stress, boosted sex hormones, improved mood, less pain — these all can equal a massively improved sexual experience for you and your partner. If you want to hear me go over this in less than three minutes for you, hop over here to watch my TikTok on Grounding and Sexual Health
Or if you prefer to read an article I wrote with this information, hop over here:
How Grounding Makes Sex Feel Better & Boosts Your Libido TooIf you want to feel exactly what I’m talking about, you can experiment with going outside and enjoy a long sweet kiss with your partner. Feel your lips, feel the sensation and the blood flow through them as you lean into your lover. It’s a heightened experience for sure.
So how do you get grounded when you are ready to go further than a kiss, but want more privacy? Oh it’s so easy. You can use an indoor grounding tool to ground your bed — that’s the easiest solution — plus sleeping grounded all night long will not only help your sex life but will boost your body’s health in all the ways I mention earlier in this article.
I have invested a great deal of time and research creating the highest quality, most reliable, eco-ethically hand crafted (right here in the USA) grounding tools that use all natural materials — safer for you, safer for the environment. Tools that can be used while you are sexually intimate in bed, grounding products you can lay directly on with your partner… items like grounding mattress toppers, grounding bed rolls, and grounding pillowcases that you can use on top of any of these grounding products… more on all of these options below.
How To Sleep Grounded:
When I first started introducing the concept of grounding to my patients, I advised them to go outside and touch the earth directly. Free, accessible, direct healing. To this day, I still advise you to do this, daily, whenever you possibly can! If you can go outside and touch the earth outside to improve your sleep, for 30 or more minutes a day, absolutely please do.
As winter approaches, even 30 minutes outside might get tougher to come by, so I wrote an article for you here on how to ground directly to the earth outside even when it’s cold. I highly recommend running through all the different ideas I have waiting for you about how to touch to the earth outside long before it’s freezing cold out there:
My Favorite Grounding Shoes + A Dozen Ways To Ground Outside When It’s ColdNow I do additionally recommend adding an indoor grounding tool at night too, and that’s because the medical literature is so very clear that grounding indoors with indoor grounding tools is extremely healing.
Because I did not want my patient’s healing to be limited to times when they had the energy, good weather, mobility and spare time to head outside . Plus there are so many patients with mobility issues, those who stay indoors because they are convalescing or recovering, or those who feel particularly ill or isolated, or who have safety concerns heading outside.
In general, the folks who need grounding the most are the ones who are least feeling up to being active outside.
So I scoured the medical community for grounding tools that my patients could use indoors. Tools made by hand, lovingly crafted out of eco-friendly materials, and tools that would last and last and last, made from strong, resilient stainless steel fibers that would not degrade after a single use or a single wash.
I couldn’t find any. So I started making my own. I offer these to you right here and review them in detail for you below.
Ready To Sleep Grounded? 8 Essential Tips:
1. Minimize Electrical Fields
Ideally, you have your bed in an area that is free of electrical fields, so that you can have beautiful restorative sleep without EMFs irritating your brain. I go over the effects of EMFs on the brain in this article.
What Happens To The Human Brain During EMF ExposuresAlthough many folks can ground in an electrical field and reap all the health benefits from grounding without feeling any negative symptoms, millions of us are electrosensitive and can really feel it if we are grounding in an electrical field.
And to be fair, we can feel it if we are in an electrical field period, even without being grounded. For more on grounding in EMFs, read this article I wrote for you here:
Is It Safe To Get Grounded Around EMFs?The bottom line is that the medical literature is very clear that your body is in a healing state when it’s grounded, even in the presence of EMFs. The medical literature is also very clear that EMFs are damaging to your health whether you feel it or not. So if you do feel some negative symptoms from EMFs when you are grounding, the ideal solution is not to stop grounding and ignore the EMFs but instead to decrease the EMFs where you are grounding — because even if you stop grounding, those electrical fields will be impacting your health and even worse, you will not have the health boost from grounding, so to stop grounding is lose-lose. Figuring out how to decrease your electrical field exposures and continue grounding is win-win.
Not sure if electrical fields are impacting your sleep? It’s pretty easy to figure out. Try turning the breaker off in your bedroom just for one or two nights and see if your sleep improves. That is a free, easy way to tell if electrical fields are impacting your sleep.
If you don’t want to turn your breaker off, you may want to simply snag an electrical field meter and really find out what areas of your bedroom have measurable fields. I have an e-field detection meters waiting for you here. Push your bed to the area with the lowest reading and immediately feel the relief that very night.As long as you have your bed 2 feet or more away from any outlets, cords or appliances, then likely you are free of electrical fields.
Continue reading for some other tips to help…
2. No Metal Components To Your Bed:
To further reduce your bed’s resonance with an electrical field, I don’t recommend any metal in your bedframe or bed — so avoid spring or coil mattresses (I sleep on an organic latex mattress from Sleep On Latex because it is more affordable, but if costs is not an issue the ones from Savvy Rest are exceptional) and avoid metal frames (I recommend all wooden frames or platform beds.)
Also important is to avoid fire retardants (more on that in this article I wrote for you here: A Secret Cause Of Infertility That You Are Exposed To Every Day and Every Night) so again, an organic latex mattress and pillow is a great option and although they are pricey, they outlast all other mattresses, offering up to 30 years of organic, chemical free support.
3. No Electric Blankets or Adjustable Frames:
Because we don’t want electrical fields impacting our body while we sleep, we don’t want to bring any heating blankets or electric adjustable frames either. If you want warmth during the winter months, I recommend extra blankets and an old fashioned hot water bottle at your feet!
There are a few things you can do to make sure the CPAP is not bringing unwanted EMFs into your sleeping space. One is to get get a longer tube, a 4 foot or 6 foot long tube instead of the shorter 2 foot one. That way you can put your CPAP machine three feet away from your bed and the electrical fields from the machine will not reach you, as electrical fields don’t extend very far away from appliances and die out after about 2 feet or so.
On top of that, do not use a tube that has a heating element in the tube (the newer CPAP machines heat and humidify the air in the machine, to help you avoid using a heated tube) as the heated tube elements produce large amounts of EMFs.
Switch your tube, push your CPAP machine as far away from the bed as you can, and you may instantly notice deeper sleep just from that alone.
5. Add a Grounding Tool:
There are several great ways to ground your bed so you can sleep grounded all night long.
The first thing I recommend is to sleep on eco-friendly materials. Those vinyl, polyester, synthetic plastic “leatherette” grounding mats and grounding sheets that are mass produced out of the cheapest materials come with several huge downsides.
One is that they are not biodegradable, so although you are asking for health support from our earth, you are then consuming plastic that will sit in a landfill for 500+ years after you are no longer alive, which to me isn’t a great way to thank our planet for the healing support it offers us.
Two, these surfaces are hot, non-breathable, sticky, and that alone can make sleep worse. If you have a nice supportive mattress under you, why would you cover it with hot sticky toxic plastic and then sleep on that? It’s like sweating all night long on a plastic shower curtain. No thank you.
Lastly, because these items are made from plastic, they are not great for long term exposure, especially when warmed by our body heat. I don’t want plastic wrapping around my body all night long, I only want soft, eco-friendly, ethically hand crafted grounding tools touching me. Healthy for me and health for the planet, win-win!
I have invested a great deal of time and research creating the highest quality, most reliable, eco-friendly and ethically created grounding tools in the world, crafted by hand right here in the USA. Tools like my eco-friendly Grounding Mattress Topper for full bed surface area grounding (ideal if you have multiple sleepers in one bed), or my eco-friendly Grounding Bed Roll, perfect for those who travel and want a plug-and-play set up that can travel with them.
6. Have fur babies?
Grounding is very supportive to your pet’s health as well. You can read more about that in an article I wrote for you here:
Why Your Pet Loves Your Grounding MatIf you bed share with your pet, I recommend the grounding topper because it grounds your entire bed surface so no matter where your pet (or kids, are partner) sleep they will be grounded. If you want to ground the pet’s bed, you can put this washable organic grounding mat on it but be certain to supervise them around the cord so they do not chew on it or get tangled in it.
Speaking of ground cords…
7. Don’t sleep with exposed cords
I do not recommend sleeping with a cord attached to your body, or attached to a grounding tool that leaves the cord within reach of you while you are unconscious. It seems super obvious to not allow a sleeping person to have a cord that could wrap around their neck while they sleep, but clearly there are lots of grounding companies who don’t care about that because they sell a pillowcase with a ground cord that attaches to it, right where your neck is. What?!?! The first rule in medicine is do no harm, so for that reason alone I refuse to carry a products that is an choke and entanglement risk while you are asleep, and a trip and fall risk when you get up in the middle of the night to pee.
That’s why I always encourage folks to ground their bed surface (with the cord tucked safely away under their mattress) and NOT to sleep with an exposed cord and/or a cord attached to their body, like with a grounding wristband.
Instead I recommend:
a grounding topper, as shown above, for full bed grounding, or…a grounding bed roll, for a portable grounding mat that rolls all they way across the length of the bed and allows you to tuck the cord under the mattress, or…run the grounding bed roll or a grounding ribbon across the bed at the top, where your pillows rest, and place a grounding pillow case on top of it to ground through your pillow without any cords near your head or neck.
8. Upgrade to a PureGround Cord
In addition to moving your bed out of an electrical field, if you are electrosensitive I strongly encourage you to upgrade your ground cord from a standard ground cord to an EMF filtering PureGround grounding cord.
The PureGround cord only allows DC energy from the earth goes up the cord and enter your grounding tool. This enables healing electrons from the earth to flow to body but does not allow EMF or other currents on the ground wires to reach you.
You can find out more about that on my PureGround FAQ page here, or simply order the PureGround cord right here.
I’m so glad we live in a time where we are beginning to wake up and really figure out all of the invaluable ways that connecting to the earth supports our healing.
There just is no substitute.
Luckily we have lots and lots of indoor options so that we can remain connected while we work indoors or recover and heal indoors or sleep indoors at night. So pick a way to ground inside and don’t forget to add on some outdoor time touching the earth directly when you can as well… and watch your health skyrocket!
During the day, ground outside, shooting for 15 minutes or more, and during the night, consider sleeping grounded. You can find all of my eco-ethically hand crafted grounding tools in my Grounding Boutique right here.
xoxoxo,Laura Koniver MD
PS — Want to test your sleep quality?
In the office, clinicians use an assessment tool called the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI for short) This test will give you a score for your sleep quality — on a scale from 0 to 21. The higher the number, the worse your sleep quality.
600 middle aged patients (from 38 – 50 years old) were given this same exact test, and the average score result was 5.8, so clinicians now typically consider any score at 6 or above to be worse sleep quality than desired.
If you want to take this assessment quiz, simply click here to print it out, for free.
Be sure to record the date you took it, and try taking this quiz again after a month of grounding to see if your numbers have changed! Hopefully you will be able to see very concretely how sleeping grounded at night makes a measurable, significant change.
Free printable: PSQI sleep quality rating
While we sleep, we cycle through alpha sleep states and REM sleep states and each time we do we are held in beautiful resonance with the Earth’s healing energy. This is why dreams often increase in intensity when we sleep grounded.
What are some other things you can do to optimize sleep besides grounding?
That’s the topic of next week’s blog post, so stay tuned for my next healing article to come out on repairing your sleep in your inbox next Monday. If someone forwarded you this article and you’d like to get my weekly articles emailed to you, sign up for my weekly holistic health newsletter right here:
Dr. Koniver’s Healing Newsletter
The post Everything You Need To Know About Sleeping Grounded This Winter appeared first on Intuition Physician.
October 16, 2023
How To Protect Your Mental Health From Work Related Stress
Because we are headed into cooler months, most of us will be spending more time indoors. When we are inside for most of the day, it affects our levels of stress and our mental health. In fact, job stress may cause as many as one out of every seven new cases of depression, anxiety and other common mental disorders, suggests a study published in Lancet Psychiatry.
Researchers looked at over 6,800 participants, ranking job strain at age 45 with risk of mental illness at age 50. The results were astounding.
Having a job that is highly demanding increased mental diagnosis rates by 70%.Having a job that causes high strain (moves at a fast pace, or is highly risky, for example) increased mental diagnosis rates by 220%.Having a job in which the employee had very little control over decisions increased mental illness rates by 89%.All in all, researchers estimate that simply having higher job stress increased the overall likelihood of subsequent mental illness significantly, accounting for 1 out of every 7 new cases of mental illness in midlife.Forget the usually-thought-of triggers such as divorce, bereavement and serious medical issues… job strain alone can put you at significant risk for mental disorders.
What constitutes a stressful job? A job that requires high intensity, a job that moves at a fast pace, a job that has high risk, a job that gives you very little control over your duties, and/or a job that doesn’t allow you to make your own decisions were all factors that contributed to job strain.
If you are thinking… yes my job is stressful but I really love it, it’s not enough. Job satisfaction is not protective of the strain that job stress can put on mental health.
Although ideally we would all have meaningful soul satisfying jobs… even when they are super fulfilling soul careers, they can actually still be toxic, stressful, high paced, and put us at high risk for mental illness. And let’s face it, many times jobs simply are not in the slightest bit soul fulfilling at all and yet still are so stressful that they raise mental illness diagnosis, all for a job you don’t even enjoy.
But there are ways to help protect yourself and your mental state. So today I wanted to do a round up for you on ways to decrease work-related stress to safeguard your mental health.
