Stress is such a bugger!

We all like to pretend that stress doesn't matter.  We like to think we are handling it or that we are not stressed.  My husband purchased me the Inner Balance gadget for Christmas with a lovely meditation pillow. Inner Balance is a cord (with an app, of course!) that you plug it into your "i" device, in my case my iPad, and clip it onto your ear.  The sensor on your ear measures your heart rate variability as a way to determine your level of stress and help you learn how to train your mind to bring your heart rate variability to a less stressful pace. There is a lot of science around it, books, etc. none of which I was interested in enough to read.

The first few uses over Christmas break I was easily able to keep it in the green (meaning good heart rate variability, low stress and their term "coherence").  Fast forward a couple of months and I have increase to level 2 and am trying to do around 10 minutes of my HeartMath every day.  Some days, more often than not, it's HARD to get into and stay in coherence.  Dang!  I thought with all my yoga and everything that I was so chill. Apparently not :(  It's amazing how I can be sitting there doing great, in the green, and my mind just wanders to something I have to do or don't want to do and boom! I immediately go into the red.  Then you have to focus again on breath, gratitude, heart thoughts, working your way through blue back to green only to wander and go back to red.  Wow!  It's so much more relaxing to be unplugged and not know :)

I've found when I eat in a rush or under any stress my food just sits in a giant lump in my stomach and doesn't want to go anyway.  I get a little reflux even sometimes.  If it happens to be dinner when this goes down then the next morning can be rough.  So, even though Dr. Pimental has done research that shows that stress alone does not cause SIBO, it can definitely contribute to your symptoms and inhibit your ability to digest.  And remember that the stress hormone cortisol is catabolic, meaning it breaks things down, definitely not helpful for healing!