Are you aware feeling drained, overwhelmed, and unable to tap into your full potential could actually be hidden stress symptoms? In this eye-opening episode, I sit down with Dr. Gala Gorman, a licensed acupuncturist, naturopath, and author, to explore the hidden culprits behind chronic stress and how they might be sabotaging your life.
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Show Notes | Transcript“Your body’s been managing that for a really long time, and it just finally hit the point where your body said, ‘Whoa, I cannot do this any longer.'” – Dr. Gala Gorman
Dr. Gala Gorman is an advocate for getting to the root cause of the health issue and treating it naturally. Drawing from her decades of experience and personal journey, Dr. Gala reveals the surprising truth about stress that goes far beyond our typical understanding. She introduces us to the concept of “kryptonite” – those invisible stressors that silently drain our superpowers and leave us feeling defeated.
In this informative conversation, you’ll discover:
- The 12 categories of toxicity that could be secretly wreaking havoc on your health and energy levels
- Why traditional stress-reduction techniques might not be providing lasting relief (and what to do instead)
- The telltale signs your body is crying out for help – from mysterious weight gain to persistent headaches
- The “Fierce Five” food sensitivities that could be fueling your stress and how to address them
Whether you’re a high-achieving entrepreneur struggling to maintain your edge or simply feeling overwhelmed by life’s demands, this episode offers a compassionate roadmap to reclaiming your inner “Super Woman.” Get ready to unmask the hidden kryptonite in your life and rediscover your innate resilience and power!
Resources:
Join the Soulful Women’s Network
Connect with Dr. Gala Gorman:
Website: drgala.com
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TRANSCRIPT
Namaste. Has too much stress left you feeling overwhelmed and underproductive? Well, it’s time to ditch that kryptonite and reclaim your superpower. I hope you are going to join us today as my guest is unveiling the secrets to conquering stress and unleashing your inner hero. But before I bring her on, I do want to welcome those of you who may be new to live. Love. Engage. I am Gloria Grace, and I help female entrepreneurs attract clients who align with your values and become your biggest cheerleaders. And joining us today in just a moment is Doctor Gala Gorman. She is a licensed acupuncturist, naturopath, and author who offers practical advice and programs for people who are experiencing health issues resulting from chronic stress. And she helps women, in particular, relieve their symptoms, restore their energy, and reclaim their superwoman status. So, without further ado, I am going to bring her on and officially welcome you, Gala, to Live. Love. Engage.
Thanks for having me, Gloria Grace. I am looking forward to our conversation today.
Me too. And one thing I didn’t mention, and you’re going to have to forgive me, because I don’t remember exactly the title of your book, but I know it has kryptonite in the title, which is why I mentioned kryptonite.
Yeah. The title is, what’s your kryptonite? You can see in my little.
That’s right. Oh, there it is right there. On the banner.
Right. And the subtitle is, manage the toxic stressors threatening your superwoman status.
Okay, well, I think that’s where we need to start, right there. Tell us a little bit about, you know, what is your kryptonite? And, yeah.
So the way I usually talk about this, in a way that I think helps women to understand is, you know, in the superhuman world, kryptonite for Superman or Superwoman, kryptonite is never, like, sitting out on the dining room table. Right? They just feel their superpowers being drained. And because of their past experience, they know that kryptonite must be somewhere nearby, and they have to figure it out fast in order to distance themselves from it in whatever way is most appropriate, and then their superpowers are restored. We have a similar sort of situation in our own world where all these things that potentially cause us stress escalate, essentially to toxicity. And that could be emotional stress, which is what emotional, mental stress is what most of us think of as that kind of stress. But what we tend to overlook that is actually more challenging to deal with are some of the other stressors like mold, you know, which in my world is referred to as microtoxins, bacteria overgrowth, viruses, as we all know what that has looked like in the last few years. And so there’s twelve categories of toxicity is just how I sort of grouped them together. But only one of those categories is emotional toxicity. There are a lot of other ways that toxicity affects us. And then what happens is, if we’re, if our body is already trying to manage toxicity, that is basically invisible, we’re not seeing, and then we end up in a very stressful period. That is the kind of stress we normally think of. Our body doesn’t have the same resilience to deal with it. And so what tends to happen is we apply techniques like meditation or journaling or whatever, and we kind of get ourselves soothed and our nervous system kind of back to regulated. And then we find that that feeling doesn’t last. We find ourselves being escalated back to feeling really overstressed and anxious really quickly. And that’s a good sign that you’ve got some other toxicity that’s kind of boiling beneath the surface.
