The world may have gone mad, but violets are here to help...

Early spring can be a bit overwhelming for me. This March, in particular, is feeling more crazy than usual in a more global sense. But the change of the season has always been hard for me. As someone with a hyperactive mind who is also hypersensitive and autistic, I thrive in the quieter, slower pace of winter. It helps mellow me out a bit. 

When spring jumps into the scene, it can quickly feel like too much. Too many smells, too much new stuff, everything suddenly moving so fast and feeling impossible to keep up with. March madness, indeed!

Nettles appear in early spring and it is a narrow window for harvesting, so there is a push to get while the getting is good. I love them, but they are easier for me to love at a distance or in small doses. 

Simply put, too many nettles in the house at once can be overstimulating. Processing the plant after picking it amps me up, sometimes to the point of agitation. I don’t usually have anything scented in the house, and although they smell just fine to me, it can quickly become too much. And I have injured myself on more than one occasion trying to harvest more than my body was ready to harvest (I have EDS so I get injured pretty easily). 

Violets, however, are another matter entirely. They also start to appear in early spring, but there is a much bigger window for harvest, so there isn’t the mad rush to go after them all at once. I have all sorts of violets in my backyard, and am fortunate to have a home that was previously owned by master gardeners who never put any pesticides on anything, so I am able to harvest freely. 

It’s so interesting to me that you pick up so much about a plant from harvesting it. As I said earlier, nettles are quite invigorating, and you don’t have to drink nettle tea to experience that. Simply harvesting and then processing the herb will have that effect on you. To me, violets are the opposite–picking them, washing dirt from the leaves, spreading them out evenly on a tray, all of these steps are quite calming and regulating to me. 

Violet is a nervine, so it is helpful in soothing the nerves, meaning it shouldn’t be terribly surprising that it has a calming effect. I just find it fascinating that you don’t have to consume the plant to experience this.

I enjoy the presence of violets so much that I will pick a small amount every week throughout the spring (it’s also the amount my back can handle before injury), and then spread them out on a huge tray and put them next to my bed to dry. They are my spring companions! I really feel calmed and comforted by their presence throughout our time together. 

Violets  have a very mild, light fragrance that is lovely, and is one of the only flowers that is mild enough that I can keep it indoors with me continuously without it ever becoming too much.

Harvesting slowly and steadily throughout the spring means I end up with enough to get me through the year. That’s particularly important because it has been almost impossible to find violets in commerce in recent years, which is a shame. If I had to live with only one herb, it would probably be violet, and it makes me sad that not everyone has access to it. But it does grow almost everywhere so there may be more access than you think…

So what is so great about violet? Well, for one thing, they are one of those rare moistening herbs. All medications and most plants actually dry you out to varying degrees, which can lead to conditions that range between a bit uncomfortable to downright painful. Severely dry eyes, for example,  are more on the excruciating end (it feels constantly like you have sand in your eyes you can’t get out), and rinsing your eyes in some violet tea with a bit of saline is the most soothing thing ever.

Violet is also a lymphatic herb, meaning it helps move stuck fluids out of the body (like taking out the trash). It is especially good at doing this in the chest area and in the head. So the tincture can be marvelous for certain kinds of headaches, especially because it also lowers inflammation. I particularly like it for sinus headaches combined with ground ivy (where there is stuck fluid and inflammation) and hot, stabby kinds of headaches or for times when too much energy is stuck in your head.

If, on the other hand, you’re having brain fog and have the kind of headaches that coffee helps, violet is not likely for you. I’ve given the tincture to a number of folks and I often get asked later “So…what all was in that?” and people are pretty astonished when I tell them it was only violet. Sometimes one herb is enough to get the job done!

Violet as a long infusion has additional benefits. That’s where you’re really going to see that moistening action–it can get pretty goopy if you let it sit long enough! That can really vary though depending on violet, if it was fresh vs. dried, etc. 

It’s also really high in minerals. You do have to let the infusion sit for at least 4 hours to extract all those minerals (that’s what I mean about a ‘long infusion,’ so sometimes I prepare it the night before and then start drinking it in the morning. People often drink nettles this way as an alternative to a multivitamin, but it’s nice to have an alternative to nettles if people can’t work with nettles for whatever reason.

And then there’s those nervine aspects! I find it very soothing to frazzled nerves. If you don’t have access to it locally, linden would provide a lot of those same moistening and nervine actions. 

Although it can’t usually be bought commercially these days, it does grow all over the place and you might be able to harvest it yourself if you trust the soil quality. One thing I get really irked about though is all these people on the internet posting pictures of all the violet flowers they harvested. You know what? The leaves are every bit as potent as medicine, and once you make a tea or tincture you can’t see the pretty flowers anyhow.

I try to leave as many flowers as possible for the pollinators, who absolutely need them in order to survive. I know the flowers are pretty, but so are butterflies. Spare the flowers and maybe you will be lucky enough to draw some rare butterfly beauties to your little patch. 