9 ways to decrease the negative health effects of job stress:
1. Factor job strain into your career choices early on whenever possible.
If you have a family history or a personal history of mental illness, it is absolutely imperative that you protect your mental health by choosing jobs that give you autonomy, or at least allow you to participate in decision making.
Or… if you want to work in a tightly regulated job field where you don’t get to have control over the decisions, then select a job where the pace is slow and relaxed and/or the job is low intensity, low stakes.
If one out of every 7 cases of mental illness in midlife comes from having a stressful job, it is absolutely something to take into account when selecting between several possible career pathways. Look for a job that allows you to be a part of the decision making process, or look for a job with lower intensity and a slower pace if you have an option and want to be protective of your mental health.
2. Modify existing job parameters.
If you are already in a stressful job that you want to stay in, consider small ways to modify your current stress levels at work.
There are three basic ways you can lighten your job strain: increasing your autonomy (getting to make more job related decisions,) lightening the pace of the job, or lightning the demands on the job. Even choosing just one way to modify your current work load, even just slight modification, can help reduce mental illness risk:
Ask to be part of decisions whenever possible… if there are committees to be involved in, if there are meetings you can speak up during, if there are opportunities for a leadership role — this study shows that even in a highly stressful job, having some sort of say in what decisions are made allows the job to cause less strain over all.Negotiate terms whenever possible… not just the classic example of asking for a raise, but speaking up over anything you can… such as negotiating when you take a break, what shift you work, what snacks are stocked in the vending machine, or what the dress code is can help give you some say in your work day and reduce strain.If you can’t make decision and you can negotiate terms, sharing the burden is another way to reduce job strain. Asking for help, getting co-workers involved, turning individual tasks into group tasks, forming alliances, delegating and and all tasks that you can delegate — these are all ways to reduce job strain even in jobs that are highly stressful and where you have little control.
3. If you can’t make work less stressful, make it more meaningful.
There is medical proof that the more meaningful your work is, the better your brain works. Which means less frustration, less burn out, less stress.
Published October 22, 2014 in Neuron, researchers found that having your own internal motivation, in the form of curiosity, allows your brain to have enhanced memory and function. Being curious about learning something enhanced the study participants absorption and ability to master the information they were curious to learn and even enhanced their ability to remember non-related information alongside it. Researchers could literally see the brain enhance function on MRI when the subject was highly curious about the material they were engaged in — showing that being curious about something literally changes the way the your brain functions, optimizing key parts of the brain such as the hippocampus and the dopaminergic circuit.
This shows that the physiological function of the brain changes when the material a person is focusing on is one that they are curious about learning, as opposed to material they have low curiosity about. Not only does the brain allow for learning of self motivated material better, but it even allows better recall of ancillary information presented while in that engaged, curious state.
So it’s not about completing a task as directed, or rote memorization of material, or getting a specific test score on an exam in school that allows you to truly learn. It’s about following your inner guidance system, engaging in your own innate curiosity, and allowing that to guide you in making educational and career choices that align your soul gifts with your occupation.
This study shows that you are naturally suited to learn, retain and remember information that you are self selecting, motivated, and curious about. This is exactly why I am so glad that I never ever ever had any formal training in painting… I just picked up a paint brush in medical school and starting painting on a canvas between classes as a way to completely unplug and de-stress from the mental grind of my medical studies.
Because I didn’t know what colors mixed with what or any formal do’s or don’ts with regard to how to layer paint on a page, I was free to experiment. I am far from being a skilled artist, yet my artwork has been on the cover of magazines, CDs & DVD, in the three healing children’s books I’ve published, was blown up to astronomically huge proportions to be the entire backdrop of a stage at a music festival, and more!
Why? All because I followed my curiosity when I picked up my paintbrush, and I was motivated to do it, not instructed to do it. Some examples of my imperfect artwork: (please do not use or reproduce these images in any way, but please do head over here to see more artwork painted by moi and to order prints!)
So ask yourself: Do you find you are going through most of your day being told what to do, bossed around or directed at work, instructed through life instead of exploring through life?
Yeah, that doesn’t vibe right with your soul. So… what to do if your days are too full of meaningless tasks? Follow your curiosity. I can say for certain (after 21 years of formal education and 23 additional years of practicing medicine) the things I remember most and the things that make the biggest impact on my patients are not the lists of facts I memorized in medical school or the lab values that I dryly take note of in the medical literature, it’s the meaningful information I personally uncovered on a quest to help a specific patient, to support a specific health care goal of a loved one, or to advocate for a particular outcome to help empower a person I care about.
It’s not the facts about the illness, it’s the motivation — the caring state of advocating for a patient I adore — that helps me find, learn, retain, and use the information I glean in the best possible way, as well as to remember and use this information to support and enhance infinite patient encounters in the future.
In this way… combining meaning and motivation with information… we can deliver the most soul value and align our physical journey with a rich and meaningful spiritual purpose.
4. Recover fully when not at work.
Create clear boundaries around time spent working vs. time spent not-working each day.
One of the worst habits you can get into is taking your work home with you. I should know, doctors are the classic “on call” occupation but every doctor I know makes this occupational stress a hundred times worse by bringing work home even when not on call.
I have strained myself beyond capacity for years (decades actually) staying up in the middle of the night on my computer, returning emails from my phone at the wee hours of the morning, packing and shipping shop orders literally around the clock… and I know I am not alone. In many — if not most — jobs these days, there really are no designated off hours since technology can reach us anywhere, and this can create a situation where there is no down time, no recovery time, no off time.
So you have to be proactive and protective to ensure — for your own mental health — that there absolutely *is* time off from work and time away from all work related activity.
If you are in a job that you can’t modify, can’t control, has high stress, and little autonomy, then the next best thing you can do to protect your mental and physical health is to make sure off hours are actually off hours.
Make it harder to access work related tasks… leave your computer at work (if you work from home, leave your computer in a designated *home office* space and do not bring it into the rest of the house!)Put cell phones on airplane mode at night, or better yet turn them off completely.Designate a cut off time in the evening where you will no longer check emails or return business related calls.Prioritize sleep. More on this in an upcoming blog post.Move your body in a non-job related way: exercise, stretch, get into a yoga routine, go on a long walk, have sex, even simple taking a hot bath in Epsom salts will help soothe tense muscles and get you out of “work mode.”Read a book that is absolutely 100% simply for pleasure and *not work related!!!*. I’m the worst at this because I typically read medical journals before bedtime instead of romance or mystery novels but this is one of my new goals.Schedule time for leisure activities — from a designated weekly movie night to a routine family date to time alone — off time is so crucial for balancing out the stress from your job and should be given the same weight (or even more weight) than your dedication to your career.Take time for friendships and relationships that are not in any way work related. Consider this… are most of your relationships with people in the same work place or career path as you? Be sure to go out of your way to nurture friendships and relationships that have nothing to do with work at all — if you have to join a knitting club or a book club or sign up for a gym class or introduce yourself to your neighbors — meet people that it would be literally impossible to “talk shop” with in your down time because they do not work with you. Having outside interests and outside relationships apart from work helps ensure you don’t think about or talk about work in your off time.Take vacation time — up to 1/3 of all vacation days are simply never even used!!!! What the…? No way. Please take those vacation days, every single one of them.
5. Reduce stressful background noise.
Chronic background noise doesn’t just irritate you… it actually impacts your long term health. Chronic levels of noise found frequently in the workplace and in our living spaces have been shown to significantly increase your risk of heart attack, heart disease, heart failure, stroke, even atrial fibrillation. And it doesn’t stop there. Not only is chronic noise increasing your blood pressure, increasing inflammation in your arteries leading to heart attack and stroke, but it’s also increasing your risk of metabolic diseases and type two diabetes.
Because the disease burden of chronic noise is so directly linked to heart disease, high blood pressure and increased inflammation of the arteries, it’s important for clinicians to start treating noise pollution as a cardiac risk factor on par with smoking history, family history, age, blood pressure, and weight. Here is a printable medical study you can take to your physician to get them to take noise pollution seriously in evaluating your true cardiovascular risk.
Even small noises are an issue.
What is interesting is that it’s not just loud sounds that affect your health, it’s the small chronic ones that do too. So it’s not just an airplane passing by or the occasional sound of construction, but the level of normal talking, phones ringing, and sounds of cars on the street all impact your heart attack and stroke risk, and they all up your risk for metabolic disease too.
We are now aware that normal volumes of speaking and car sounds result in much more insidious health risks over time –compromising the health of your heart, of your brain, of your body. The new term is Noise Annoyance — which is all that is needed to produce these increased rates of chronic, life threatening health issue. Look at the table below (taken directly out of this medical study) to see that even normal conversation is above the area now considered safe in terms of affecting your health. 55 dBA and above is considered a health risk factor by the World Health Organization (WHO):
Every 10 dBA increase in noise increases your heart attack risk by 6%, arterial calcification by 8%, and stroke risk by 14%… starting at only 50 dBA!
This is why the World Health Organization has now lowered the noise pollution threshold to only 55 dBA:So normal conversation (at 60 dBA) can, over time, contribute negatively to health issues… increasing both heart attack and stroke risk by 6% and 14% respectively.The normal sound of cars driving/traffic, doubles that — increasing heart attack and stroke risk by 12% and 28% respectively.Listening to a telephone ring repeatedly increases risk of heart attack and stroke by 18% and 42% respectively, and on and on.Think about your background noise exposures:
Do you hear traffic constantly (especially consider if you hear traffic where you sleep at night?)Do you work in an area where there is chronic talking (such as a hospital, a hotel, a store or a restaurant?)Do you work in an area where there are phones constantly ringing (such as at an office?)Do you work in an area that has music playing constantly?Do you sleep with music or a television on?At home maybe you can consider reducing your background noise by:
Installing noise blocking and light blocking curtains on your windows.Do not sleep with windows open if you live in an area with nighttime traffic, and try to sleep in a room that is not facing a road if you have an option of which bedroom to take. If you already have a high cardiovascular risk or history of heart disease or stroke, consider switching bedrooms with another family member in order to get away from a busy street.If you have a yard, consider planting a row of trees to help block noise coming to your home.Turn off appliances when not in use… don’t sleep with the TV or music running, don’t sleep with a sound machine on, give your brain a break from the constant onslaught of noise whenever possible.But what to do about noise pollution at work? Too easy. You can simply wear these simple, soft, effective silicone ear inserts to decrease irritating noise while at the same time, helping to clarify important noises that you actually want or need to hear.
Calmer reduces stress by removing distortion that would usually trigger the human ‘fight or flight’ response. While this response was a vital part of our evolution to alert us to the slightest sound or threat, in today’s modern world where we no longer need to be alert to the snap of a twig, this added resonance is loading us with unnecessary stress.
Calmer specifically helps reduce noises that causes stress and anxiety. They do this without reducing the volume so you don’t feel disconnected from the world, and you can hear what you need to hear clearly. The result is a natural way to minimize today’s constant barrage of environmental noise stressors which have a negative impact on our mental and physical well-being.
While this will decrease stress for anyone, whether you are sensitive to noises or not, it can be a game changer for those with Hyperacusis, for example those with autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, tinnitus, or other hypersensitivity issues.
You can wear these during waking and sleeping hours. The help to relieve stress while at home, at work, at school, on commutes, while traveling, at restaurants, concerts, or all night long when you want to deeply relax. They are very discrete and you can still hear normal conversation, music, co-workers, etc… but at much safer volumes that protect your long term health and decrease your immediate stress.
When you wear them you not only protect your stress levels and ability to process communication in the short term, but protect your heart and brain and metabolism for the long term, too! Tell your friends, fellow students, co-workers, anyone who ask about them how wearing ear protection can actually decrease heart attack and stroke risk — they will be amazed!
Learn more about how these ingenious, simple ear protective devices work right here.
6. Make sure you have an avenue for play.
Play is not only a relief and a respite from the seriousness that stress, illness and trauma bring to our lives, it is actually therapy. Play time is therapeutic time, point blank. Child psychologists use this healing tool often, because play is a child’s way to express and release any inner turmoil or fears that the child doesn’t even consciously know they have.
But it isn’t only therapeutic for children, it’s therapeutic for adults too. In fact, I would argue that engaging in some form of play daily is one of the best things you can do to safeguard your physical health.
From physical play (whether through dance, playing a sport like golf tennis or bowling, painting, playing a musical instrument, bird watching, hiking, you name it!) to mental play (such as crossword puzzles, chess, sudoku, reading and discussing books, watching plays, learning a new language, etc…) many medical studies have proven there are mental and physical health benefits from time spent in play. Here are just a few:
Medical studies on the healing power of play:
Play and Optimal WelfarePlay and Adult CreativityPlay in AdulthoodCurrent perspectives on the biological study of play: signs of progressThe relationship between playfulness and coping in preschool childrenUsing play and playwork with teenage parents and their childrenThe importance of play in promoting strong bondsPlaying to learnI know that at times of great stress in my life, it was ever more crucial for me to have avenues to release that stress. For example, during medical school anatomy class, when we were dissecting human cadavers — a process that was intensely uncomfortable and psychologically stressful — I relished my time spent playing intramural soccer. A large study published in Leisure Sciences in 2014, backs up my experience. They analyzed students in rigorous educational paths from three different universities, and found that the more playful the student was, the more successfully they coped with the high levels of stress.
