Category: Health

Adrenal fatigue, Anxiety relief, Health, Recovery, Relaxation

Of dentists, adrenaline, and stress recovery

Emily

Fun fact: standard dental anesthetic contains epinephrine. So if your heart starts to pound when you get numbed up for a filling, it’s just because you’ve been literally shot full of stress hormones. This is a great example of how emotional reactions (feeling like you’re panicking) can come after a physical/hormonal change. This happened to me today when I got numbed up for a filling.

Here’s a bizarre follow-up. I’ve been having heart palpitations since January (just a flare-up of my periodic rumbles, already cleared as “no big deal, just annoying” by a cardiologist). Now that the drug-induced tachycardia has cleared up, my heart feels the most steady, and my resting heart rate is the slowest it’s been, in months. 

I’ve long noticed that my body often doesn’t down-regulate after a stimulus (e.g., have trouble relaxing muscles after working out). In this case, the injection delivered a discrete amount of hormones, and my body responded with a strong relaxation response proportional to the amount of adrenaline in my body. But since my body wasn’t making new adrenaline, the relaxation response was able to overcome the epinephrine AND any background stress hormones that might’ve been making my heart do the wacky the last couple months.

What this is suggesting to me is that my body IS “able to create a relaxation response” BUT it is “unable to stop creating the stress response.” Like, I know how to put the brakes on, but I don’t know how to take my foot off the gas. So what happens is I hit the gas, then stomp on the brake without letting off the gas. It slows me down some, but the brake can’t overcome the gas, so I never fully get into the “off” position. I’ve always assumed that my foot came off the gas, but I didn’t know how to use the brakes, so I could only kinda-sorta coast to a stop. Maybe that’s not at all how my body’s been working.

It also stands to reason that this is incredibly draining – gas pedal is always on, AND I’m “braking” twice as hard…but not really resting. And it gives me some different ways to think of treating all this. The first things that come to mind are small doses of Sudafed or caffeine. I’ll let you know if anything works…

Dang. This is one of the most educational healthcare visits I’ve ever had.

p.s. You can totally ask your dentist for “cardiac-friendly” anesthetic that doesn’t have epinephrine. So, if you feel anxious at the dentist, go ahead and ask them to please not shoot you full of stress hormones.

UPDATE: I was back to feeling the same – or even a little worse – the next day. Which is not surprising; going through the adrenaline spike and recovery is hard on a body. So, there might not be any therapeutic breakthroughs with this info, but at least I understand why my heart rate spiked!

Courses, Health, Herbalism, Yoga

Fenhaven 2023 in Review

Emily

I spent a lot of 2023 wondering what direction(s) I wanted to go with Fenhaven Wellness. I dedicated time to Fenhaven in a way I’d never done before – half of my working hours or more starting in mid-September. I consulted marketing experts, got a new logo that I LOVE, and made a few starts at blogging, videos, and Instagram, which didn’t really “take.” I attended the Great Lakes Herb Faire to get a sense what ways people weave herbs into their lives. I started seeing new bodywork clients again, and found I’d really missed hands-on healing. Almost reflexively, I planted herbs – and what what seemed like an extraordinary amount in April now looks like a tiny patch to me!

Herb garden in bloom
The 2023 herb garden. Clockwise from the big leaves at 1 o’clock: elecampane, tulsi, lemon verbena, scallions, skullcap, calendula, hibiscus, anise hyssop, plus more things hiding from view!

Another key moment of ’23 was releasing myself from the thought that I should – or even want – to make my living solely with my wellness business. I like my “day job,” and it gives me many useful things: financial security, colleagues I like, a different flavor of job challenges, and external direction. (Self-employment can be very tiring when you have to come up with “what should I be doing today?” as well as doing the work!)

When I let go of trying to “grow my business,” several things happened. I started doing what sounded fun, instead of doing what marketing folks told me I should be doing. And by following fun, I fell in love with making tea.

A pot of tea shining reddish in the light from the Fen
Festive Digestive tea steeping with a view of the fen

As you’ve probably noticed, teamaking totally took over my brain, my heart, and my hands in the last quarter of the year. I haven’t had that much fun with plants in years. It’s just so freaking satisfying to put together a tea that is tasty and functional and then share it with others. Tea Club has been an absolute blast the last few months! I put together holiday gift boxes, and I have thoughts for two new ones (one for when you have The Crud and one for people dealing with grief). The spate of strictly tea-related ideas is slowing down, so I wonder if the honeymoon of teamaking might be passing now – or I might just be tired from/of pushing the commercial side through the holidays. In 2024, I know I’ll be exploring what my tea interest wants to mature into.

Better Broth brewed up as a mug of bouillon
Gorgeous deep color, thanks to a boatload of turmeric!

I also started having more ideas of things to do in the wellness realm. Savory Better Broth (one of my favorite herbal blends) was a small step from teamaking. Sourcing large quantities of local herbs has me thinking about collaborations with local farmers and cafes. Conversations with friends and my own bodyworkers has me thinking about hosting my own super-gentle somatic yoga class online. And my interest has rekindled in developing a “resilience curriculum” around skills for food/health/mental health/community that would be a self-paced exploration for adults and teens (especially homeshoolers).