That’s interesting. So, yeah, I never really thought, thought about it in that way. So my question then is, okay, if you are experiencing something like that, then how do you go about trying to figure out what is, if it isn’t regular emotional stress or you’ve been able to calm it? And I love that you mentioned meditation and journaling. My favorite things.
Yeah, I honestly sort of found this out through trial and error myself, you know, as over the last 40 years, essentially. But I love to meditate as well. I literally can sit for hours and just, you know, lose myself in contemplation and love that feeling of being really sort of serene. But I would regularly have somebody that I was seeing myself for help with symptoms. And this is decades ago at this point, but I would have them tell me, you need to reduce your stress. And I would say, golly jeepers. I already do all the things you’re supposed to do. Like, what else am I supposed to do? And eventually, it was determined that there were some other stressors that I had going on that had to be addressed in order for the regular stress reduction techniques to actually be, work long term.
Essentially, what were some of the symptoms then that you were experiencing that sort of made you, I guess, maybe either made you seek help or that someone else was noticing, even though you thought that you weren’t stressed out.
Yeah. So I was not sleeping well, and that started, gosh, in my twenties, honestly. And in hindsight, I can point to kind of when it started, I was in a relationship that would eventually become my husband, and he snored. And I had never been in a situation like that before. And just chronically, over years period of time, my sleep was disturbed, like I was already. I’m already a fairly light sleeper, but my sleep was regularly disturbed, and the effects of that compounded. I was already like a, you know, overachiever in my, you know, normal life. So, so not sleeping at night and trying to pedal to the metal all day long, those two things just simply do not go together for more than a few days, you know, in a stretch. And. And so when I was out of that situation and I still found that I could not sleep, it was clear that I had done some damage over that period of time. And the other ways that tends to show up is we obviously have chronic fatigue. And the question is, do you have chronic fatigue because your body’s not making energy, or do you have chronic fatigue because you’re not sleeping well? Or are you not sleeping well because you’ve got some toxicity buildup that needs to be addressed? So it can really, it’s understandable that, you know, people say, well, where do I even start? Because it is a conundrum. But essentially, when you’ve got symptoms, whether that is not sleeping, whether that is weight gain, that would not be able to be pointed to something. You know, for example, I have been not in my normal situation. We’ve been sort of on a, like, quasi sabbatical situation for the last few months, and. And so I’ve been splurging a little more on dessert, and, you know, the kinds of things that I would have tell myself, not indulge in. Right. And so, you know, don’t be surprised when you’ve got five extra pounds that kind of, like, accumulates over that period of time. Now, it’s going to take me a little bit of time to sort of work that back off by doing all the things I know I’m supposed to be doing all the time. But, um. But, you know, when you can’t point to a situation where, you know, you’ve just not been doing what you’re supposed to do, but nothing’s working. The other thing I point to, especially as we age, is that we just start to look a little puffy, like there’s, like, a layer of fluid almost that just accumulates in certain areas, but almost looks like your whole body’s just a little puffy. And so that tends to be what’s referred to as interstitial fluid. And it’s just your whole lymphatic system not really functioning optimally. And again, that tends to be something that points to a buildup of toxicity. And so I was just actually working on some of the material that I’m putting together for a new video that I’m going to be recording on headaches and treating headaches naturally. But headaches is another thing that is really debilitating. And women tend to struggle with headaches more than men. And if you get headaches regularly, that’s a clear indication that you’ve got toxicity building up.
Yeah, yeah. And I’ve had that like I’ve had migraines in the past, and thankfully, I haven’t had one in a while now, but, yeah, they’re no fun. And. And even, just, even just minor headaches, you know, once in a while. So our. But I also know people who have really had debilitating ones, and, yeah, my heart goes out to them because it’s.
And it’s interesting, right. Because I know, like, if I ever get a headache, I don’t get one very often, but if I do get a headache, it’s right here. Like, literally, it’s the same spot every time. So we all have our sort of spot where our bodies says, here’s, you know, this is going on again. Right. Whatever it is that your body is kind of your Achilles heel. When. When stress escalates, that will flare up, and that’s your sign to take it seriously, you know, not just try to suppress the symptom. Because your body, the way I explain it, is that if your body is sending you this really sort of clear and loud message of an annoying symptom, that isn’t like. It’s not like the thing happened five minutes ago, and now your body’s sending you this really loud message. Your body’s been managing that for a really long time, and it just finally hits. Hit the point where your body said, whoa, I cannot do this any longer. You know, like, my pot just boiled over. And that’s, you know, a lot of people look at a symptom like, well, that’s the first time that showed up. But if we would look at a symptom like, wow, that’s my body’s cry for help, because it’s been managing this for a really long time, and I. Now it’s to the point where it can’t manage it any longer. I think we would take these symptoms more seriously if we looked at it through that lens.