Play is also brain protective as we age. The Journal of the International Neurophysiological Society published a study in 2011 that showed simply doing crossword puzzles was enough to significantly delay the onset of memory decline. And Geriatrics and Gerontology published a study in 2019 showing that almost all forms of playtime activities prevent cognitive decline (some examples were: reading, playing board games, music, art, handicrafts, crossword puzzles, even learning computer skills) and that activities that involved intellectual stimulation and communication was particularly effective. One recent study show that being playful drops Alzheimer’s rates by 64%, just by learning new things and being playful to retain the plasticity of the brain.
A study published in Neuroscience Letters in 2003 showing that play stimulated neurotropic growth in several parts of the brain. As Dr. Stuart Brown says in his book Play, “when we stop playing we start dying.”
But I would say the reverse is also true, when we start playing, we start living!
The European Journal of Humour Research published a study in 2013 showing that the more playful an adult was, the higher they rated their physical and mental well being. As you intentionally welcome play back into your life, you’ll notice that through play your optimism, your smile, and your sense of humor returns. So it’s very important during times of increased stress to specifically carve out space in your life to allow for play.
When you give yourself time to play, it gives your body a time to repair and recover. Play gives you a period of time where stress hormones can decrease, for you to relax and shift out of stressful mind-frames, and even release unhealthy coping mechanisms.
In fact, replacing unhealthy coping mechanisms with play can actually keep your brain plastic and flexible, ward off mood disorders, and even strengthen your relationships with others (if you choose play activities with a social component.)
A study published in 2008 in Therapeutic Recreation Journal found that leisuretime activities were so powerful in helping to cope with stress that they recommend incorporating play and leisure activities into a therapeutic healing plan.
A study published in Leisure Sciences in 2013 found that the more playful an adult is, the lower their levels of stress were and the less they utilized negative, avoidant, or harmful coping mechanisms.
While there are so many stressors in life that you can’t control, one thing you can do to bring more satisfaction and well being into your life is to prioritize play. So be intentional about creating welcoming a time for play into the structure of your daily, weekly and monthly routines. Pare down stressful obligations to make space for activities, whether mental or physical, that you truly enjoy.
Need help remembering what brings your inner child out? Read through these different Play Personalities below to help you discover… or re-discover — what activities might bring you joy. Remember back to childhood as you circle the play personality that is closest to your play style growing up. Then read through them again and put a check beside the one that is your play style now. These are the play personalities suggested by Stuart Brown, M.D. in his book: Play, How It Shapes The Brain, Opens The Imagination, and Invigorates The Soul.
Play Personalities:
The Joker: primary enjoyment is being class clown, practical joker, goofy fun, going for the laughsThe Kinesthete: enjoyment comes from pushing physical limits, feel the result of movement and often enjoys play in the form of physical competitionThe Explorer: enjoyment comes from discovering the world, searching, traveling, researching, understanding, experiencingThe Competitor: enjoyment comes from play centered around winning games, keeping score, outwitting others, interaction, usually very socialThe Director: enjoyment comes from planning and executing events and interactions, relationships, satisfaction from a job well doneThe Collector: enjoyment comes from obtaining objects or experiences, either alone or with groups, enjoys social interaction and clubs based on common interestsThe Artist: enjoyment comes from making things, creating things, experimenting with different forms of expression, color, decor, visual artsThe Storyteller: enjoyment comes predominantly from imagination and expressing the imagination, written word, spoken word, communicationWhether it is dusting off an old pair of rollerblades, or heading outside for a game of catch with your dog, to crafting or creating something, learning or playing an instrument, dancing to your favorite music, trying a new recipe in the kitchen, heading outside to watch the sunset, blowing bubbles in your living room, singing songs around a campfire, going on a walk, improving your golf game, learning how to play tennis, playing a pick up game at a park with friends, playing card games with your family, doing a jigsaw puzzle all week long, riding a bike, laying down to look up at cloud shapes in the daytime or twinkling stars at night, writing poems, learning how to sew, creating a scrapbook, practicing photography, trying a new healing modality, and on and on and on…
…know that time you devote to playing is every bit as healthy for you (& let’s face it, probably even more healthy) than the time you spend in serious mode when you are working.
7. Be proactive about protecting your mental health in other ways.
Like with everything in life, health is a balance. Even when you can not do anything to change one stressor (like your job for example) decreasing other stressors in your life helps decrease the total amount of stress burden placed on your body.
Optimize the quality of the foods, nutrients, micronutrients, vitamins & minerals you put into your body, optimize the purity of the water you drink, increase your physical activity, go outside and get your body grounded to the earth as often as possible, and on and on.
Read through this list and find one (or several) ways that you can focus on what you can control, which will help mitigate the stressors you can’t control:
Decrease toxic burden. Go through your pantry, bathroom, and laundry room and remove synthetic, chemical laden foods from your pantry, toxic artificial body care products, oral care products and hair care products from your bathrooms, remove chemical laden home care and cleaning products as well as artificially scented and chemical laden laundry products, and never use toxic chemicals on your lawn. Reducing environmental toxins like artificial fragrances and toxic household cleaners and toxic body, beauty and oral care products also goes a long way to reducing the total burden you put on your body each day.Wash your hands before eating anything to remove all the chemicals we pick up as we go about our day so you don’t get traces of them into your mouth with each meal.Eat clean whenever possible. Reduce total body toxic burden by eating less processed and artificial foods, and more antioxidant rich natural healthy foods whenever possible.Want to improve your nutritional intake? Supplement with high quality supplements that can help alleviate the over all burden of stress on your body.Don’t drink enough water? Put a water filtration system right out on your kitchen counter and drink a big glass every single time you walk by it.Don’t exercise enough? Start and end every single day with a walk outside in fresh air. Daily movement helps deliver much needed fresh oxygen and nutrients to all organ systems as well as aid in the removal of toxins and waste by-products. Exercise absolutely boosts your body’s health and resiliency!!!Want to meditate but can’t get the hang of it? It only take 3 deep breaths to literally boost the function of your heart and other crucial internal organs — take 3 deep breaths right now. It’s a mini meditation that literally boosts your health instantly. Use a chime routinely to remind you… I walk you through it right here in this video. Feel that? Do it daily.Start reading books at night instead of watching TV.Stop multitasking and let your brain focus on just one task at a time.Start taking nightly epsom salt bath soaks.Sauna each week to relax tense muscle and boost your health (as I blog about here, routine sauna increases life span!)Join a spiritual support group or get serious about finding a church or synagogue or meditation center that feels right the moment you walk in the doors.Stop using social media and reach out to your real life friends to set up a weekly date.And on and on and on. There is always something you can do to feel better, and better and better. There are always actionable steps you can take to boost your health.
8. Address past traumas.
If you’ve had a history of trauma, or a history of serious illness or injury, the death of a loved one, a divorce, recent unemployment, increasing financial struggles, legal troubles, etc… than medical studies have actually shown that any additional stress (such as work stress) is actually is harder on you than on someone without prior trauma.
So if you feel like you are struggling to deal with the stressors of work that other folks take in stride, there is good reason. It’s not you. It’s your trauma. We’ve known for a while that a history of trauma makes subsequent traumas more likely to cause PTSD.
A study published in 1999 showed that a history of trauma increases the risk of getting PTSD with a subsequent traumaA study published in 2008 backed this up by finding that a history of trauma increases not only the risk of getting PTSD but also the risk of developing depression (Major Depressive Disorder, also known as MDD) when faced with a new trauma.And this medical study (published in June 2020) looking at folks with a history of trauma and their response to a natural disaster. Researchers found that individuals who had 4 or more predisaster stressors had a significantly greater chanced of developing PTSD than those with no predisaster stressors. They also found that having even one single predisaster stressor increased the chance of developing depression, and that every single additional predisaster stressor increased the odds of having a major depressive episode significantly higher.While it might make you feel better to know that your history of having major life stressors and traumas makes it completely natural and expected for work stress to hit you in a deeper way than it may hit others, you deserve some good news. Is there good news with trauma? Actually, yes.
The largest meta-analysis to date on trauma recovery (looking at data from over 11,000 relevant medical studies) suggests that the best long term recovery after trauma is simply talking about it. Published in JAMA Psychiatry on June 12, 2019, reasearchers looked at direct comparisons between talk therapy (psychotherapy) and drug therapy (pharmacological treatments) in patients with PTSD. They found that in the long term, talk therapy helped more, being slightly superior to drug therapy both immediately following treatment and in long term follow up.
Be encouraged by this. This means that the vast majority of folks can be helped by talking about trauma instead of medicating it away.
Connect with others.
Reach out for help.
Don’t feel like you are going crazy and don’t feel like you must go it alone.
There is long term benefit from connecting to others and speaking about it. Treatment is not relegated to a psychiatrist’s office nor does it need to be prescribed away.
In fact, as I blogged about here, PTSD can actually be significantly helped by something as simple and as accessible as repeating a mantra. It’s true. Here is that blog post and several other blog posts I’ve written on trauma recovery for you… please read any you are drawn to, for instant support:
2 New Treatments For PTSD You Can Use Right Now To Feel Immediately BetterHow Grounding Releases Trauma From Your Body To Protect Your Long Term HealthTrauma Changes The Health Of Your Body, But It’s ReversibleTrauma Increases Headache Risk 4-FoldChildhood Trauma Increases Risk Of Self Harm. Here’s Help.OCD May Stem From Birth TraumaGoing From Surviving To Thriving After CancerYour 2023 Healing Mantra — Say It With MeResolving PTSD, OCD, Tobacco and Drug Addiction TooEmotional Stress Directly Predicts Heart Attack… 10 Ways To Prevent ItLetting Go Helps You Heal (Here’s How)Is Stress Is Making Your Antidepressant Ineffective?The Healing Power Of Grounded TouchA Super Interesting Difference Between Men and Women When Under StressAnother Difference Between Men and Women… Found On AutopsyThe Healing Process Of Grief
9. Work with me for more support.
The medical literature is clear… just communicating about trauma is powerfully healing. So simply joining a class, talking to a therapist, or connecting with others to heal can be just what you need to feel better than you have ever felt.
And here’s the best part…. those who move through trauma can actually be healthier than those who never went through any trauma at all.
It’s incredible to believe that trauma can actually strengthen your health but it is true.
In my Trauma Resilency & Recovery Class I go over the medical literature that shows that trauma can actually be adaptive and empowering, and I give you all the tools you need to use trauma to boost your own health in ways you never could have imagined possible.
I developed this class based on my extensive research into the best of what the medical literature has proven to us about how to release trauma once and for all and become healthier for it.
No matter what you have gone through, you absolutely do have the ability to rebound from from it and create a new normal and a new health set point.
Everybody does.
Your body naturally want’s to trend back to full and complete wellness… mind, body and spirit.
I’ll give you the tools to get there and walk with you through it. Class emails come directly into your inbox so that you can start healing, right from the privacy and comfort of your own home. Join in by clicking right here today.
And check in with others that you love that you know face significant stressors and might benefit from taking this trauma healing class right alongside you.
You absolutely can stop past trauma’s from affecting your mental health… and there are tons of medical studies that show exactly which methods of healing truly work. This class has been hugely helpful in giving participants actionable, positive, enjoyable healing tools that are medically based and proven to work.
One participant said that the content on the very first day of the class alone far exceeded what she thought she would get out of the entire class, all put together.Another participant said she felt movement on old stuck traumas from childhood for the first time in her entire life.Another said that even though he had been in treatment for PTSD for years, he learned things he had never been told before about how the body holds on to trauma and how to let it go.I would love to support you in this exact same way as well. Join me here.
I hope this idea list helped!
You don’t have to quit your job to save your mental health.
Even one simple change, like starting a few stress relieving supplements to increase your mental resiliency, or getting a half hour of extra sleep at night, or being strict about not checking emails after dinner, or joining a committee at work to help make work related decisions and bring more autonomy to your role at work, healing past traumas so you are no longer triggered by the stress of your job, or specifically choosing a job that has a slower pace…
…any and all of these things and more can help make sure that your are not letting your job get into your head!
If someone forwarded you this email, be sure you are signed up to receive my free newsletter so you don’t miss any of these uplifting, holistic healing tips that I send out once a week. I’d love to support your health too.
Sign up right here to get these tips delivered directly to your own inbox! And forward this to any of your loved ones who could benefit from some uplifting support.
To your naturally resilient, joyful human body!xoxox, Laura Koniver MD
The post How To Protect Your Mental Health From Work Related Stress appeared first on Intuition Physician.
October 9, 2023
How To Heal Your Skin From Summer’s Sun Damage & Protect It From Winter’s Cold
Well it’s officially cold outside where I live, and there is no way I’m wearing a sundress or a bathing suit for the rest of the year. Which means it’s time to repair my skin from this past summer’s sun damage as well as protect it for the upcoming winter.
To that end, today I’m going to share with you my 12 holistic skincare tips for the fall transition. Here we go:
12 Effective Tips To Repair And Protect Your Skin:
1. Get Your Body Grounded:
This first tip will be no surprise to folks who already read my blog: the number one skin care tip I can give you is to ground your body every day.
Yeah sure there are literally head to toe benefits in every major organ system as well, but it also boosts skin health thanks to increased circulation bringing more nutrients and oxygen to your skin, removing free radicals and other skin damaging by products, healing wounds in your skin three times faster, and even deepening your sleep which boosts collagen integrity.