If you do not feel comfortable harvesting in your area, you are not out of luck. Violet medicine can still be for you–try sitting with a patch of violets and allow them to calm you the f*ck down. Believe me, they can do it. The world may have gone mad, but the violets are here to help us through it.

DISCLAIMER: This is for educational purposes only. Herbalists do not diagnose or treat any medical condition. 

Musings on why getting aligned with natural rhythms an be especially impactful for us neurodivergent folks.

Recently I overheard a conversation in a waiting room. “Do you know what I read the other day? Apparently there’s this phenomenon in hospitals. For some reason, whenever there’s a full moon there’s an increase in certain kinds of things people come into the hospital for, I don’t remember what exactly….but isn’t that the craziest thing? Isn’t it weird?”

In true neurodivergent fashion I bluntly inserted myself into the conversation. “Births and deaths, for starters,” I said. “More storms too, so probably more accidents. And no, it’s not crazy at all. It’s totally natural. What’s crazy is people never going outside and understanding they are connected to anything. What’s crazy is staring into a little screen all day.”

I was going to continue on, but I managed to reel myself in and not release the full tangent I could feel building inside of me. I was remembering the book High Tide in Tucson, in which author Barbara Kingsolver recounts the story of going to the Bahamas with her kids and bringing back a  bunch of seashells. Upon return to her home in Tucson, she discovered a hermit crab amidst the shells and she decided to build it a terrarium.

She found herself observing the crab from time to time, and noticed it would get very active at certain times and she wondered what that was about. Following a hunch, she looked up the tide tables in the bahamas and discovered the crab was getting active in rhythm with the tides, even thousands of miles away in Arizona. Removing the crab from its environment did not remove the environment from the crab…

Personally I get a little testy about the moon because the full moon means less sleep whether I am tracking the lunar cycle or not. I’m not even into astrology and will often only catch it in retrospect—why did I sleep so poorly last night? Was it a full moon? Oh, that figures. And if it’s a supermoon (when the moon is even closer to the earth than usual), the effects are even more pronounced. I can black out the windows, but something in me is still tracking it, whether I want to or not.

But much as I begrudge the moon, I do not want to sever my connection from it. In fact, I can’t think of a single time in which getting more connected with natural rhythms was detrimental to anyone’s health—emotional or physical. In fact, the opposite. The more disconnected we become, the more likely we are to get out of whack.

Consider melatonin. When you think of melatonin, you probably think of a little pill that people take before bedtime to get a better night’s sleep. Am I right? That’s how melatonin has been marketed, because that’s how others are able to profit off of it.

But the reality is that melatonin is produced naturally in our bodies and is cued by light signals. Consider it a privilege if you can get outside to experience sunlight in the early hours of day and have ways to block blue light after sunset (more on that shortly), because this will cue your body to regulate its production of melatonin, reset your circadian rhythm, and influence the entire hormonal cascade within your body. That’s pretty remarkable!

In a more natural world, we simply would not need melatonin (or anything) in a capsule. But it’s not like the capsule is our only choice now and it’s definitely not our best choice. Granted, this is tougher with some schedules and there are those for whom it is unrealistic.

Unfortunately, if we don’t ever get outside in the earlier hours of the day and if we are saturated with blue light after sunset (which is in the vast majority of lighting these days), those signals get all scrambled and can contribute to a lot of issues with our health and adequate sleep.

Last year I did quite a bit of experimenting with all of this, which broadly goes into something many refer to as ‘light therapy.’ I started off by making it a point to get outside for the sunrise, and walked 15 minutes or so to get to where I could see it (when it wasn’t completely overcast). My husband went with me on this, and we really enjoyed the ritual of it and felt some benefit from it in a matter of days.

The challenge is that the time of sunrise is always changing, albeit slowly, and so some times of the year are going to be more convenient that others. If you have breakfast at a fixed time, does that change due to going out for sunrise? What if you pretty regularly go to the bathroom at a regular time in the morning and suddenly you’re getting the urge to go when you’re out on your walk to see the sun? For someone who can get pretty stuck in their routines, I was both attracted to and frustrated by the dynamic nature of the practice.

Ultimately, I ended up making a bit of an adjustment. I now go out for the sunrise, but just stand in this one spot in my yard for a few minutes to orient myself and remember my place in the world. I’m always in the middle of doing a whole list of other things to get ready for the day and it’s a bit inconvenient to do it, but I never regret it.

I like that it gets me outside of myself, that it puts things in prospective, that it makes me remember that I am one being on this giant planet in a much larger solar system and my all consuming anxieties are just the tiniest speck in the entirety of things. It’s very freeing.

When my schedule allows, I then get back outside again for my morning walk at the UVA rise, which is basically an hour and a half after sunrise. UVA (ultraviolet A light)  comes into play when the sun is around 10 degrees above the horizon, and it affects us down to the molecular level.

Writes Carrie Bennett, MS, “The benefits of morning sunlight extend far beyond mere pain relief and mood enhancement. Exposure to these specific light frequencies has a profound impact on various aspects of our health and wellness. Hormone regulation, energy support, and sleep quality are just a few of the many areas that morning sunlight can positively influence.”