Yeah, absolutely. And that actually leads me to my next question. That was perfect segue is, can you share, like, what are some mistakes that many women make when trying to manage these symptoms?
So I write a newsletter every Sunday, and so I was just working on my Sunday newsletter. Typically ride it a couple days in advance, and then I’m working on it up to that point in time. But a couple of weeks ago, in this place we’ve been staying, I was scooting across the tile floor in my bare feet, and I caught the leg of the chair with my toe. And normally, you know, you stub your toe on a chair and it hurts like heck for an hour, and then you can’t even remember you did it. Right. Well, that was not the case here. I’ve literally been hobbling around for a couple of weeks now. And. And so last night, the nerve that innervates that toe, the main, like, the epicenter of the problem, the nerve is aggravated all the way to my spine. It’s basically the l five dermatome. And so it’s throbbing. And I really caution anyone about taking pain relievers because I don’t want you to take a pain reliever to numb out and silence that message that your body’s trying to send you. Right. But there are situations where a pain reliever is just called for. Right. Like, I try to walk my talk, right? Because I get that some of the things I suggest are really challenging, and it’s like, if I can’t practice them, how am I going to expect the people that I work with, the women that I work with to practice it? So I’m having a mental wrestling match last night in bed, trying to decide if I had really gotten everything I needed out of this situation. And I wasn’t going to really do much further damage by taking a pain reliever so that I could go to sleep because, you know, my leg is on, obviously barking at me, and I’m not able to do that. And so finally, I got up and took the pain reliever, and it was so intense that it took quite a while for it to even take effect. But then, you know, did I take another pain reliever this morning? No. If my foot hurts when I’m, you know, walking around today, it’s much better. But. But I want to know that because I don’t want to be pushing it too hard and re-injuring it. I want my body to be able to go, okay, that’s enough. That’s all you can handle, you know, put your foot up kind of thing. And so one of the other before I had this personal experience in the last couple of weeks, usually what I get is, yeah, but I woke up with this headache. I’ve got meetings all day today, and I’ve got to, you know, I got a thing because I’ve got a day in front of me that cannot be canceled. And so what I tend to tell women there is that before, before you take the pain reliever, I want you to really milk all the information out of that experience. You know, what happened yesterday? What did you eat yesterday? What did you do right before, in the few hours right before bed? Did something happen in the night that, that contributed to this? And truly, if it’s kind of like a one-off thing, then no big deal. Take the pain reliever and get on with your day. Right. I will say, though, that if you take the pain reliever and the pain still doesn’t subside, cancel your day and go back to bed, unless it’s so severe that you really need to seek emergency care. But the important thing to recognize is that when a symptom, especially a symptom that threatens your ability to be able to, like, continue on business as usual, you want to just hit the pause button, as inconvenient as it may be, and make sure that you are not doing further damage by pushing through.
Yeah, I think that’s very sound advice, and I hope everyone out there listening and or watching are taking heed to that. So, obviously, you know, the body, I’ve definitely learned and had experiences where the body really does let me know something is out of whack and you need to take care of me already. And you mentioned that sometimes you do just need to rest. I’ve had friends who start coming down with cold symptoms, and it’s like, well, your body’s telling you, you need to slow down, so just get some rest, get plenty of fluids, just knock it out early before it has a chance to really grab hold of you. When it comes to stressors or these toxic stressors, are there some other easy ways that you can manage it? What else do you recommend?