I recently published an article in Current Research In Alternative And Complementary Medicine here (just click this link o read the entire report) all about grounding’s skin boosting potential. Here are some of the points I touch on:
Multiple grounding studies have shown health benefits to the skin through contact with the DC energy of the earth. One double blinded placebo based study found that grounding significantly (and nearly instantaneously) increased blood flow in the facial skin of grounded test subjects, while subjects who were ungrounded had no change in their facial blood flow. [1]
Another study found that applying DC energy (the same energy as grounding) tripled the rate of wound healing for healthy skin, making normal skin heal three times faster. In fact, DC energy improved skin healing in impaired skin so well that it healed at almost the same rate as totally healthy skin did. [2]
Another study found that grounding simultaneously decreased inflammation and boosted immune function which then resulted in improved wound healing in multiple test subjects. [3].
Grounding was even found to decrease blood glucose in diabetic patients, which helps explain why applying a DC energy current to diabetic skin made it heal almost as fast as healthy, non-diabetic skin. [4]
Studies on grounding and sleep have shown that being conductively connected to the earth deepens restorative sleep, normalizes cortisol, helps to relax muscles, and boost mood [5].
Confirming this was an interesting double blinded placebo based study that found that a 30 minute grounding session was enough to make a statistically significant improvement in quality of sleep in Alzheimers patients. [6]
What does sleep and sleep quality have to do with skin health? Recent studies have found a direct correlation between sleep and collagen integrity, suggesting that beauty sleep is real. Researchers found that poor sleep actually caused a decrease in the structural integrity of collagen with an increase in collagen misalignment. [7]. So over a lifetime, decreased sleep quality may literally be visible in your skin as your collagen becomes more misaligned, weaker, less elastic, and contributes to accelerated aging. Conversely, improving sleep over a lifetime may help provide skin healing and even anti-aging benefits by boosting collagen integrity and skin repair while you sleep.
All together, grounding to the earth — a totally natural DC energy source — is a completely natural, exceptionally easy way to support skin health, helping to heal wounds and repair skin by boosting blood flow, improving oxygen and nutrients to the surface of the skin, even protecting the collagen of your skin by improving your sleep. All it takes is going outside to touch the earth directly, or applying the earth’s DC energy to the skin through a grounding cord or ground stake.
Make sure you have an indoor way to stay grounded this winter even when the weather forces you to stay sheltered. Here are the most eco-friendly, long lasting, superior quality (artisan hand crafted) indoor grounding tools in the world:
The Grounding Boutique
2. Take Curcumin To Protect Against Melanoma:
Did you know that Curcumin has been specifically shown to target and kill melanoma cancer cells? Read this study published in the International Journal of Cancer in October 2016 for a good overview on what we know about curcumin and melanoma so far.
If you want to add the anti-cancer benefits of curcumin to your health regime (which I highly recommend if you have any personal or family history of melanoma or even if you just have a history of intense sun exposure) I recommend taking a pharmacy grade supplement that couples a 500 mg dose of curcumin with bioperine to help increase the bioavailablility and absorption of the curcumin.
The one I listed in my Skin Repair Protocol here is my favorite:
Skin Repair Protocol
3. Use Vitamin B3 to Decrease Other Forms of Skin Cancer:
Clear evidence that a simple vitamin can be cancer preventive: Vitamin B3 dramatically reduces skin cancer rates.
Presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2015 Annual Meeting in May 2014, Vitamin B3 has been shown to be a safe, effective way to reduce your risk of recurrent skin cancer. Researchers looked at over 380 patients with a prior history of non-melanoma skin cancers, giving half nicotinamide supplements and half a placebo, and followed them for a year. They found the patients in the Vitamin B3 group had a quarter less skin cancers total (a 23% decrease) than control patients:
Basal cell occurrence decreased by 20%Squamous Cell Carcinoma decreased by 30%Actinic Keratosis decreased by 13%Niacinamide (Vit B3, also known as Nicotinamide) enhances DNA repair in skin cells damaged by UV light, as well as boosts the immune system and prevents the suppression of immunity by ultraviolet radiation. (Nicotinamide has other benefits as well, including preliminary studies showing a boost in cognition… helping to restore cognition in Alzheimers!)
So… if you have a history of serious sun exposure? Or a history of previous skin cancers? Or you just want less unsightly actinic keretosis popping up in the future? Vitamin B 3 offers 100% all natural holistic chemo-prevention! Vitamin B is safe, inexpensive, proven. Find my favorite Vitamin B3 and Curcumin supplements together in my Skin Repair Protocol, here. I have both topical (lotion) and capsule forms of Niacinamide listed for you here:
Skin Repair Protocol
4. Add on Topical CBD Products:
CBD is incredibly anti-inflammatory and soothing (if you want to hear me speak about the role of CBD in trauma recovery, you can listen to my podcast on that here) so it’s no surprise that researchers have found several different cannabinoid receptors in the skin.
Both cannabinoid receptors type 1 and type 2 (CB1 and CB2) are found in all skin, and help regulate everything from our hair growth to our skin’s immune system to our skin’s oil production. CB1 and CB2 receptors have been found in our keratinocytes, hair follicles, sebeceous glands, on the skin’s nerve fibers (including pain receptors that give rise to pain and itch sensations) and mast cells (which are responsible for our skin’s allergic response.)
CBD has been well studied for it’s role in facilitating skin healing, treating acne, reducing itch and even decreasing inflammatory reactions such as eczema. Researchers have found that supporting the endocannabinoid system may help reduce pruritus (itching) associated with chronic skin conditions, as well as decrease inflammation (showing promise for help in treating eczema) as well as decreasing oil production (making it a new avenue to treat acne.).
Many major research articles suggest that application of CBD to the skin improves human skin function while also being incredibly safe and well tolerated. I’ve listed some of the best ones below, if you’d like to dive directly into the medical literature on this:
Therapeutic Potential of Cannabidiol (CBD) for Skin Health and DisordersThe antimicrobial potential of cannabidiolTopical Administration of Cannabidiol: Influence of Vehicle-Related Aspects on Skin Permeation ProcessThe potential role of cannabinoids in dermatologyCannabidiol induces antioxidant pathways in keratinocytesCannabidiol exerts sebostatic and antiinflammatory effects on human sebocytesAn Observational Study of the Application of a Topical Cannabinoid Gel on Sensitive Dry SkinTolerability profile of topical cannabidiol: evaluator-blinded clinical and in vitro studies in normal skinIn vitro percutaneous absorption studies of cannabidiol using human skinCannabidiol-Mediated Changes to Keratinocytes from Psoriatic PatientsThe Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Cannabidiol (CBD) on AcneCannabis sativa and Skin Health: Dissecting the Role of PhytocannabinoidsThe purity and potency of the vast majority of CBD products on the market is super variable and of questionable quality, so I highly recommend getting your CBD (whether topicals, capsules, gummies or tinctures) through ECS Therapeutics, which requires a physician to order it for you.
These are prescription grade, pharmacy quality CBD oil products that are organically grown right here in the USA and quality tested more thouroghly than any other CBD product I have ever seen. It’s the only one I personally trust and use. You can ask your in person physician for an ECS Therapeutics prescription, or you can fill out my contact form here to request more information on prescription strength CBD products ordered directly through me.
So if your acne topicals, or ezema ointments, or antihistamine lotions, or any other topical skin care products you have tried have failed to help resolve your chronic skin issue, I highly recommend giving CBD products a chance to get your skin into it’s best shape ever. And now is the time to do it, before the cold, raw temperatures outside and the super dried-out, heated air on the inside makes your skin condition worse.
5. Exfoliate with Baking Soda or Dry Brush Your Skin:
Many of us stop exfoliating in winter as our skin isn’t on show as much. But giving your skin a quick daily or even just a weekly exfoliation will sweep away dead skin cells and allow your skin to better absorb your moisturizer afterwards as well as decreasing the layer of dead keratinocytes on top, which can help decrease the likelihood of your skin cracking.
To exfoliate, simply make a paste by mixing baking soda and a little water in the palm of your hand and us it to gently scrub your skin to remove dead skin cells, or alternatively you can dry brush your skin using a natural bristled brush before stepping in the shower or bath, or an all natural hemp exfoliation mit while in the shower (this is the one I use.)
6. Bathe In Honey:
Add a half cup of honey to your bath water to nourish your skin and speed the healing of any winter chapped skin. Findings published in 2012 in the International Wound Journal show that when raw honey was used on all types of wounds, it:
promoted healingminimized necrosisminimized the amount of skin that sloughed off the woundreduced wound sizedecreased affected area around woundNot only did it help speed wound healing, but it made a measurable improvement in over 84% of wounds!!!! We are talking:
post operative woundsgeneral skin woundsinfectionsburnsulcerspressure sores and more!Honey is all natural, anti-fungal and anti-bacterial, accelerates wound healing and decreases the risk of scarring…. making it the perfect skin supportive, holistic bath soak. Another tip is to use warm, but not hot water when you bathe. Even though it is tempting to blast hot water in the shower to warm up, the extra heat strips the skin of its oils more quickly. Keep the bath or shower warm, not hot, stay in the water for less time, and decrease the frequency of your bathing in the winter months.
7. Seal In Moisture After Bathing:
Use a beautiful, all natural, super healing organic oil directly on skin — such as coconut oil or sunflower seed oil (these are my two favs because they are both medically shown to repair the lipid bilayer best.)
Oil seals in moisture better than a lotion or cream which both are water based and will not provide a skin barrier the way a pure oil will. You want to apply an oil on top of skin that is already hydrated, so it’s perfect to use right after bathing, or on top of a water based moisturizer that you apply first.
8. Protect Your Nasal Mucosa With a Humidifier + Coconut Oil:
Humidifying room air and keep well-hydrated internally by drinking water copiously — these two steps will prevent the tendency to develop chapped tight skin and dry, uncomfortable nasal passages.
If you only have one humidifier, place it in your bedroom so that you can sleep in a moisturized environment at night.
You can also use a cotton swab to apply a little coconut oil just inside the nasal openings to help protect your nasal mucosa from drying out! Apply nightly and you will be shocked at how much better your nose feels this winter!
9. Make Coconut Oil Lip Balm to Use Throughout the Day:
It’s so easy to mix up your own homemade lip protection, it takes less then one minute and you can even use it as an intensive hand and foot salve.
Simply melt 2 parts coconut oil with one part beeswax (for example, 2 TBSP coconut oil and 1 TBSP beeswax) in a microwave or over a double broiler. Stir and add a few drops of Vit E (I simply snip the end off of a capsule of Vit E and squeeze it right in) and stir again. You can add a drop or two of honey for sweetness (and honey is incredibly skin supportive as a topical treatment for wound healing, as mentioned above) and pour the mixture into a clean, recycled container or small jar.Empty skincare jars or mint tins work well.
Use liberally to protect your lips and save them from winter dryness!
10. Moisturize Skin From Within:
If you are not internally hydrating your body, there is no amount of external moisturizer you can put on your skin that will effectively hydrate it. So all winter long, drink lots of pure, filtered water all day, every day.
This is the water filter I recommend as well as personally use.
Even though it’s so much easier to remember to stay hydrated in the summer when we are hot and sweating, please don’t ignore your hydration status in the winter when it is every bit as crucial, if not more so. Dry skin is dehydrated skin.
You can also support your skin by eating foods rich in healthy fats that supply your skin with the essential vital nutrients it needs to maintain its crucial lipid bilayer. Take care to consume foods such as olive oil, coconut oil, avocados, walnuts, almonds, pecans, cashews, pistachios, macadamia nuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, chia seeds, fish, flaxseed and kelp all winter long.
11. Take High Quality Omega 3 Supplements Daily:
Drinking water and eating healthy fats in the winter may not be enough to maintain a healthy skin lipid bilayer, especially if you are prone to dry skin, psoriasis or eczema. I highly recommend taking a high quality Omega 3 supplement daily (for so many reasons, from preserving brain volume to decreasing ADHD symptoms to supporting heart health to keeping your skin supple.)
I added the Omega 3 supplement that I personally take to my Skin Repair Protocol here, in case you want to take it right along with me.
12. Get Extra Sleep:
Take advantage of the longer nights, the soft indirect lighting of winter and the natural urge to hibernate more to repair your sleep deficit and stock up on restorative beauty sleep. This decreases the stress on your body from the inside and out, allows your skin to repair more easily, giving your complexion a natural boost!
I mentioned in tip #1 above (grounding) that improving sleep protects the structural integrity of your collagen. If you’d like to hear me talk more about why sleep actually does improve your skin’s appearance, you can hop over here to listen to my podcast on Beauty Sleep.
More on this topic soon, as I am working on an article about maximizing sleep in the winter, which will be out on my blog in the next few weeks! If you are not yet signed up to get my weekly blog post into your inbox, you can sign up right here so you don’t miss this important article:
Dr. Koniver’s Weekly Newsletter
Bonus Tip: Re-evaluate your boundaries:
Your skin is always speaking to you.
Skin can speak subtly through chronic messages that it whispers to you your entire life… or skin can scream loudly and angrily during acute transitions and times of crisis.
Because our skin replicates so quickly, it is a wonderful mirror for what is going on with the rest of our body and mind:
If we are anemic, it shows us quickly.If we are dehydrated, it shows us quickly.If we are malnourished, our skin will lack that robust glow that healthy skin gives.If we have been neglecting our selves in other ways, our skin will reveal us.If we are unhappy, our skin literally sags.If we have lost connection with joy, our skin tells it.If we feel ugly, our skin mirrors that.And because it covers our entire body, every thought we think and every word we say and every intention we ever have passes through our skin on its way to communicate with the outside world.
So it doesn’t just protect us from the world… quite the opposite is true too: it translates our inner being to the surface. It shows the world what is going on inside of us.