This has really worked for me. I feel more like walking at this time (could it be because I am wired to be most active at this time?), and my own experience with going out at this time has been a marked increase in my overall capacity. I have more energy on the walk itself and then just have more capacity throughout the rest of the day to do ‘all the things’ I need to do. I think that must mean less pain because pain is probably the biggest zapper of energy in my day to day life.

It’s fascinating to me that doing the exact same walk at 9 am vs 2 PM could have this kind of an impact due to the different cues my body is getting from the sun at those times. At the same time though, I’m wondering if this is one of those times being hypersensitive can actually be a blessing rather than a curse. So many of us neurodivergent folks are so sensitive to fluorescent lighting, and we tend to just see that as something annoying we have to live with.

But perhaps we are also the ones who can benefit the most from getting reconnected with natural light? I do know a few people who have said this kind of work is the thing that has made the biggest impact on their health, and that’s not something to take lightly.

​For both my clients who struggle with insomnia as well as my clients who struggle with being alert and focused during the daytime, getting out in the morning light can be an important tool in your toolbox, and it is almost never one that people have experimented with already. Again, in our consumer culture we are much more likely to reach for a pill or an energy drink first. I think there is a lot of potential here (and it’s free!)

When it comes to blocking blue light after sundown though, I have not yet found a way to do it without buying a few things. I mean, if you have a little cabin without electricity you can hole away in every night, go for it, and be careful with those candles, but that is not my situation.

It does seem to be getting more common for folks to have adjusted the settings on their phones and laptops for night time, and that is a great start, but in an ideal world we would not be seeing any blue light after sun down. You can make yourself go absolutely nuts trying to cut it all out though, since every little electronic, your smoke detector, your air purifier, etc. are going to have little lights on them.

I’ve also been encouraged with there being less of a stigma around wearing tinted glasses. I recently had a consultation with someone online who was in a timezone three hours later than my own, and the clinician showed up on Zoom with what appeared to be sun glasses. She told me they were blue light blocking glasses (more on these below) and that they were enabling her to do these later evening sessions without it keeping her up all night. So rather than being embarrassed about it, it became a moment to model self care to her clients. I really like that.

In the past I only focused on cutting out blue light at bedtime to calm down my nervous system, and it always really jumped out at me when I am staying in an AIRBNB. So many lights everywhere! I would try to remember to pack little things to cover them all up with but it seemed like there was always one I couldn’t get to for one reason or another. Sleep mask to the rescue!

But this last year I decided to try out those glasses that completely block blue light, like the ones my clinician was wearing on Zoom. A colleague of mine suggested putting them on as soon as the sun sets. You can buy a cheap pair to try them out first before investing in something nicer--just make sure they actually block light in the 450-510nm range (many don't). It kind of makes everything look like it’s in candlelight, and it takes a little getting used to.

My eyes like the feel and it instantly relaxes them, but initially wearing them just made me so ultra aware of how artificial our human world is and how that artificial world has saturated everything around us. Wearing the glasses made that awareness so strong in me the first few days, and was rather disconcerting, but I did end up getting used to it. Unfortunately you can’t wear them while driving, which is a bummer since really bright headlights at night drive me bonkers.

And that reminds me of my second great find—a blue light blocking book light.
I originally got this for power outages. You can just clip it right on to you so your hands are free of a flashlight or lantern. But even better, the orange glow is not harsh at all the way a flashlight is. In the past, power outages always led to migraines due to that harsh lighting, all the more piercing against the surrounding darkness. Total score!

But then I discovered that I could also clip it to my bedside table and use it if I have to get up in the middle of the night too. I am one of those people that inevitably knocks something off the bedside table in my attempts to find the bedside lamp, so having the clip-on light right next to me eliminates that particular problem.

I am very early on still in my explorations with light therapy, but it feels like a very important piece of a larger goal I have to rewild my body and reclaim my health and wellbeing. To tap back into natural rhythms and realign myself with them, to remember that I am a human animal and not merely a consumer whose primary role it is to keep buying things that will throw me even more off balance as a strategy to keep me needing to buy ever more things. It’s slow work, but it brings me alive. I’m ready to see where the path goes next.

Special thanks to my friend and colleague Heather MacMillan, a fellow neurodivergent herbalist, for encouraging me to go deeper in my exploration with light therapy. Her commitment to these practices continues to inspire me, and I am so appreciative of her support.

A look at why a one-size-fits-all approach to herbs is problematic and how to think about it instead.

What’s the best herb for allergies? Is there anything that will help my stomach ache?  What herb do I take for migraines?

I get questions like this frequently, and I know everyone just wants to hear the name of the magic herb so they can buy it, take it, and be fine.

But herbs are complex and people are complex, so more often than not it's just not that simple. The bright side to this complexity is that getting to know both the person and the herbs better is much more likely to lead to lasting improvements in your health—really getting down to root causes instead of just putting bandaids on everything indefinitely—and without the negative side effects we have just come to accept as collateral damage when we take pharmaceuticals.
Let me use myself as an example of how that can play out.