So one of the things that I recommend that helps just about everyone is avoiding the common things that people tend to be sensitive of with food sensitivities. And so I call them the fierce five, because for most people that basically what’s happening in our body, these are like fierce aggravators, and, and if you will, avoid them, sometimes moderation is enough, depending on your personal situation. But avoiding these things tends to reduce whatever you’ve got going on about 80%. This is that, like, low hanging fruit with applying the 80/20 principle. So 80% improvement comes from your diet. And. And so the first thing in the fierce five is dairy. And, you know, there’s a. That’s a fairly long story when I talk about dairy. But the, essentially, it’s the enzymatic structure in dairy. And if you are thinking that you’re going to take some medication of some sort, a symptom suppressor, essentially, so that you can continue consuming dairy now, you’ve just added insult to injury. The dairy is still creating a problem in your body. And so dairy, dairy is literally like the one thing that anybody who goes off of dairy comes back to me a couple of months later and says, like, I really didn’t do anything else. And, like, all these great things happened. Do you really think it could have just been the dairy? I’m like, well, I don’t know. What do you think? What else did you do? Well, really nothing, except for the dairy. And typically I have a month, some protocol to just help then pull out the residual toxicity. But it’s a big aggravator. And then gluten. The gluten is the thing that so many people now are trying to avoid, gluten. But the trick with gluten is that everybody now is turning to these alternate grains. So almond flour is a good example. You might not have a sensitivity to almonds or nuts, but if you’re eating things with a lot of almond flour that has been essentially substituted because you’re trying to eat gluten free, our bodies were never designed to consume that much almond. You know, like the amount of almonds that have to be ground down to create almond flour. I mean, think about that. Like a massive amount of almonds, right? And so a little bit’s not going to hurt you. But what happens with these alternate grains is that we’re asking our body to consume something in a quantity it was never designed or thought it would need to consume or to process. And the people who are these master bakers have figured out that they can make things look and taste similar to the stuff with the gluten by adding a bunch of extra yeast. And so what I tend to find is that then I’ll have people who have a yeast overgrowth, which essentially shows up in my world as a bacterial overgrowth, but I’ll have people that have a yeast overgrowth because now they’ve switched to all these alternate grains. So, so it goes dairy, gluten, yeast, sugar and alcohol. And sugar is another one of those things that people will tell me, well, I don’t eat much sugar, but they’re using sugar substitutes. And it could even be like natural sugar substitutes. But again, they were never meant to be used that way. So what I tend to tell people is that if you want something sweet, use real sugar, full strength, as little as you possibly can. And the artificial ingredients, processed food is the biggest culprit. And then alcohol. Like most women, I love a glass of red wine here and there. It’s not going to be the end of the world. But we definitely don’t want to be consuming alcohol to any sort of extreme. If you’re anywhere near drinking a bottle of wine a night, you are way off the chart. You know, that needs to be dialed way back to maybe a glass. Right. But the other thing I will say is that if you’re still consuming sugary drinks, like margaritas and that sort of thing. You need to wean yourself off of that, because that, you know, all of those things where we combine, combine things, it just makes them exponentially harder for our bodies to manage it.
Yeah. And I can, I can certainly attest to this because I was, I’ve kind of gotten a little off track here this year. And just finally, I think I’ve been three weeks now where definitely no grains. I still have occasionally had cooked some plain popcorn just as a treat. But again, it’s like I’m not having it every single day, you know, once a week or once every two weeks. No refined sugar anymore. I do use a little bit of honey, but mostly I’m getting sweetener from fruit. And the first, after about the first three days of getting back to that type of thing, it was like, oh, I can think again. Isn’t that lovely? Yes. It’s like, oh, yeah. So, so now I’m like, okay, yeah, continue on. You know, the, I’m releasing the extra, extra pounds slowly, but, you know, it’s okay.
That’s the best way to release it, right?
Right.
We hate to have it be so slow that it really doesn’t even show up on the scale for weeks. But that’s the best way to do it. The best way to do it is to not even get on the scale and to just do what you know you’re supposed to do and notice it in your clothes. How are your clothes feeling? And if your clothes are feeling better, if your pants are sliding on easier, if your belly doesn’t seem as puffy, you know, over time, that accumulates, and in the process, you’re developing these new habits and lifestyle mods that are going to be sustainable. Then you’re going to find that six months from now, you can still do this because you figured out how to work it into your life and lifestyle. It wasn’t one of those things where you did it for a month and you had some great results, but. But then over the next six months, all the benefits are reversed.
Yeah, absolutely. Although I will tell you, I did the putting the scale away for a while, and that actually made it worse because it was out of sight, out of mind for me. And so it was like, okay, but.
You know, once a week, my husband is, like, one of those people who has always weighed himself. Like, that was something that he adopted many, many years ago. And so there’s always a scale in the bathroom. But I’m very particular about, because I’m a small person, and honestly, I can fluctuate three pounds in a, you know, a matter of hours, just depending on what’s going on with me. But the. But I. If I’m going to weigh myself, I always weigh myself at the same time. Like, first thing in the morning before I even, like, drink my tea or do anything else, I want to weigh myself so that I have, like, I know I’m comparing apples to apples, essentially. So if I miss that moment, like, if I forget to get on the scale or, you know, something alters my little, you know, routine, then I can go for a period of time and not do it. And then, you know, then when we do notice that our pants are a little tighter, it’s like, now we don’t even want to get on skateboard.