It is constantly in contact with and intimate with our inner workings. Because of this, skin reflects how we feel about ourselves. Skin forms our barrier, our identity. It forms what we perceive as *us* and delineates *us* from *the rest of the world*.
In short, skin represents our personal boundary.
And every winter… during the darkest, coldest months, we get an invitation to go inward re-evaluate our boundaries before we emerge this coming spring fresh and new.
Grab a journal or get into an open meditative mindframe and ask yourself:
Are you grinning and bearing something that you’d secretly like to say a firm no to?Are you letting someone in your energy space that constantly irritates or drains you?Do you need to set some healthy boundaries at work?Do you need to set clearer boundaries around your time? We all have the same 24 hours in a day, but if you are doing activities you don’t feel aligned with or tending to emotional needs of others constantly, you will find much of that time will disappear and you won’t even know where it all went.Do you have a friendship that needs some boundaries clarified and strengthened?Do you have a family member that you need to create firmer boundaries and consequences of boundary violations with?Do you need more personal space when you are home? Do you have a place where it’s clear to everyone sharing your home that they are not to disturb you?Do you need to set boundaries in your sexual relationships?Double-check that you say no when you need to and have clear boundaries that allow you to do what you truly want to do and enjoy that without guilt.
If you find your skin is stressed out, ask yourself what boundaries need to be strengthened in your life and meanwhile give your skin a little TLC with the other 9 steps listed above and watch the energy shift and your skin improve dramatically.
To your beautiful, radiant, ever repairing skin…xoxox,Laura Koniver MD
References:
Chevalier G (2014) Grounding the Human Body Improves Facial Blood Flow Regulation: Results of a Randomized, Placebo Controlled Pilot Study. Journal of Cosmetics, Dermatological Sciences and Applications 4:293-308.Shaner S, Savelyeva A, Kvartuh A, Jedrusik N, Matter L, et al., (2023) Bioelectronic microfluidic wound healing: a platform for investigating direct current stimulation of injured cell collectives. Lab Chip 23:1531- 1546.Oschman J, Chevalier G, Brown R. The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. J Inflamm Res. 2015;8:83-96 https://doi.org/10.2147/JIR.S69656Sokal K, Sokal P. Earthing the human body influences physiologic processes. J Altern Complement Med. 2011 Apr;17(4):301-8. doi: 10.1089/acm.2010.0687. Epub 2011 Apr 6. PMID: 21469913; PMCID: PMC3154031.Chevalier G, Sinatra ST, Oschman JL, Sokal K, Sokal P. Earthing: health implications of reconnecting the human body to the Earth’s surface electrons. J Environ Public Health. 2012;2012:291541. Lin C-H, Tseng S-T, Chuang Y-C, Kuo C-E, Chen N-C. Grounding the Body Improves Sleep Quality in Patients with Mild Alzheimer’s Disease: A Pilot Study. Healthcare. 2022; 10(3):581. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare100... Chang, Richa Garva, Adam Pickard, Ching-Yan Chloé Yeung, Venkatesh Mallikarjun, Joe Swift, David F. Holmes, Ben Calverley, Yinhui Lu, Antony Adamson, Helena Raymond-Hayling, Oliver Jensen, Tom Shearer, Qing Jun Meng, Karl E. Kadler. Circadian control of the secretory pathway maintains collagen homeostasis. Nature Cell Biology, 2020; 22 (1): 74 DOI: 10.1038/s41556-019-0441-zThe post How To Heal Your Skin From Summer’s Sun Damage & Protect It From Winter’s Cold appeared first on Intuition Physician.
October 2, 2023
Immediate Answers To All Of Your Most Urgent Grounding Questions
I’m right in the middle of my online grounding class and I’ve gotten so many fabulous questions.
So today I wanted to share with you, dear reader, the answers to some of the most popular questions I get asked year after year after year, class after class after class, in case you are not in my grounding class right now but still have some questions on how to get grounded to see the health benefits you want to see.
Have you ever wondered about any of these questions:
Is there anything I can do to make my body more grounded?Is it okay to ground through other body parts or should I use my feet?Is it ok to get grounded if the lawn is treated with chemicals?What can I do to naturally prevent a tick bite and decrease my chance of Lyme disease if I do get bitten?Is it better to have more surface area touching the earth?Is it necessary to ground for 30 full minutes to get health benefits from grounding?Is it still working if I don’t feel anything while I’m grounded?What’s the best way to talk to my children about grounding?Will touching a tree ground me?Will touching water ground me?Will touching a rock ground me?Can I get grounded through a sidewalk?Are my pets grounded when they are outside?Are PEMF, TENS and other electrical stimulation therapies the same thing as grounding?Is it safe to ground around EMFs?How do I fit it in to my already overly busy day?And more!If so, I’ve got you.
Click this link or click the image below to watch the full Q&A right now:
Your Most Urgent Grounding Questions… Answered!
Sent with much love!
I’m really hoping this helps you get outside while the weather is in transition — either cooling down or warming up, depending on where you live — and getting in that extra health boost of grounding each day!
xoxoxo, Laura Koniver MD
The post Immediate Answers To All Of Your Most Urgent Grounding Questions appeared first on Intuition Physician.
September 25, 2023
My Favorite Grounding Shoes + A Dozen Ways To Ground Outside When It’s Cold
As we move towards the cooler months of fall and winter, my inbox always gets overflowed with folks asking me if there is any way to keep grounding outside when the weather turns cold… and even bitterly cold.
It’s so important to get outside, even in the darkness of winter, to keep you sleeping deeply at night and as I wrote about here, thinking more clearly during the day.
Thankfully, there are tons of fabulous options to stay warm while still grounding outside. And I’ve thoroughly tested them all for you — literally confirming that these grounding options work and truly ground you by verifying them with a grounding test meter on lots of different outdoor surfaces.
I can confirm that there are several effective grounding shoes that truly do ground you, that there are conductive socks you can wear inside the shoes to keep your toes toasty warm and still be grounded, there are shoe stickers that you can place on any shoe you already own and it will truly to ground you (perfect for a favorite pair of orthotic shoes you love, or if you simply want to be eco-friendly and not buy more pairs of shoes, as one of the best ways we can support our earth is reuse what we already have instead of consuming more!)
You can also switch to grounding through your hands (instead of barefoot) with several different options to keep your hands warm but effectively grounded, like conductive gloves that layer with wool gloves to keep your fingertips nice and warm… even ways to keep warm in pajamas yet still be grounded — like wearing conductive sweatpants, socks, tank tops, t-shirts, etc… — while sleeping inside, right on top of your grounded bed.
Let’s get started!
My 12 favorite ways to stay grounded even when it is cold:
Obviously the sandals are a warm weather staple, but they are so soft and comfortable that if it’s a warm-enough day, these are my go to open toed shoes and here I am, wearing them:
Me heading out for a walk in my Groundz sandals1. Wear Grounding Shoes:
I have three different companies whose grounding shoes are very impressive to me, and believe me when I say I’ve tested them all! Out of the entire market of grounding footwear, these are the shoes I have found provide the most reliable grounding plus are made in an eco-ethical way.
Here are my top 3 choices when looking for new grounding shoes:
If you are looking for boots or hiking shoes: Harmony 783
Finally, a grounding boot! Woot! This company was founded by my dear friend Sharon Whiteley who developed a new technology called GroundWorks™. This technology utilizes a conductive carbon outsole connecting to a silver conductive footbed. For those looking for a lace up ankle boot or trail shoes, Harmony 783 are the ones you want.
Harmony 783 has sneakers, ankle boots, trail shoes, loafers, walkers and even flip flops — in both Mens and Womens styles. These are my go-to shoe to recommend to hikers, dog walkers, bikers, and really anyone who needs a stable and cushioned foot bed on their and need the rugged protection of a lace up style ankle boot or trail shoe.
If you are looking for slip on loafers: Raum
Ethically made, individually hand crafted leather shoes that are minimalist in design and come in closed toe slip on designs as well as closed toe lace up loafers for both men and women.
Raum shoes have a zero-drop sole made from a porous water buffalo leather. This type of sole is made extra conductive by absorbing the earth’s moisture and your perspiration. In addition, a copper metal grommet located behind the ball of your foot at the KD 1 pressure point provides maximum conductivity to ground your body.
I particularly appreciate that these shoes are hand sewn, because most shoes on the market are simply glued or cemented together, not hand stitched. So your feet mold into the leather over time to create an amazing level of comfort that brings you back into alignment with how your foot feels and functions best.
If you are looking for a slip on shoe that is minimalist in design (read: a non-cushioned footbed that allows feet to stay in their natural alignment ) and you want the largest selection of colors, then you want Raum shoes. Whenever I head out the door with my hands full (which is pretty much every time I head out the door) and I don’t want to stop, put things down, and sit down to lace up or buckle up my shoes, I slip my feet right into these and carry on with my day effortlessly.
If you are looking for sneakers or sandals: Groundz:
I’m so impressed with Groundz and wanted to showcase their gorgeous shoes (see the pic at the top of this section where I show you my grounded sandals from Groundz!… not only because I wear those sandals almost year round (where I live in the south, I can get away with wearing a sandal style shoe throughout the fall and even into early winter) but also because I’ve witnessed their customer service — absolutely phenomenal customer service bar none.
Groundz uses sustainably sourced and eco-friendly leather and goatskin throughout the sandals, chrome-free, water based and nontoxic vegetable dyes (very impressive) and a copper plug that is so comfortable I literally can not feel it. It’s so comfortable I had to check and double check that I was actually grounded in them and yep, I am, every time!
And as you will see in the video I made for you at the end of this article, wearing open toed shoes whenever possible is extremely important for your foot alignment (and subesquently, for the health of your knees, hips and back over a lifetime!) so I typically reach for sandals instead of a closed toe shoe whenever weather permits. But Groundz does also offer beautiful slip on loafer as well as slip on sneakers, so when patients are looking for grounding sneakers with a secure footbed, this is the website I send them to.
2. Add Grounding Stickers To Shoes You Already Own:
These grounding shoe stickers are so easy to use — stick them to shoes you already own and forget them! Get access to all of the benefits of grounding outdoors while being able to wear your favorite footwear.
I can’t think of much more eco-friendly than to continue to use shoes you already own. And if you love them, and they support your foot function best, why not convert your favorite pair of sneakers, running shoes, hiking shoes, or even sports cleats into grounding shoes? A grounding shoe sticker is the way to go.
The sticker is fully conductive and runs the grounding energy from the earth beneath you up and around your shoe and into the sole of your shoe where your feet are. By touching the sticker, you bypass the rubber sole entirely and are basically standing barefoot on the ground, conductively speaking.
I can’t even feel these stickers on my shoes. Find them here.
3. Slip On Shoe Grounders — One Pair To Ground All Of Your Shoes
The benefit of reusable shoe grounders (over purchasing new grounding shoes, which it consumer heavy, or grounding stickers, which are more ec0-friendly but can only ground one pair of shoes per sticker set) is that you can use one pair of shoe grounders over and over and over on all of your shoes, and remove them if you ever don’t want your shoes to ground you.
There are a few different style of shoe grounders on the market, but these are the ones I carry because they ground you not just through the heel, and not just through the ball of the foot (most shoe grounders have only one point of contact in either the heel or the ball of the foot) but will ground you through both, meaning as you stride your foot is grounded from the moment your heel makes contact, all the way through the step, and as your foot lifts.
This not only means you are grounded for a longer period of time but also with a larger surface area available to ground you, so you are more likely to be grounded on a variety of surfaces. These also are very adjustable to fit a wide variety of shoes, from loafers to sneakers to even some styles of boots!
4. Wear Grounding Socks:
If you wear any of the grounding shoes above, or have put a grounding sticker or reusable shoe grounders on shoes you already own, you’ll be grounded the moment you slip your bare foot into the shoe and stand outside on the earth.
But what if you like to wear socks?
Almost every sock manufactured on this planet will block the grounding flow from the grounded shoe (or grounded shoe sticker) because almost all socks have synthetic, non-conductive fibers, elastic, polyester, etc… or are too thick to allow grounding contact.
But it’s truly no problem to wear a sock with a grounding shoe or grounding shoe sticker, you just have to make sure it is a conductive sock. Luckily there are tons of beautiful socks made with conductive materials that will ground you instantly. I’ve got three styles for you to consider:
an athletic crew sock: thick, plush, absorbent, ankle length a thinner dress sock: thinner, sleek, comfortable, crew length… great for work or dress!and a compressive knee high sock: stretchy, warm, with the added bonus that they carry grounding all the way up your calves!In each of these pictures on their product pages, I am personally modeling the sock for you, and have thoroughly tested their conductivity with a grounding test meter. Each sock utilizes silver fibers throughout the entire sock, every inch of it, so the entire sock is conductive from top to bottom.
By wearing a conductive sock with your grounding footwear, your entire sock will instantly encase your entire foot and ankle immediately in grounding energy, which will then powerfully ground your entire body from head to toe.
You can also wear these conductive socks to bed if you like to wear socks but want to be grounded through the grounding mattress panel or grounding bed roll you have your feet resting on in bed!
Grounding through your hands is a great option, here are my favorite ways to do it!
Fingerless Gloves (shown above):The first option is to wear fingerless gloves that keep your hands toasty warm but your fingertips available to touch the earth, like these lovely wool fingerless gloves I’m modeling for you here.
Conductive Gloves:
The second option is to wear conductive gloves that cover all exposed skin, protecting you from the elements while still allowing grounding to conduct right through to your hands. Find those right here.