Throughout my 30’s I had severe allergies that really limited me. There were months of the year I tried to avoid going outside altogether. I wore a mask when I did have to be outdoors in peak grass season (and this was before the pandemic), and I rarely went over to anyone’s house unless I knew it was not dusty and was well ventilated because it could take me days to recover from the sinus migraines that ensued if I had a bad reaction.

I worked with a number of folks in the healing arts during these years, and I can’t tell you how many times people told me that nettles are good for allergies. So of course I tried them, and they did seem to help slightly, but my overall health never improved at all.

Fast forward to my 40’s when I began studying herbs formally and learned about this idea of ‘herbal energetics.’ It’s kind if a misleading phrase (or at least it sounds a little woo woo to me when it’s not). It’s about the characteristics of each herb—whether it’s moistening or drying, heating or cooling—that sort of thing.

Everything we eat and the drugs we take also have these qualities. Medications, almost always, are drying, and some more than others. The majority of herbs also land on the drying side, although thankfully there are numerous ‘demulcent’ herbs as well that hydrate and moisten.

A light bulb finally went off for me. I realized that taking all of my allergy meds since childhood, as well as some drying herbs for allergies, had totally dried out my mucous membranes over the years. Mucous membranes are your body's barriers that trap and expel irritants—if they’re not well lubricated, more irritants get in and stay trapped there. So the things that may have been initially helpful created a different problem over time that led to my allergies getting even more severe than they were in childhood.

The idea of demulcent (moistening) herbs appealed to me immediately because I also had been dealing with extremely dry eyes for a number of years (which feels like you constantly have sand in your eyes that you can’t get out). It dawned on me that this was not a separate issue from my allergies—systemic dryness throughout my body was wreaking havoc!

Now, that being said, nettles are highly anti-inflammatory and especially shine with allergic/histamine response. So I’m not saying nettles aren't good for allergies. But they are pretty drying. So unless you are a super damp person with too much mucus, you are going to need to balance that out with lubricating herbs  like violet and marshmallow root. 

Once I figured that out, I was able to vastly improve both my dry eyes and my allergies, and was able to participate in so many more activities than I had in the handful of years leading up to that time. I also saved tons of money on expensive medications and procedures and stressful appointments with specialists.

But that wasn’t the end of it! Due to some GI issues, I had had an endoscopy done in the midst of all this and found out I had a precancerous issue in my esophagus. As that is not something that the conventional medical world thinks of as improving on its own, they wanted me to come back for another endoscopy later that year to see how it had progressed. But as it turned out, the demulcent herbs I had been taking for my allergies and dry eyes ended up being just what my esophagus needed as well. The second endoscopy revealed no damage of any kind in my esophagus at that point. Pretty fabulous!

Now let’s look at migraines. Part of why migraines are so tough is that they are caused by so many different things, and herbal energetics play a role here as well. For example, if you have a sharp, stabbing pain like an ice pick stabbing you behind the eyes, that is completely different than a broad, dull pain that has taken over your entire head and leaves you foggy and unable to think straight.

Boswellia is a trendy herb right now that is advertised as being a potent anti-inflammatory. So you might think “Hey, what if I tried that instead of some ibuprofen?” But if you have the hot, stabby kind of pain, boswellia could actually give you whatever is worse than a migraine because it’s going to amplify the characteristics that you are already showing in excess. Let’s not even imagine it.
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Turmeric is another trendy anti-inflammatory, but most people don’t know that its actions are directed primarily in the gut. Usually that’s fine as the origin of so many people’s pain (whether we’re talking headaches, joint pain, etc) is stemming from what they’re eating.  So it follows that bringing down inflammation in the gut can keep that pain from spiraling to other parts of your body. But turmeric is also hot and drying, so if you’re dealing with osteo arthritis, those effects can actually exacerbate those excesses in your body.

With osteo, we also need those cooling, lubricating herbs (like Solomon’s Seal!) to soothe and restore joint function (Hey! There’s me again! Another hot and dry condition I have that benefits from lubricating herbs). That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t get any benefit from the anti-inflammatory benefits of turmeric, but over time you could be intensifying your body’s state of being hot (inflamed) and dry (those clicking sounds you get with osteo are indicative of dryness).

One more example. Who among us has not heard about how amazing echinacea and elderberry are for fighting off viruses? Take it as soon as you start coming down with something! Fight back!

For many people, they can be  helpful (although you really have to know how much to take and how often to take it to get good results), but if your body has any characteristics of autoimmunity you could be making things much worse by taking a strong immune stimulant.

Even if you think you don’t have an autoimmune disease, I highly advise trying out those herbs first at a time when you are not sick, and take a large amount (like a teaspoon of tincture as an initial test) and see how you do. Does anything flare up?