I know. I know. I want to know. Yeah, but sometimes it’s not as bad as we think. And that was. That was me, too. I was kind of, like, dreading it. And I’m like, okay, put the girl, big girl panties on and just. Just own up to it, you know? And then it wasn’t as bad as I thought. I was like, okay, good. Shew. Okay, now. Now I can go from here. And so. Because sometimes I think that is.
Yeah, you know, you know, what needs to change? And so the good news, like, in a perfect world, we would weigh ourselves at least once a week and try to be kind of consistent in that. And then if you see a couple of pounds creep up, then it’s so easy, if you catch it early to just say, okay, I got to do better this week, you know? And I. And so even when you’re. Even when you’re getting to this point where things start to get stuck a little bit when we hit mid-life, and our bodies just isn’t. Our body isn’t quite cooperating the way it used to. You may have to be a little more disciplined than you used to have to be. You might have to eliminate more things than you had to eliminate before, but it does still work.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I think that, as I said, once you do start feeling better, it becomes positive reinforcement for you to continue on this path, because it’s like, oh, well, this is working. So, yeah, let me keep doing it. This time has been flying by, so I want to just ask you. Well, I’m going to ask you three quick questions. So, number one is, what are you curious about right now?
So there’s all these great, like, research studies. I really, I love when the research starts producing information that corroborates what I’ve already known. So, for example, with pain relievers that we talked about here today, we’re now seeing some long-term research studies that are showing that taking something that was thought to be pretty simple and benign, like Tylenol, long term, not only numbs the pain we’re trying to numb, but it also dulls those receptors in our brain and makes us less emotionally intelligent. And so I think most of us would say we would not want to be less emotionally intelligent. Right. And so the pain relievers, those of you listening or watching who are guilty of taking pain relievers really regularly, you need a new strategy.
Absolutely. Wow. I hadn’t heard that before. That’s. Yeah, that’s not good. Yeah, we don’t. We don’t need to be less emotionally intelligent. Thank you. Is there anything else that I should have asked you but didn’t? Any other last point regarding, you know, stress and that.
Well, one of the questions that I get asked a lot is, you know, how does stress turn toxic? And essentially, our bodies are constantly managing this toxicity. These toxic stressors that I have talked a little bit about today in this episode, and, you know, just to mention a few of them, touched on a few of them, but our bodies can handle it. We were designed to do that. We’ve got all kinds of internal filters that help us do that. But when we start seeing signs, the way I refer to it is that our filters have become clogged. And as our filters become clogged, that allows, like, things to back up, toxicity to back up, and then stress escalates to dis-ease, and dis-ease escalates to disease. And so, again, if you want any incentive for reversing course at the first signs, it’s knowing that you’re going in the wrong direction.
Yeah, that’s very good. Yeah. I appreciate that. Well, I know that we’ve no doubt had folks listening to this today who would love to know more. Maybe they even want to get a copy of your book or sign up for your newsletter, perhaps. So what is the best place for people to reach out to you?
Yeah, so you can go to drgala.com d-r-g-a-l-a dot com. If you skim, that’s the homepage. If you skim down the homepage, you can see a link to get the book. At the bottom of the homepage there’s a little form you can fill out to sign up for my newsletter. And if you go to drgala.com forward slash links, that’s a more like mobile friendly page that again, you can just, there’s a quick little button to sign up for the newsletter. And I have a program, a very inexpensive program called the Human Energy System Reboot. That’s a little DIY program that just gives you a little more like dive into my and how I approach things. So
Cool. All right, well, I will have all of that information in the show notes. So if you are listening, just go back in and check that out, especially if you’re listening in a car or something somewhere so you’ll be able to find it there. And I do so appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to be with us today and shared a lot of great information. Really appreciate it.
Thanks again for having me. It was great.
And I also want to thank all of you for watching. And I hope that you have been enjoying this episode. And one way that you can show your affection, let’s say, for live love engage is by voting for us. We have been nominated for a women in podcasting award in the mindset category. So voting is open between now and October 1, 2024. So all you need to do is go to womeninpodcasting.net, forward slash awards. And of course, I’ll have the link to that in the show notes as well. So not to worry. But I would greatly appreciate your vote for that. And of course, if you’re not subscribed already, I hope you will take the time to do that on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube. And yeah, that’s going to do it for me for this time. Until next time we see you, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply and engage authentically.