Layering Both:
The third option — my favorite by far — is to layer the two! Put your conductive gloves on, then slip the fingerless wool gloves on top so you have a double layer of warmth while allowing grounding through your fingertips comfortably all winter long.
Wool fingerless gloves keep the palms, wrists and base of the fingers extra insulated, while allowing the conductive layer over the fingertips to touch the earth and directly allow the healing flow of grounding to ground your body from head to toe.
Sets of these gloves are sold together in Youth (XS), Small, Medium, Large and XL unisex sizes. Very stretchy to accommodate most hand shapes and sizes! Find your set right here.
6. Protect Bare Skin With A Skin Protectant:
You could also consider simply using a skin protectant like Warm Skin to allow you to stay out in the cold a bit longer, even without protective gloves on. I have to say I use this not only on my hands, but even on areas of my exposed skin that I don’t use for grounding, like my nose and cheeks!
As someone who has lived with Raynaud’s Syndrome all my life, staying grounding outside as the temperature drops is a huge challenge for me. I turn to using Warm Skin to protect my skin and prolong the time I am able to directly ground outside — Warm Skin prolongs my outdoor grounding season by several months each year, even on windy and cold days.
It works by holding in the body’s own natural warmth and serves as a barrier to prevent water loss, moisturizing the skin to keep it pain-free and flexible even in the harshest environments, without the interference of heavy clothing that would block your ground connection. It’s also made in the USA by a a small family business in Minnesota and is all natural. Use it alone or coat your hands with it before slipping your hands into the grounding gloves I show you above. Either way, you are guaranteed to last longer in the cold while getting your healing boost from the earth.
7. Walk or Stand With A Grounded Walking Cane:
The other creative way to ground through your hands while staying bundled up and warm is to simply hold onto a conductive grounding walking cane! Stainless steel cane from the crampon on the bottom all the way up to your handgrip ensures quick and immediate grounding.
This is the best solution I have found so far for those with mobility issues as well — not only can you sit at a bench or on a chair and ground through your hand using this cane, but even those in a wheelchair can hold onto this grounded cane while outside and ground directly through their hands. Check these grounded canes out right here.
8. Or Make Your Own DIY Grounded Hiking Stick:
If you want to make your own grounding hiking stick, you can grab a DIY kit to transform any cane, stick (or even a simple wooden broom handle!) into a conductive walking stick that will ground you from head to toe without you ever needing to touch the earth directly.
I demonstrate how to use my DIY kit to make your own grounded walking stick in the second half of the video above, starting at the 5:40 min mark.
9. Ground Through Your Pajamas:
I have these soft, elastic waistband, comfy sweatpants hand made, custom sewn per order right here in the USA. They are made from a lovely shielding material, but the perk of this is that is also allows you to lay on a grounded surface (like an organic grounded bed topper or an organic grounding mattress panel, both waiting for you right here) and ground right through your clothes.
Perfect for folks who want to be grounded in bed all night long but who like to keep bundled up and warm with no exposed skin available to touch the grounding tool.
Find these options to wear to sleep to keep you grounded to your favorite grounding bed surface:
conductive T shirtsconductive sweatpantsconductive grounding socksThat’s right, yet another perk of having the grounding socks we talked about above… not only can you wear it with your grounding shoes to stay grounded outside, but if you like to sleep in socks to keep your feet warm in the winter, you can wear theses socks to bed and use them to ground while you sleep as well.
Slipping into bed and resting your feet on a grounding mattress panel or grounding bed topper will allow you to ground right through your grounded pajamas or grounded socks all night long.
10. Sleep with a grounding hot water bottle:
For decades one of my ultimate go-to healing recommendations for patients is a hot water bottle, which combines the healing properties of water with the healing properties of heat (the most holistic supportive therapy that helps relax, repair, and soothe aches and pains from head-to-toe!)
So I have these custom, hand sewn, grounding hot water bottle cozy’s made just for you when you order it, so that you can sleep all night long, grounded in warmth and healing energy. I can’t think of a better way to stay warm and grounded all winter long, and if you are thinking ahead to holiday gifts, this must be one of the most lovely, comforting, supportive healing gifts you can possibly give.
You just have to make sure you order them early, because I have these literally hand made just for you when you order it and it does take a few weeks. Order yours before it get’s too darn cold at night… you can find them right here.
11. Treat your feet with toe alignment socks:
My feet instantly relax with these socks on, and as a bonus not only will the improve the health and alignment of your feet but they will also allow you to ground at the same time, thanks to the fact that your toes are still bare and ready to connect with the earth outside or while you stand on an organic grounding mat while grounding indoors.
At the end of a long day, these are almost as good as a nice foot massage from your partner. Almost. But infinitely more practical, because I can wear them while I’m standing in the kitchen making dinner and doing the dishes, and my feet feel stretched out and free by the time I’m done.
I always smile when I pack up an order that someone has placed for these toe alignment socks and some magnesium lotion to go along with them — it’s just the sweetest little duo and I always imagine how good the recipient is going to feel after working some magnesium lotion onto their feet and slipping into these socks.
If you are looking for a little gift to give your hardest working loved ones, some toe alignment socks, my favorite magnesium lotion and a handwritten coupon for a free foot massage is the best thing I can imagine. It’s like physical therapy for your feet! Available in sizes small through XL.
Activity Time!Grab a pen and paper to test your foot health:
Want to know if you are getting enough barefoot time?If your feet properly aligned?If the alignment of your foot is giving you knee, hip and back pain?If the shoes you are wearing causing foot issues?And how can you reverse damage shoes have caused your feet?
With the two very simple tests that I demonstrate for you in this video, you can test your own feet right now and you’ll know the answer to all of these questions!
@laurakonivermdAre You Going Barefoot Enough? (Laura Koniver, M.D. The Intuition Physician)
♬ original sound – Laura Koniver, MD
And here it is on YouTube:
A Quick Way To Know If You Are Going Barefoot Enough (YouTube)
This exercise is extremely eye opening, and you can do it in less than 2 minutes! I highly encourage you to give it a try right now!
12. Read About Even More Grounding Tips:
For more awesome winter time grounding tips, you’ll want to grab the ultimate guide to grounding outside, no matter where you live or what the temperature is. Whether you have a yard or not. Whether you live in an urban area or not. No matter what the season. No matter what the time of day or night.
I’ve filled this book with my very best ideas to get you inspired to head outside in the hottest and coldest seasons, no matter if you live in a city or have any green spaces around you or not… you can get grounded naturally to the earth and I’ll be right there with you, showing you how.
Keep it on hand and you will never run out of ideas on how to get grounded directly to the earth outside, year round.
I have signed copies waiting for you right here… or you can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, New Harbinger, and anywhere books are sold! It’s been translated into Korean, Japanese and Russian as well. Find links to all of these editions right here.
FREE BONUS: Ask Me Your Questions In Class
Grounding helps keep your immunity high, your inflammation low, reduce stress, deepen sleep, and boost your mood, no matter what you are going through. Sounds like the perfect winter healing plan. But how do you ground all winter long? What is the shortest amount of time you need to stay outside in the cold and still see health benefits? How can you optimize grounding for different health goals?
You ask me and let me help you.
I developed this class to give you tons and tons of ways to incorporate grounding into your daily health care and wellness routines. Every single day you will get a new, uplifting, inspiring way to ground your body and support your innate health through grounding, even as we head into winter.
Class culminates in a private Q&A Recording with me, answering as many questions as I can fit into one Q&A about grounding. Join me in the free class and get materials, tips, and ideas for grounding that you can use again and again and again, for the rest of your life.
Class starts today so this is your last chance to be added in!
To a healthy fall and winter full of grounding, even outside!
Yes, it is absolutely doable! Please share these resources with anyone who would like some tips on comfortable cold weather grounding. From shoes to gloves to DIY hiking sticks, books, classes and more, there are dozens of fun safe ways to connect to our planet and boost our health through grounding, no matter what the season.
xoxoxo, Laura Koniver MD
The post My Favorite Grounding Shoes + A Dozen Ways To Ground Outside When It’s Cold appeared first on Intuition Physician.
September 18, 2023
12 Questions To Ask Yourself To Make Sure You’re Ready For Fall
The fall Equinox is this week, so we are officially headed into fall now! And for so many of us, shorter days and longer nights means a dip in our mood.
Fortunately, there are lots of great things to do to get prepared as the seasons change. Of course there are things like pulling out your sweaters and boots and knitting a scarf or two and planting a winter garden and getting the fireplace cleaned that you might look forward to this fall.
But one thing that I get every year, and absolutely never look forward to, is a drop in my energy level and mood as the days get shorter.
So I want to share with you today my annual fall post with a collection of 11 important, personal things that I do to prepare my body now for a smooth transition to fall and winter. Run through these questions and ask yourself if you are ready for fall…
12 Fall Health Questions To Ask Yourself:
1. Do you have a way to stay grounded, even as it gets colder?
Make your plan now for how you can still get outside and soak in the fresh air, sunlight, and healing earth energy even as the temperature falls. Getting outside in even the cloudy grey days for a mid-day walk is better than staying inside even under the brightest artificial lights.
Even if the sun appears not to shine, your pineal gland senses the light in the environment and needs this pick-me-up to function best this fall and winter. Make a commitment to get morning or mid-day light (sunshine if possible!) every single day.
Slip off your shoes for a few minutes, or, if it’s too cold, just use your fingers to hold onto a tree that is grounded in the earth. I even have grounding gloves waiting for you so you can keep your hands inside a warm glove and still be grounded while touching a tree branch, cement, a rock, the earth.
Same with socks and shoe grounders that allow you to be grounded through your feet without ever exposing your toes to the cold!
I’ll go into more detail on this in next week’s blog post, reviewing all my favorite cold weather ways to get outside and still get grounded. Buy you might also want to consider a way to get grounded indoors too. I have organic grounding throw blankets that ground you while wrapping around you in warmth, even organic grounded hot water bottles, which is my absolute favorite way to ground indoors in the winter.
As I talk about in this video here, connected to the earth each day — particularly around transitions such as the equinoxes and the solstices — allows your body to be oriented to the season and more seamlessly adjust to it.
The time spent grounding to the earth will refresh your body and soul. This one daily practice is probably the single best thing you can start right now to smooth your fall transition.
2. Do you make enough serotonin naturally?
Less daylight can mean a palpable drop in the mood boosting neurotransmitter serotonin. If you happen to be serotonin depleted, the winter blues are more likely to hit you harder than other people.
You can address this in two ways:
One, by taking supplements that help boost your natural serotonin levels. If you get a mild case of winter blues, you likely don’t need to take prescription medications for that. Instead, you can make sure that your body is getting all it needs nutritionally in order to make its own, healthy levels of serotonin. To do that, it needs a building block called 5-HTP.
A precursor to serotonin (the positive, mood enhancing neurotransmitter that most antidepressants are targeting, in the hopes to elevate brain levels) 5HTP is a nutritional supplement that makes sure your body is getting what it needs to make serotonin as efficiently as possible. Do not supplement with 5HTP if you are on a serotonin boosting medications like an SSRI or SNRI antidepressant already. But if you feed your body what it needs (most of us don’t get enough of this precursor as it is) and you don’t already take any medications for depression, you can naturally boost the serotonin you’ll need to keep your spirits up as the light fades.
I have 5HTP and several other supplements that have been shown to support seasonal affective disorder in my Mood Support Protocol right here.
Or alternatively, if you want something to prevent the winter blues and boost serotonin without taking a supplement, Light Therapy is medially proven to not only prevent and treat the winter blues, but it actually treats all forms of depression (and even treats fibromyalgia!). This is a great solution if you already take anti-depressants and want to add on an additional mood boost as well as a good circadian rhythm routine.
My very fav, compact, therapeutic light box is clinically proven and is waiting for you right here.
3. Do you have a silver barrier cloth to open doors with?
It’s no secret that communicable illnesses increase during the fall back-to-school time and the cold wintertime when we are most likely to spend our days indoors. By hand washing frequently, you can decrease the amount of pathogens you pick up and transmit to yourself.But what about when we can’t wash our hands? I am not a fan of hand sanitizers, and you can read an article I wrote for you here on why. Instead, I prefer a physical barrier between my hands and commonly used surfaces, such as door knobs and key pads. So I carry a silver handkerchief and I actually clip it to my purse so I always have it on me when I step out the door. You can do the same for your backpack, brief case, an extra one to keep in your glove box, and another one to slip easily into your pocket. You can check them out here.There have been many medical studies over the years that show the antimicrobial properties of silver, like these:
Application of Silver for the Prevention of Infection in Healthcare Workers
History of the Medical Use of Silver
Antimicrobial activities of silver dressings
A review of the antibacterial effects of silver
Silver nanoparticles as antimicrobial agent
Antiviral activity of silver against H1N1 influenza A virus
Colloidal silver and its antimicrobial effect on Staphylococcus aureus
Nanosilver particles in medical applications
Silver nanoparticles: therapeutic applications
Mode of antiviral action of silver nanoparticles against HIV-1
More recent studies have tested silver’s antimicrobial effects on live coronavirus.This article showed that live coronavirus dropped to levels that that were undetectable after exposure to silver: Efficient and quick inactivation of SARS coronavirus and other microbesAnd this study shows silver embedded fabric resulted in “quick and efficient” eradication of coronavirus: Fabric Lowers Zeta Potential and Eradicates Coronavirus Infectivity upon ContactThe authors of the medical study advocate that silver embedded fabric become the “material of choice for the development of PPE in the fight against COVID-19.” This means these researchers are suggesting that face masks, gowns and other protective gear be embedded with antimicrobial metals and tested for use in healthcare workers.We don’t have to go that far, we can use the natural antibacterial properties of silver to keep a healthy barrier between us and commonly used surfaces during the cold and flu season — simply hold it in your hand to open doors, push shopping carts, wipe down your phone, wipe down your hands — I like to wrap mine around my finger before pushing buttons on the keypads at stores, ATMs, gas stations and more.Watch this video to see how I use my silver cloth countless times every single day:
You can find them in my shop here: silver barrier cloths
Of course, you can also have other personal care items made with silver, to boost their antimicrobial properties too. Things like silver fabric face masks to wear over your nose and mouth when needed, silver gloves to wear on your hands, a silver infinity scarf to have at the ready when you go out and about, even silver socks, t-shirts, and underwear if you want!