You can still have an autoimmune response even if you have not been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease (and it may be worth considering if things are heading in that direction fro you if you react badly to strong immune stimulants). If you do have a bad reaction, it’s a much better bet to stick with immunomodulating herbs instead (like shiitake, reishi and maitake mushrooms).

This all may sound a bit daunting, but there is another side of it that is quite liberating. With holistic herbalism, we don’t have to have a diagnosis to be helpful. Got a mystery condition? No problem! We can still support you because your symptoms are what matter, not your diagnosis. Whether you actually have a diagnosis of autism or not, or whether we know the name of that weird, creepy rash on your arm is pretty irrelevant. We work with what we see.

So instead of asking “What’s the best herb for sleep?” or “What are the best herbs for stress?” ask instead what herb you could be working with to fit your current needs. Is the insomnia caused by muscle tension, body aches or racing thoughts? Does stress make you lose your appetite or go on sugar binges? Does it it make you snap at everyone around you or hide out curled up on your bed ignoring the world? If you want to find the right herb to work with, we have to get at the heart at what your current experience is and how it is affecting you.

Now I wish I could say that it’s just a matter of doing your due diligence and patiently looking everything up on Google. But especially these days, the internet is becoming increasingly unreliable for good info on herbs. Did you hear about that family that went mushroom foraging based on a book written by AI and then got poisoned and died? Well I heard that story and the thing is, I don’t even know if that story is true. That's how convoluted everything has become…

So, if you are fortunate enough to be able to consult with a qualified herbalist, I highly recommend it. If you take any kind of medications, make sure you are working with someone thoroughly trained in herb-drug interactions. It really matters.
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If you can’t afford to go that route, check out the free and low cost courses offered by CommonWealth Herbs. Their $25 classes will be the best $25 you ever spent (if improving your health is what you’re after). They also offer free clinics once a month (although you really have to be on top of it if you want to snag a slot), and offer various scholarships to people of color and folks who are incarcerated.

With either route, you do have to put the time in. You have to get to know your pain, your symptoms and your unique challenges so that you can support them appropriately. It may not always be fast or convenient, but for me at least, it was totally life changing. When you’re ready for those kinds of changes, the herbs will be ready for you.

DISCLAIMER: This is not medical advise and is for educational purposes only. Herbalists do not diagnose or treat any medical condition.

https://www.menopausenaturalsolutions.com/blog/female-hormone-lifecycle

This is one of those times when a picture says it all…am I right?! Those intense squiggly lines dropping off into oblivion that correspond with a woman’s life during perimenopause is a good reminder of how much is going on under the surface at this time in life. Major upheaval! And major upheaval means less bandwidth. We maybe have not even realized we were masking all those years until we hit our 40’s and suddenly…well, suddenly everything feels amplified and some things are gonna have to give.

But this isn’t just for middle aged women. Times are stressful, am I right? While there has always been global injustice and too much pain and suffering in the world, we now have taken things up a few notches. The increasing frequency of climate disasters, for one thing. We are living on a different planet than the one we were born on, and it will continue to change faster than our infrastructure can keep up with.

And even without a ‘disaster’ things are just getting more intense. Can someone really say their allergies are getting worse when the pollen seasons are much longer and more severe than they used to be? How do you know if it’s you getting worse or the pollen going gangbusters?

Add to that the technology that dominates so much of our lives that is so out of sync with our natural rhythms. The algorithms that are getting better and better at manipulating us to maximize profits for a handful of tech giants. Give me a break already.

When I was a kid, school was consistent and orderly and (ok, really boring) but it was actually not a hard thing to know what was expected of me and just get through it without any major ordeals. It was unimaginable that school could just stop for a year or more like it did when COVID hit or that we would have the constant, chaotic distractions of technology and its glitchy software and the constantly shifting curriculum and staff turnover and everything that is in the schools today.

My autism went under the radar in the environment I grew up in, and not just because I was female (I do know some women in my age group that were diagnosed as kids, although not many). It went under the radar because for the most part, the consistent, predictable routine of school did not trigger me. Sure, I had issues and they would wear on me more and more over time, but it was a much better environment for me than today’s schools are. Same kid, same neurotype all along, but it looks different depending on the environment it is in. This is not an easy moment in history to be hypersensitive!

The last point I want to make here is about our neurodivergent elders. Certain neurodivergent traits are also traits that can show up more in seniors generally—things like forgetfulness, having less of a filter and just saying whatever you want, or getting more rigid in certain ways.

If an ADHD person has always been forgetful and late to everything, and this gets worse in their later years, I would argue that that can just be a natural part of aging and does not in any way convince me that their ADHD is getting worse.

