The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet: Activate Your Body's Natural Ability to Burn Fat and Lose Weight Fast (42 page)

When it comes to your health, there is one factor that is more important than perhaps any other. If it is missing from your life, it causes or worsens 95 percent of all illness. It has been associated with dramatic reductions in disease, with longevity, and with weight loss. It doesn’t come in a pill, and it can’t be found in your doctor’s office—because it resides within you.

What is this critical factor that has so much to do with how healthy or sick, fat or slim you are? It is the health of your mind and spirit. In fact, aside from eating breakfast, the biggest predictor of longevity is psychological resilience—being able to roll with the punches that life throws at us. In other words: How we deal with stress dictates the length and, perhaps more important, the quality of our lives.

As I’ve said before, chronic stress causes your brain to shrink and your belly to grow. That’s because the main stress hormone, cortisol, damages the brain, making the memory center (the hippocampus) shrink. Stress shortens our telomeres, the little end caps on our chromosomes. The shorter your telomeres, the shorter your life. And, as
you read in
Chapter 5
, stress also activates a biological response in the body that makes you hungry. It increases your level of insulin and cortisol, sparks an increase in carb and sugar cravings, and at the same time, also increases your body’s storage of abdominal fat.

But that’s not all. Chronic, unmanaged stress gradually breaks down virtually every system in your body, undermining your immunity and prematurely aging your cells even as it erodes your relationships and your pleasure in living.

The thing about stress is that it just keeps coming around, like the sun. Every day, we are going to be confronted with responsibilities and demands. We have jobs, families, mortgages to deal with. There will be conflicts to face and crises to handle. To some extent, the stuff of modern life makes stress inevitable.

That’s why I often tell my patients: “Stress finds you, but you have to go looking for relaxation.” Like it or not, it’s up to you to find ways to take breaks and manage your stress, for the sake of your health, your sanity—and your waistline!

I noted earlier that there are two parts of the nervous system: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. The sympathetic nervous system is the part that gets activated in the fight-or-flight response, when your biology charges up to power you through challenges. The parasympathetic nervous system, by contrast, governs the rest-and-relax response—that sense of calm you feel when you can let down your guard, breathe calmly, and just
be
.

The problem is, for many of us, our sympathetic nervous systems are active way too much of the time. It’s as if they’ve gotten stuck in the “on” position. If you want to heal your brain, your metabolism, and your chromosomes, you need to learn how to hit your “pause button” to give your sympathetic nervous system a rest and activate that parasympathetic nervous system instead.

But that doesn’t mean sipping a glass of Chardonnay while watching TV or practicing retail therapy. For relaxation to have the restorative effect we’re looking for, it has to be active, not passive. Sitting on the
couch may be enjoyable, but it’s not relaxing. I’m talking about a biological relaxation response in the body that’s activated by certain behaviors: breathing exercises, yoga, meditation, massage, even the UltraDetox Bath, all of which encourage deep breathing and profound relaxation of your nervous system.

The trigger for the relaxation response is your breath. When you take a deep breath, you stimulate the vagus nerve—a very special part of your nervous system that helps you calm your mind and turn on a cascade of healing. The vagus nerve runs from your brain through your chest cavity into all your organs, like an octopus stretching out its tentacles to every cell in your body. Your immune cells, your stem cells, and all the other organs and tissues in your body are connected to this nerve.

Stimulating the vagus nerve signals the production of hormones that calm your nervous system, reduce cortisol, help you metabolize your food, boost your brain function, and naturally regulate your appetite. Simply by breathing deeply and activating the vagus nerve, your body starts to boost metabolism and increase fat burning. Pretty amazing.

Science has demonstrated that by stimulating your vagus nerve (which connects directly to your fat cells and the gut), you can trigger all of the following:

Here’s the coolest part: You have the power to stimulate that nerve
anytime you want
. It’s low-cost, easy to access, and always available to
you. You don’t need any special equipment or medication. You can literally change your heart rate, brain cells, brain waves, and weight just by shifting your breath. It’s
that
powerful.