4. Are you sleeping enough?
Allow yourself to re-connect to the natural rhythm of the earth, which means you sleep longer in the fall and winter when nights are longer.
These days of bright artificial lights and TV channels that blast shows 24 hours a day can keep us feeling like there isn’t much difference between the middle of the night and the middle of the day. But there is. To your body, to your pineal gland, your hormones, your muscles, your brain… the difference between night and day is iron clad. You are meant to sleep at night, and you are meant to sleep longer in the fall and winter months.
Allow your body to get an extra hour of sleep each night during the winter… at least give it a try this week: vow to sleep an extra hour each night this week and see if your mood, energy level, eating habits, activity level and joy all get a boost!
One way to do this is to lower your EMF exposures in your bedroom at night, as EMFs have a direct effect on your brain — for more on that read this article I wrote for you here.
How to decrease EMFs during sleep? Start by following any of the tons of health tips on protecting yourself from EMFs that I wrote for you in here. Another way to do this is to wear blue light blocking glasses starting 2 hours before bedtime, if you absolutely need to be on the computer, on your cell phone, or watching TV to unwind.
Another thing to consider is that those of us who tend to be low serotonin (and get the winter blues) also tend to have trouble making enough melatonin naturally. This is because melatonin is actually made from serotonin… so folks who are low serotonin are generally low melatonin, and these levels dip in the winter because of the shorter days.
So just as serotonin can dip in the winter, adding to the winter blues… your melatonin levels can dip too, wreaking havoc on your nightly rhythm. Even though the darkness makes you feel more tired and ready to turn in earlier, oddly enough you may find sleep elusive just when you crave it most.
While 5 HTP may helps boost daytime serotonin, at night you can take melatonin, as the sun sets, to boost your nighttime levels of melatonin.
Taking melatonin in the fall when the days grow shorter (and you can combine this with using the light therapy box we discussed above!) will help your body re-set to its natural rhythm once winter peaks.
Sleeping well at night is an easy way to feel brighter during the day, beating those winter blues. My favorite melatonin as well as tons of other suggestions on improving sleep are waiting for you right here in my Sleep Restore Protocol.
Free 5 day detox program5. Do you need to detox?
Like I do every year when the earth begins to transition to cooler temps, leaves changing and shedding and the earth diving inwards for renewal, I have a natural urge to dive deeper and detox my own body, from the inside out.
There are a million ways to do this… strict raw food diets and prolonged fasting and colonics and a ton of wonderful different ways to feel like you are starting fall with a new you.
For me, I go with a very easy and very simple detox.
I’m literally aching to do my gentle 5 day detox again, like I do every fall… and this year I’m giving it to you my detox routine free as an instant download, right here. Take 5 days to reset your body for the fall. The earth is getting cooler, the days are getting shorter, and our bodies are going inwards for a period of renewal. So Gentle Restart Detox, here I come. It’s time.
6. Are your magnesium levels good(i.e. are you pooping enough? Are your muscles tense?)
Many of us are magnesium deficient and we don’t even know it. Magnesium is absolutely essential to 300+ different biochemical reactions in our body, like muscle function, nerve function, maintaining healthy blood pressure, blood sugar levels and more.
Without enough magnesium, we can have muscle pain, irritability, insomnia, constipation and even heart arrhythmias. So ask yourself… are your muscles tight? Do you feel anxious or have trouble relaxing into sleep? Are you constipated?
If so, consider boosting your magnesium intake. Magnesium is a natural muscle relaxant, so taking a magnesium supplement at night is one of my favorite recommendations for anyone with difficulty relaxing due to muscle tension or soreness, such as issues with tension headaches, fibromyalgia, grinding teeth at night, TMJ, etc…. so this is why I have magnesium supplementation included in my Sleep Restore Protocol.
You can also soak in a nightly bath filled with magnesium rich Epsom salts, which will relax your muscles before bed and is a great treatment for restless leg syndrome, tooth grinding at night, and other issues with muscle tension such as fibromyalgia. You can then layer on a magnesium rich topical lotion to really relax and soothe sore muscles, here is my favorite magnesium lotion to help soothe tense or sore muscles.
If you are constipated, I would recommend taking magnesium internally, not just topically through baths and lotions, because it will naturally help loosen your bowels. My favorite way to do this is to drink a magnesium drink before bedtime (I like to drink mine in hot water, sipping on it like a nightly tea!) to help relax your body, loosen your muscles, soften stools, deepen sleep, and create a lovely evening ritual all fall and all winter long.
That’s why I have included a magnesium drink in my Sleep Restore protocol here.
It’s normal for everything to slow down in the winter, so if your bowels are feeling full of rich and hearty winter meals and you are feeling dense inside, you can also up your water intake, take tons of healthy fish or flax seed oil, eat a prune a day and ground on the earth each day to help restore your daily rhythms. But if that’s not enough, upping your magnesium intake will help!
7. Do you get enough Vitamin D?
Yes, you will get some Vit D when you go outside to get grounded each day… but most of us are deficient in Vit D even during the summer, so nearly ALL of us fall deficient in the winter.
Not only is Vit D a powerful antioxidant, it prevents cancer, stroke, heart disease, boosts weight loss, decreases pain… you name it… we need it. My favorite are Carlson’s Solar D Gems, found in my trusted online dispensary here. I love these the most because time and time again, when a patient comes to me with Vit D levels that are low despite supplementation with other brands, when we switch to the Solar D Gems, the levels return to normal. Woot!
8. Are you drinking just as much water in the winter as you do in the summer?
Hopefully you’ve kept yourself well hydrated during the summer, when hot temperatures and sweating drive us to remember to drink water more than at any other time of the year.
But in the cooler temps, ones in which you are shivering, not sweating… it’s more important than ever before to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Dry heated air, dry cold outside air, wind chapping our lips, and no internal drive to remind us to drink leads to mid-winter dehydration, brain fog, and a sure-fire road to BLAH.
You can get so dehydrated that you actually feel semi-nauseous all the time and a bit depressed.
Drink water and then drink some more… and start right now. I take the time to filter out the fluoride and chemicals in my water… I’ve got lots of articles on why I do that (you could start with this one if you want to read more) and here is the water filter I personally use in my home.
9. Are you allowing yourself gain a pound or two?
You might be an enlightened buddha thriving off the energy of the universe, but your body is an organic, human thing that is connected to the physical earth and responds to the rhythms of the seasons and needs nourishment.
So every winter it is normal to slow down and allow a few extra pounds to sustain and warm you.
It is like-wise just as effortless and natural to lose several pounds in the spring as the world awakens and we are drawn to more physical labor such as preparing garden beds, trimming the lawn, spring cleaning our homes, and walking barefoot on the beach.
If we don’t attach all the typical BS to our weight that we usually do, the few pounds that warm us in the winter will be shed without a second thought in the spring. This is the natural rhythm of the world all around you. The first half of winter, while food is still plenty and days grow darker, are a time to allow yourself to find nourishment in foods and warmth under your blankets, eating more and sleeping longer.
In a few months, as the pantry empties out and the holiday parties are long gone, there will be a natural thinning time, a time when the days become noticeably longer and your thoughts turn to the fresh spring salads that will be popping up in your garden.
It is only when we attach a negative meaning to our weight that adds to the heaviness and permanency and bulk to it… and these pounds become a part of how we see ourselves forever. We get locked into battle with them and they fight to stay and add and grow, year after year after year. As a result, most people tend to gain a few pounds a year (despite being locked in constant battle and fighting against it the entire time) and accrue this mass permanently, instead of easily gaining and losing a few pounds with the seasons. It just shows that fighting weight isn’t the way to go.
If we dropped all our mental baggage around this rhythm, a rhythm of ebb and flow, of nourishment and lean times, of seasons, we would not gain weight year after year after year, instead we would gain and release. It’s only our society that fears weight gain that makes it almost *impossible* to drop the pounds without thinking twice about it late winter and early spring.
Now is not the time to allow our culture’s baggage to taint what should be a natural time of celebration, stocking up, and preparing for the winter ahead. If you welcome this seasonal change with gratitude, you will be healthier for it. For more guidance on dropping your resistance to a seasonal weight gain, you might want to start with this article I wrote for you on how having a few extra pounds can offer a survival advantage.
10. Are you getting enough Omega 3 fatty acids?
I’ve already blogged a bit about how Omega 3’s can:
effectively treat ADHDsave your brain from atrophying (and decrease your dementia risk!)stabilize your mood so much that it can literally prevent psychosishelp relieve constipationdecrease prostate cancer riskprevent a fatal heart attack.and even cut your risk of diabetic retinopathy in half!Omega 3 fatty acids are such an important whole-body nutrient that comes even more into play during the colder months. Winter means everything from a permanent brain fog to dry tight skin. Omega 3 fatty acids support brain function, digestion, circulation and skin… all things that we need help with in the winter.
Although I absolutely recommend fish oil supplements not just for seasonal affective disorder support, but year round. If you don’t already take them, plan on starting to take them in the fall and it will help prep your skin for the dry air to come, protect your brain for the dark days to come, soothe your circulation for the colder winds to come, and smooth your digestion for the heavier, thicker, richer foods to come.
11. Is your skin prepared for the winter ahead?
Winter can be a tough time for anybody’s skin… painfully dry hands and cracked heels galore (ouch!). Dry heated air dehydrates and cracks your vulnerable skin while you are inside staying warm, and combine that with whipping cold winds that chaff skin when you are outside and winter is just no fun on your skin, especially if you suffer from chronic skin conditions such as psoriasis, eczema or other forms of dermatitis.
Drinking twice as much water as usual and taking fish oil supplements will absolutely help from the inside out… but if you have specific trouble spots you might want a topical barrier cream to apply directly on a daily basis for protection. And luckily, if you like the barrier protection of petroleum jelly but don’t want petroleum by-products anywhere near your body, it’s super easy to make your own!
Today I want to share with you the recipe I whip up each winter to use on our poor cracked hands and feet. Thank you so much to One Good Thing by Jillee (which is where I first saw this recipe!)
Homemade (Un)Petroleum Jelly.
1/4 cup Beeswax Pellets 1 cup Olive OilMelt together over very low heat in a saucepan or double broiler… once well combined, pour into a jar or recycled container and allow to cool for 30 minutes.
I keep a jar by my bedside and by my kitchen sink to us on my winter cracked hands and heels.
12. Are you feeling burnt out?
Fall is the perfect time to turn inwards, nurture your adrenal glands, boost your internal energy reserves, and emerge this spring feeling better than you may have felt in many many years. It’s okay to take these upcoming months slower, to tend to our inner needs more, and to make sure we are getting lots and lots of sleep. It’s not only okay, it’s what we are *supposed* to be doing.
It’s like Mother Nature hand carved these months out for you to repair your adrenal glands and nurture your energy reserves so you can emerge this spring feeling triumphantly energetic! Repairing your adrenal glands is actually the easiest to do in the fall and winter.
It’s easier to sleep longer with the days getting shorter, easier to prepare and eat warm foods like soup, roasts, stews, etc… rich with fat, protein and salt (all absolutely crucial when repairing your adrenals) and easier to cocoon in and nurture your body, with less exertion and more repair.
Emerge this spring feeling better than you have felt in many many years! Ready to eat lighter, sleep stronger, lose weight, move your body more.
To help, I am sharing my Adrenal Repair Book with you for free, right here. In it I have tons of uplifting, actionable things you can do right now to address adrenal fatigue.
A nice combo to do is start with my free 5 day detox plan and then move on to the free adrenal repair book immediately following the detox — this is an amazing way to head into the winter months feeling your absolute best, with several weeks of absolutely free holistic health support from me:
Free 5 Day Detox Plan — download by ordering it hereFree Adrenal Repair eBook — download by ordering it here
Let’s get you feeling better than ever… and enjoying this cooler weather and the beautiful fall colors that surround us.
I’ll be here for you all the way through it!
xoxo, Laura Koniver MD
The post 12 Questions To Ask Yourself To Make Sure You’re Ready For Fall appeared first on Intuition Physician.
September 11, 2023
Tons Of Holistic Health Ideas To Help You Move Through Grief
A few years ago I became a Death Doula.
You would think as a physician we would be taught in detail about the death and dying process in medical school, but we weren’t. Not at all.
We were taught how to pronounce someone dead, how to preform advanced life support to try to stave off death, how to sign a death certificate… but never about the intricacies of it: what the body feels and experiences as the soul prepares to leave it, what the dying process looks like, what order the organ systems shut down in and how that looks and feels, how long afterwards it takes for the body to have the soul no longer palpable in it, how to make the process more meaningful for the person transitioning on, how to make the process more meaningful for the loved ones still here, how to care for the body in the immediate hours after death, the meaningful experiences folks who have technically died and then returned to live have to say about the death process, and so much more about the possibilities — and the healing — that go hand in hand with the death experience. To learn these things, I had to find my own education by other death doulas and death midwives (this one is my fav.)