Now the rigidity (typically more of an autistic trait) is a little bit different. Neurologically speaking, anything we do over and over becomes like a groove in our wiring that gets more and more entrenched over time. The more often you repeat something, the more it gets reinforced and the harder it becomes to change it. So if you had an autistic person who was very rigid in their habits, and they had some tendency that they were leaning into every day for decades on end (let’s say not feeling the need to pick up the phone when it rings), then I think an argument could be made that their wiring did in fact get more pronounced over time. But that is more about neuroplasticity than anything else. Anyhow…I think I may be getting a bit nitpicky with this example, so why don’t I end this paragraph before I disappear into the weeds…

The point is that some of the natural effects of aging can indeed appear to intensify some aspects of neurodivergence, and make them more obvious. But in reality, we are all impacted by our environment and all the natural fluctuations of life, and that is in turn going to impact our functional capacity at any given moment. While this can make it look like we are more or less autistic or ADHD when we are more or less overwhelmed, the reality is that we have the wiring that we have, and we have it for life. What really matters is that we recognize what kind of support we or someone we love needs at all those various points in their life and meet them where they are at.

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A look at the best foods to nourish and replenish you in times of high stress and/or burnout.

When you have been under a lot of stress and/or are recovering from burnout, your nutritional needs are going to be impacted because stress uses up a lot of resources in your body. Let’s take a look at what you can eat to help support your body through challenging times.

Magnesium and Stress
When we are under stress, our bodies burn through minerals at a faster rate than usual. That, in turn, can lead to more stress. How so? Well, consider the role of magnesium in the nervous system. It sits on certain receptors in the synapses (the gaps between neurons) in the nerves and decides which messages to pass on and which can be ignored. But if your magnesium is low, it will just pass along everything. That’s the moment when every little thing imaginable just seems to set you on edge and make you twitchy. I think we’ve all been there! Magnesium can help.

Our modern diets are deficient in magnesium to begin with, because modern agricultural practices don’t replenish the soil with magnesium. This leads to more and more depletion over time. So supplementing magnesium is generally a good idea for everyone, although you can only absorb a little bit at a time. Adding some Mega-Mag drops to your water or mixing in some Natural Vitality Calm throughout the day is one way to boost these levels.

But adding more mineral rich foods to your diet is a great idea as well—bone broth and seaweeds are great places to start, as well as  working with mineral rich herbs like nettles (also a great spinach alternative!) and horsetail. Wild greens like dandelion leaves and anything else you can scrounge up in a yard untreated with pesticides will be full of minerals. And if you can stomach it, organ meats are powerhouses of both minerals and vitamins that are hard to get elsewhere (and are much more affordable than supplements). And finally, if you are fortunate enough to be able to grow some of your own food, adding rocks around your garden area will allow your plants to absorb more minerals.

Cortisol and Inflammation
When excess inflammation is in the body, more cortisol is going to be produced, and if you are already stressed out or in burnout, more cortisol is not what you need. So rather than just thinking about how much fat and how much protein you should be getting and that sort of thing, it’s better to think about what kind of fat and what kind of protein are going to lower inflammation so that cortisol can be lowered as well. The same goes for sweet things—refined sugar is for sure inflammatory, but honey is anti-inflammatory. So you don’t have to cut all sweet things out of your life, but switching to things like honey or maple syrup when possible will go a long way.

Healthy Fats and Proteins
When it comes to fats, we are looking for ones that are higher in omega 3s and lower in omega 6s to lower excess inflammation. For oils, coconut, olive and avocado oils and ghee are excellent choices. Industrial seed oils (and basically anything you are likely to find when you eat out) are going to be inflammatory.

Now here’s the interesting thing about meat—whether the meat is inflammatory or anti-inflammatory depends on how the animal lived. You may have heard that tuna and salmon are great sources of omega 3s, but that is only true of wild salmon and tuna. If it is factory farmed fish, the diet and the life of that fish is going to be very different (and pretty depressing), and now the fish is producing omega 6s instead of omega 3s.

The same goes for chicken, beef, etc. If the animal was able to live in a pretty natural environment without unnatural stressors and eat food that is ideal for them (think pasture raised, grass fed cows), they are going to be healthy sources of protein and fat. A lot of those studies that seem to show that meat is inflammatory are flawed in the sense that they don’t distinguish between Oscar Meyer bologna and your neighbors beef that you got at the farmer’s market. They are not the same!

Protein plays another key role here in terms of giving you what you need to stay sharp and focused during the day (harder in times of stress) and in keeping you full longer. Grazing between meals leads to extra inflammation (especially if you’re grazing on processed foods and/or refined carbs), but getting 20 grams protein at each meal will keep you full so you are less likely to snack between meals.

Getting plenty of good fats is also really important to help nourish your nerves from the effects of stress. You hear people say things like “my nerves are frazzled,” or “I’m so burned out,” and there is some truth to that! Just as oils can help nourish and hydrate sunburned and dried out skin, so can good fats nourish and replenish your nervous system when it gets impacted by ongoing stressors.

Stress and Appetite
Now let’s talk about how stress affects our appetite. If you are someone who finds it hard to eat when you get stressed out, either because you lose your appetite, get nauseous or feel like your stomach is tied into knots, there are some things that will help you out.

Eating something bitter 10-20 minutes before a meal will help stimulate the appetite (and is also great for your liver!). Ginger will help with nausea, and and carminative herbs like fennel and chamomile (especially if steeped strongly for 30 minutes or more), will help relieve stomach cramps.