So there’s a bit about my thoughts as 2024 approaches. Now, your turn!

Health, Self-care

Air Purifiers for Coping with Smoke

Emily
Smoke from Canadian wildfires

I’ve been having a rough time with the wildfire smoke the last couple weeks. Not full-on asthma attack bad, but definitely feeling tight in my chest, like I can’t get a full breath.

Indoor air purifiers help a lot. My criteria for a filter include:

  • Needs to work well against smoke. Key words to look for: Filters particles smaller than 2.5 microns; MERV 13 (for furnace filters); and a high CADR rating for smoke. (Conveniently, this will also filter for viruses, as well.)
  • It should not produce ozone – so no ionizers, no “electronic air cleaners.”
  • It has to be QUIET, and it has to filter well when it’s on its quietest setting. When you see performance data, that assumes it’s on high. I have bat-like hearing, so the absolute loudness (decibels) and the pitch of the noise are very important to me. I’ve found 17 decibels is great; 23 is OK; and anything 40+ is hard to listen to for long. YMMV.
  • I prefer things with fewer electronics, bells, and whistles that draw as little as electricity as possible.
  • Filters should be affordable.

Here’s what I’ve found works for me (and no, I don’t profit from these links and I wasn’t bribed to say nice things about these):

  • Blueair Pure Series
    • Model 411 (discontinued) and 511, for small rooms like bedrooms and home office. On low, I can barely tell it’s on. On high, it will reduce the PM2.5 in my office from 25 to 10 in about 15 minutes. Consumer Reports said these are one of the only filters that do anything meaningful at low speed.
    • Model 211+ (discontinued, but available on eBay – be sure it’s the 211+ or 211+Auto and not the plain 211). This is essentially the same as the 411, but for bigger rooms. It’s kind of large, but it can reduce the PM2.5 from 80 (unhealthy) to 20 (moderate) in a 12×15 room in about 15 minutes.
    • Model 211i Max (new) – I’ve ordered this one, but haven’t received it yet. Basically, it’s the 211+ with some additional features, like a built-in PM2.5 sensor and phone app support. It’ll turn itself on when the air quality gets low and turn down or off when it gets better.
    • There’s also a 311 auto that’s still in production that is larger than the 411 but smaller than the 211.
  • A standalone air quality monitor is super helpful.
    • Look for one that measures PM2.5 – smoke particles fall into this category.
    • Note that the scale used for PM2.5 is different than the Air Quality Index (AQI) number you see reported on the weather. It’s nice if your monitor has both.
AQI values vs PM2.5 values (in micrograms per cubic meter). They’ve recently adjusted what counts as “unhealthy” levels of PM2.5, so refer to the right-most column.

A couple key points:

  • I’d rather buy a larger purifier and run it on low than buy a smaller purifier and run it on high.
  • Check eBay for used purifiers. Watch the shipping prices, and expect you’ll need to buy a new filter from the manufacturer right away. I wouldn’t buy filters off eBay, though; it’s very little savings and there’s no way to know for sure the filters are unused and not knockoffs.
  • You can’t cheat physics. Buying a purifier that’s too small for your space will help some, but it’s not going to have the power to do the job when the smoke gets into the “unhealthy” range.
  • Focus on really, really cleaning the air in one or two rooms. Keep the door closed and crank it up. If noise is an issue, turn it up when you leave the room and down when you come back.
  • These Blue models draw tiny bits of electricity – the 411 draws 2 watts on low – so just let them run all the time instead of trying to save electricity or filters by turning them off and on multiple times a day.

I’ll post later about some herbs that have also helped me during this time.

Adrenal fatigue, Courses, COVID-19, Health, Long Covid, Recovery, Self-care

Help! I’m a “do-er” and I don’t know how to “do” rest!

Emily

I’m guessing a lot of folks out there are having a hard time recuperating from COVID, chronic stress, burnout, and the accumulated fatigue of years of coping through a pandemic. Maybe you feel like you’ve been resting a lot, but you don’t seem to be able to recover that last bit of your energy from the “before times.” Or maybe you were already burned out then!

I’ve just released my new course Self-Care for Restoration, where I teach concrete techniques for moving from total rest into active recovery without falling into a cycle of overdoing-and-crashing. Here’s a sample video, aimed right at all you go-getters who are at a loss when people tell you to “slow down” and “just rest”!

Launch special – I’m offering the course as a name-your-price offering starting at just $5.

Register for the course
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Anxiety relief, Relaxation, Self-care

Improving Anxiety Via Somatics

Emily

“Somatics” refers to any physical practice that uses motion to improve physical and mental health. How does that work? Well – have you ever found that stress or anxiety can make your muscles feel tight? Does your throat close up when you are upset? Do you want to curl into a ball and hide under the covers when you are procrastinating? Those are all signs of your mental state influencing your physical state.

But it’s also possible to change your physical state to improve your mental state! Watch the video below to learn how moving your body can decrease feelings of stress and anxiety.

If you’re interested in some specific ways you can replace the Anxiety Cycle with the Somatic cycle, join my self-paced Somatics for Anxiety course, available online now!

More info and registration