What I found, is that like most big changes, death brings with it many opportunities to find deeper fulfillment. I’ve seen many patients greet death with joy, surprise, wonderment, love and even gratitude. Don’t count out the possibility that death may very well be one of your favorite phases of your life. If you’d like to read more about my experiences with life after death, read this blog post here.
But of course, for those of us left behind, there is great sorrow and grief.
No one likes to feel separated from those they love most, from those they love even a bit, from those that they had a complicated relationship with, from those they had unresolved issues with… it’s hard to be separate, which is why I feel there is so much joy in the re-connection. The joining of each of our souls with all the souls that have gone before us.
I am so enamored by the joy that the dying person feels as they reconnect with the vast oneness of it all that I’ve painted it several times for you, this one is one of my more recent paintings, I call it As The Veil Lifts:
As The Veil Lifts — prints available here
I hope this painting is uplifting to someone out there. I am sending it out today because this date in particular holds quite a bit of trauma for those of us who very much remember 9/11. So much loss in such a compressed amount of time. If you’ve experienced a sudden loss then you know first hand how it knocks your feet right out from under you, and it can feel just as fresh many years later. That is because trauma affects part of our brain that controls our awareness of time. So when the trauma is remembered, it’s as if time stands still as you re-experience it.
Below I offer some concrete help for specific grief symptoms, such as depression, anxiety, fatigue, sadness and decreased appetite. I am also running — for the last time in 2023 so please join me! — my Trauma Recovery & Resiliency online class in a copy weeks. Sign up here and let’s get you feeling centered again. I go into the latest medical literature on trauma and help explain why you have the symptoms you do, and how to help release them. I’d love to have you in this class.
Meanwhile, here are some ideas of holistic things you can do to support your journey through the transformation of grief:
Holistic Ideas For Moving Through Grief Symptoms:
1. Depressed Mood
Feeling down or depressed while grieving should remind you to prioritize TLC for your body, and give yourself plenty of restorative time to allow it to move through. Here are some holistic ways to help the process along:
Eat chocolate: Yep, it’s true. Published on July 29, 2019 in Depression and Anxiety, researchers found that dark chocolate consumption significantly reduced a patients chance of feeling depressive symptoms for a 24 hour period of time. Looking at over 13,000 patients, researchers found that eating any amount of dark chocolate decreased depressive symptoms by 70% over patients who did not consume chocolate in the previous 24 hours. Oh my gosh… if I could give you a Rx drug that was 70% effective in taking away depressive symptoms for 24 hours, we’d literally all be fighting to get it, some might even advocate for putting it in our water supply, ha-ha. Now imagine if this miracle drug tasted just like chocolate. Now imagine it wasn’t a drug at all and it was just simply chocolate itself. Wish come true, that’s what they found.Supplement with Zinc — In the December 15, 2013, the medical journal Biological Psychiatry published the results of a huge study that found that zinc supplementation can effectively reverse depression… and that zinc added to antidepressant therapy may produce more rapid and more effective improvement in symptoms of depression than without zinc supplementation.Add Probiotics — The natural flora of the gut is diminished in depression, so restoring the natural vitality and variety of healthy organisms in the digestive tract is a very powerful way to improve outcome in depression. A study published on Nov 15, 2013 in Biological Psychiatry, showed decreased depression when participants received probiotic supplements for 30 days, and another study reported clinically significant improvement in mood when participants ate probiotic-containing yogurt for 3 weeks.Consume Omega 3 Fatty Acids — shown in many different studies to impact brain health… from improving symptoms in ADHD, protecting brain volume as we age, and decreasing postpartum blues, omega fatty acids are a must have to soothe and support your entire body inside and out, from skin to brain.Take Vit D — The link between low levels of Vit D and depression have long been established, but newer research suggests that Vitamin D supplements, taken for 12 weeks, can reverse depressed mood. Most of us are Vit D deficient, so if you are experiencing depressed mood this is a great time to give Vit D supplements a try! Read more about these medical studies here.Sleep: A study presented at the31st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, Abstract 0335 in June 2017 showed that patients who were medically treated for depression but did not sleep well were three times less likely to recover from depression, and that sleeping 7 hours or more nightly actually tripled the rates of full resolution of depression. In the study, 62% of patients who received help for insomnia and got at least 7 hours of sleep nightly had their depression fully resolve, compared to 42% of patients sleeping 6 hours a night and only 18% of patients sleeping 5 hours a night. In other words, more sleep = higher chance of recovery in depression.
2. Sadness
Sadness needs to physically flow through the body in order to release. You must *feel* the sorrow. Don’t try to resist it or put it off, instead get into the state of allowing the flow using this one simple trick: water.
Water is the ultimate medium of flow on earth, and comprises the majority of our body. In fact, water is the body’s natural choice of release as well, in the form of tears. Tears often help facilitate the flow of sorrow through the body and allows it to release more easily. So one tip is — allow the tears. Let the water of your tears release your sorrow and lift it from your body.
Can’t cry? You can still use the power of water to help facilitate the release of your sorrow, worry or grief:
Use a hot water bottle full of warm water and hold it on your body where you are feeling the sorrow (chest, abdomen, neck, back…) and breathe into the sensationTake a long hot bath (add some baking soda and apple cider vinegar to turn it into a detoxing experience)Sit in a warm shower and envision the water carrying your sorrow down the drain for youUse steam/humidifiers to help hydrate your head, clearing out the old mental fog and allowing room for the newDrink water — hydrate hydrate hydrate during times of worry or sorrow more than any other time of your life. Let your body be flushed out inside and out and with every urination or bowel movement recognize you are flushing the old energy down the drain and making way for new healing
3. Fatigue
The feeling of heavy fatigue or during grief means your body needs a break… NOW. Not later. You must to honor this sensation/symptom for the important information it is providing instead of ignoring or resisting it. Fatigue and depression show up to alert us that we are in a time of healing/repair and not in a time of action.
Help it by:
Low intensity exercise — respect your body’s need to slow down. Now is not the time for strenuous exercise… honor caring for your body in gentle ways such as yoga, stretching, long slow walks through nature.Get help — you don’t need to do it all alone. Ask for help. Call a friend. Lean on family to help with some of the burdens you are seeking relief from. Flag down a neighbor and just simply and literally ask for help.Passive body work. Your body needs to get into receiving mode and not giving mode. Your giving mode is burnt out. What I’ve noticed is that most people who struggle with fatigue are the givers who are giving to everybody but themselves. You DESERVE to give your body the message that there is a time to stop and receive. Get a massage, acupuncture, reiki, physical therapy, a facial, a haircut. Anything that is a passive process for you — let others actively help move that energy through your body and help you on your way to release it.Deeper sleep at night… see below
4. Sleeplessness
You absolutely, 100% NEED deep, restorative sleep! It’s non-negotiable… poor sleep causes memory impairment, decreased life span, weight gain, worsened anxiety and other debilitating mood disturbances, increased risk of dementia and an increased incidence of Alzheimers, widespread brain atrophy and much much more!
Here are some ways to get that much needed, deep restorative sleep you absolutely NEED to make your way through the process of grief:
Grounding — connecting to the earth has been shown in sleep studies to increase the amount of time we spend in deep sleep, as well as treat jet lag and other circadian rhythm disturbances. Sleeping with a grounding product will support your body’s healing process from head to toe, all night long… find my favorite indoor grounding products in my Grounding Boutique right here. Be sure you are signed up for my newsletter here so you get my upcoming article about all my favorite ways to stay grounded outside in winter, including my review of the best grounding shoes.Melatonin — Taken as the sun sets (not 1 hour before bedtime as printed on the label, but whenever the sun actually, literally goes down, as this is when it’s most biologically critical for your body to get a melatonin boost) allows sleep to be deeper and more restorative.Daily activity — simply getting up every single hour of the waking day and walking for a bit (instead of spending several hours in a row inactive) just might be the best gift you could ever give your body.Develop a nightly routine — turn off all the lights, make sure there are no computer screens or clock faces or nightlights lighting up the room while you sleep, and drink a soothing cup of warm milk, sleepytime tea, or take a hot bath to relax your body and transition into bed. More on this in a blog post I wrote for you right here.Sleep with an external source of warmth — we all have a deep seated, cellular need to be connected to others while we sleep — it comes from the caveman days of sleeping in groups to help increase survival. So especially if you have recently lost a spouse, a pet, or a loved one that you are used to sleeping with, insonmia might be a real struggle. Fulfill your instinct to sleep share by sleeping with a hot water bottle (the warmth provides that deep comfort your body is craving) or with a loved pet or pray to loved ones and ask angels to surround you as you sleep each night so you go to bed feeling connected and supported.I have some additional tips for you on getting better sleep in this article I wrote for you: 12 Things To Do Throughout The Day To Improve Your Sleep Tonight.
5. Anxiety
Anxiety is a very active state, where you have lots of energy building up inside, and the answer to this (as in all emotions) is to really allow the flow to open up and release it to find relief.
With the energetic state of anxiety you generally need to get into a more active state of allowing, in contrast to the passive allowing state required by sadness, grief, depression and fatigue.
Anxiety states respond to active release… so give some of these a try:
Meditation — this is a very active and aware state that puts you in the perfect open-but-alert mind-frame necessary for relief. Focus on taking 3 deep breaths in and out and choose a mantra for the in breathe and the out breath. If you can do 5 breaths, do 5. Work up to 10, 20, 50 breaths of focused openness:
breathing in: I am lovable
breathing out: I am loved
breathing in: I am safe
breathing out: I am healing
or make up your own! Even easier, pick a mantra. I have a video in this article that guides you through a very simple, very healing mantra and I also talk a bit about the medical literature that suggests mantra can help with anxiety disorders such as PTSD. Click here to read it now.
Movement and exercise — moving the body and quieting the mind is the goal of many gentle, healing practices such as yoga, tai chi, qigong. If your energy feels more intense and will not allow you to settle down enough to do those types of exercise, honor your body’s need for active processing by something a bit more intense like pilaties, karate, kick boxing, or going on a long jog.Give to others — unlike depression and fatigue, the gift of anxiety is the gift of having energy to give and express… and one of the best way to off-gas this is to give to others in need. Volunteer at a cause that is meaningful to you, start a year of gratitude (doing one act of thankfulness to loved ones or strangers each week and record it in a gratitude journal) or just go out into the world each day asking that you be shown a way you can be of service. The point here is not to add any more stress into your life — do not do anything that doesn’t feel right. This is not a burden, it’s a very simple way to get rid of extra energy/tension. Consider doing simple things that don’t require a lot of preparation but will allow you to actively process and off gas extra energy. For example, walk along a road in your neighborhood and pick up litter for an hour after dinner. Pick up an extra pizza on your way home from work and give the extra one to a construction crew as you pass or head to your local SPCA and take some of the dogs on a walk each weekend. In fact…Care for a pet — caring for a pet is the perfect way to allow your energy to flow in a loving and active, yet low stress way. Simply walking your dog every day, spending 30 minutes petting your cat while she purrs on your chest, whistle to a pet bird and teach him your favorite TV show theme song… study after study has shown that pets improve our health simply by being in our lives. During times of anxiety and frustration, loving on a pet a little extra each day gives a heart-centered but simple way to open our heart chakras and allow excess energy to flow.
6. Decreased appetite
It’s important to consume nutrient dense food even when your appetite is low-to-gone. Your body needs healthy fats and protien in order to keep up it’s immune system and help get you through the intense and often exhausting grieving process.
Just when you don’t feel like eating at all is right when you need the nutritional support the most. So here are three tips to help you stay healthy even when your appetite has left:
Hydrate — it’s really important to at least stay well hydrated during emotional times. Although you can go for days without eating, you can not survive for days without water. Drink non-fluoridated, fresh, filtered water and drink drink drink some more. If you simply you can’t eat a single bite… drink a glass of water and take a deep breath and stay well hydrated. This is the water filtration system I use in my own home.Gentle movement — while it is okay to want to curl up and not move while you are hurting, it’s also important to make sure you get gentle activity each day — going on a daily walk in nature is the best therapy. The movement gently stimulates gut perastalsis and will help gently nudge your appetite back into place.Nutrient dense foods — when all you feel like eating is a few small bites, make every bite count. There is a reason folks deliver nourishing bone broths like chicken noodle soup to loved ones who aren’t feeling well… the healthy fats and minerals in bone broth is nurtirtionally sound and will help keep your immunity high. Other options include easily digestible casseroles, stews, organic nuts and peanut butter (when my kids just don’t want to eat, we compromise on a scoop or two of organic peanut butter), healthy fats such as avocado and coconut oil, organic yogurt, and organic butter (a comforting warm grilled cheese sandwich with organic cheese and grilled in organic butter is wonderful, especially alongside a cup of bone broth!)
If your grief is particularly intense, lasting longer than a few months or accompanied by suicidal thoughts… or you simply want the support of a counsellor… be sure to seek professional help by a medical or mental health practitioner who is experienced in grief counseling.
Want more support from me?
Sign up for my online Trauma Resiliency & Recovery Class by clicking over here right now to save your spot. And don’t forget to share this healing idea list by forwarding this blog post to your loved ones who are feeling the effects of trauma as well.
xoxoxo,Laura Koniver MD
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