Try to make it easy on yourself by having ‘easy’ foods around that you just can just grab when it feels really hard to get something down. Bone broth with some added oil is one example. A handful of almonds, an apple (with almond butter!) or some hemp seeds you sprinkle on top of whatever for some extra protein are other good options (both almonds and hemp seeds have 10 grams of protein per serving). You may find it helpful to set alarms for yourself to remind you to eat.

If, on the other hand, stress leads you to craving all the “bad stuff,” don’t despair! Deprivation is not the answer. Consider that for one thing, cravings may be your body’s way of communicating with you what it needs. When you crave salt, for example, your body is probably low on minerals. So load up on something full of minerals first, and then if you still want some chips, so be it.

If you are craving sugar, on the other hand, your body is seeking nourishment. Consider that in the wild, poisonous foods are never sweet. Sweet foods are always safe and nourishing. In the modern world though, it’s the other way around. But our bodies are still so deeply hardwired for the natural world that this gets mixed up. It does not mean that you are bad for craving something sweet—it’s hardwired into our biology! So the next time you find yourself reaching for something sugary, start with something deeply nourishing like bone broth with added oils (and maybe a bit of honey), and then you are likely to have less refined sugar afterwards. And if you are reaching for chocolate, perhaps you need both nourishment and minerals (chocolate is super high in magnesium).

You can also focus on harm reduction. While sugar is inflammatory, honey, molasses and maple syrup are anti-inflammatory and have other nourishing properties (like minerals!) that sugar does not.  At the end of this post, I’ve included my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe that uses a small amount of maple syrup, almond flour, and no eggs. The cookies do not taste like maple syrup at all, and the texture is just amazing—the perfect combination of chewy and a little crispy on the outside. I keep these in the freezer and can pull one out whenever the urge fro something decadent strikes. But whatever you are craving, be sure to keep healthier alternatives stocked in your home so that you can make better choices when the cravings kick in.

So to wrap things up, consider giving your body extra dietary support during challenging times, just like you might turn to chicken soup and citrus fruits when you have a cold. Stress depletes you in some key ways, and what you eat plays an important role in helping you recover.


CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
(sugar free, gluten free and egg free)

2 cups blanched almond flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ cup melted coconut oil and ghee (the ghee really enhances the flavor—even 1 TBS will be noticeable)
¼ cup maple syrup (at room temperature)
1 TBS vanilla extract
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
½ cup mini chocolate chips

INSTRUCTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350ºF and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. In a large bowl, stir together the almond flour, baking soda, and salt.

Add in the melted coconut oil/ghee, maple syrup, vanilla, and vinegar, and mix again, until the dough looks uniform, with no clumps.
Fold in the chocolate chips, then use a tablespoon or 1-ounce cookie scoop to scoop the dough onto the prepared pan. You will get roughly 16 small cookies from this batch.
Use your hands to flatten the cookies then bake at 350ºF for app. 11 minutes, or until the edges look lightly golden.

Almond flour cookies get softer if you store them at room temperature overnight, so I recommend serving these the day you make them, or keep them in an airtight container in the fridge or freezer for the firmest texture. They are extra-crispy if you serve them straight from the freezer.

REFERENCES: Much of the data referenced in this post was sourced from the Fundamentals of Holistic Nutrition and Neurological & Emotional Health courses from CommonWealth Holistic Herbalism.

I know, I know, we’re all sick of COVID-19. But it’s still here, and getting reinfected is problematic. Here’s why I think it’s especially important for those of us who are neurodivergent.

Well, I’m pretty sure we are all fed up with COVID these days and I won’t be surprised if this post ends up being the least popular one I write all year. But I also think it could be my most important post, so I’m choosing to write it anyway. That’s my stubborn autistic fierceness coming through—speaking up about something unpopular because it matches my values. So I’m not going to apologize for that.

But that doesn’t mean I’m trying to bum everyone out, either. The opposite, in fact.
Think for a minute about wearing your seat belt. Cars are dangerous. There are real risks. But most of us don’t panic every time we get in a car, and most of us buckle up because it is a reasonable precaution (and we don't want to get fined) and we know seatbelts save lives.

I’m hoping we can get to a point where we treat COVID precautions in a similar way—they are just an automatic response that does not have to be supercharged with stress. So let’s take a minute to look at the what the latest science is telling us about COVID risks and discuss some reasonable precautions.

Despite the fact that we are hearing very little about COVID these days, there is a ton of research on it. At the moment of this writing, entering ‘COVID-19’ as a search term on Google scholar results in 4,940,000 hits. That’s a lot. It’s more than almost anyone has the time or bandwidth to read, unless you happen to be neurodivergent and it’s your special interest (I do know a clinical herbalist who spends 2 hours every day reading through it all. For real).

So what is all this research telling us? Here are some of the main points:

1.) COVID hits you where you are weak, which is why we are seeing so many people who were already struggling with their health hit the hardest. I think this is really important for neurodivergent people to consider. So many of us are already struggling with migraines, gut issues, POTS, EDS, fatigue, chronic pain, etc. and we often struggle to ‘keep up’ as it is. If your joints are already giving you a lot of grief, you really don’t need COVID coming along and ratcheting it up another notch. Often people with autoimmune diseases or obesity are considered the most vulnerable, but neurodivergence is a risk factor as well.

2.) In a way, everyone has long covid. That’s because COVID-19 sticks around in your body a lot longer than the acute infection does, and leaves all sorts of messes anywhere in the body (via the ACE2 receptors) that need to be cleaned up.

When scientists looked at the brains of healthy individuals a year after they had COVID, the brains were still different (or shall we say damaged?)
But in someone who is pretty healthy, they may not notice that things aren’t quite the same.

Think about a workplace where a boss suddenly gives everyone a little more work to do. If they are not overworked, they may be able to handle a little extra work without major issues. But if they are already overworked and close to a tipping point, that little bit of extra work may push them over the edge. So again, those of us who were already working extra hard to ‘keep up’ may be the most likely to get hit hard by COVID.

3.) COVID risks are cumulative.
A Scientific American article from last month stated that “each infection is associated with a substantially increased risk of health issues like cognitive dysfunction, autoimmune disease and cardiovascular problems, even for mild infections.”

I’m still processing that one. Just take a minute to let it sink in: The risks are cumulative. Each new infection greatly increases your risk of serious ongoing health issues, even if you didn’t get very sick. That’s sobering, to say the least.

In light of all of these things, it is a critical time to be focused on your self-care. This could include things you can do to prevent reinfection, such as:

• Living a life where you prioritize cutting out optional stress (not the same as living in denial)
• Masking when possible (especially during peak outbreaks like right now)
• Choosing remote options over in-person when you can
• Avoiding airplanes when possible (family road trip to a National Park perhaps instead of flying to Disneyland?)
• Holding gatherings outdoors
• Prioritizing sleep when possible
• Making lifestyle choices that build immune resilience
• Vitamin D3 (5000 IU is a good amount for most people)
• Garlic, ginger, rainbow veggies…
• Herbal steam - Try steaming for 10 minutes if you have been somewhere high risk or you know you had an exposure. Add one drop of thyme essential oil added to your steam to clear out pathogens.

Here’s another thought: If you have a one-on-one appointment where you will be in close proximity with someone (like a hairstylist or a chiropractor or a massage) schedule it first thing in the morning when there are less particles in the air from the practitioner (and wear a mask).

Self-Care should also include things you do to recover from an infection to minimize the  risks of developing long-COVID (or to recover from it if you already have it), such as:

• Cutting out optional stress
• Sleep, sleep, and more sleep. No apologies. Prioritize rest! Be okay with boredom!
• Focus on getting good nutrition when possible
• Cut out optional inflammation like sugar and processed foods
• Remember your supplements (especially B vitamins, magnesium and Vitamin D3)
• Herbal Support (ideas in next section)

COVID Recovery Tea- This is a tea that would be great to take for at least the first 6 weeks after COVID, as well as other herbs that address any lingering symptoms. Taking it as easy as possible and drinking a quart of this daily can be a great way to support your body in an effort to prevent having COVID interrupt your daily life in the months to follow.

Use 2 teaspoons of each herb, boil a quart of water, cover and let it sit overnight. Drink throughout the following day.

• Calendula
• Plantain
• Nettles
• Ginger

I’ve put together this particular combination of herbs because they are easy to find and will fight inflammation, help your body clear out detritus and wastes that COVID leaves behind, heal damaged tissue inside your body, gently support your liver and improve your circulation (among other things). It will just make the big job your body has to do post-COVID a little bit easier.

Astragalus and codonopsis are two other herbs you could look into as well, especially if you are prone to getting sick easily or already have chronic health issues.

***
I realize as I write this that most of us are still burned out from the initial hyper-vigilant COVID roller coaster, so I'm going to keep advocating that we adapt a response similar to wearing a seat belt. Masking is no big deal in China, so it’s not inevitable that masking has to mean something TERRIBLE. For any of you living in a place where wearing a mask is something you are villainized for, I am truly sorry. 

Masking is just one piece of reasonable measures of prevention though, so see which pieces work with your life and you will already be more protected than you were before.

These are just some initial starting points. If there is one big takeaway here, it’s to take it as easy is possible in these times. I know for a lot of folks, even thinking about COVID risks feels stressful and even overwhelming, but does ignoring it actually make you feel better? And doesn’t a lot of that stress come from feeling powerless?

For me, knowing some tangible things I can do that will actually give me greater protection and help me recover faster eases some of my stress, and that’s why I decided to write this. I wish you all a happy, healthy and low-key summer! Take care out there, and I’ll see you next time…

Further Reading
What Doctors Wish Patients Knew About COVID-19 Reinfection (AMA)

Is it Dangerous to Keep Getting COVID-19 (TIME)
​
Acute and postacute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection (Nature)

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