If you battle with seasonal depression, you don’t want to miss this episode. Learn how nutrition and exercise can help elevate your mood during times when you feel low. Many people experience depression during the winter months, not only due to lack of sunlight, it could be due to grieving loss and a time of transition into a new season. The winter months are usually a time we slow down, but in a busy world, we do not know how to slow down. Listen in and learn some new ways to help you during this time. Disclosure: This content is for educational purposes; this is not intended to treat anyone medically or physiologically. You need to speak to your doctor or therapist for guidance. Contact information for Christina Lombardo: Website https://nutritionwellnessaz.com/
Podcast Episode 26 Transcript
Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your well-being, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, nature pathic, doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body. We are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to the Physician Heal Based Self podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Ana Lara. In this episode, we’re going to talk about the impacts of seasonal depression disorder, and I’m having Christina certified holistic counselor, join me again for this conversation. So welcome.
Hello. Thank you for having me.
So, this episode is going to be airing the first week of December, but we know that during the cold months, a lot of people experience depression, and sometimes it’s seasonal for different reasons. Here in Arizona, we get a lot of sunlight. There are people who live in states that don’t get a whole lot of sunlight, but people in Arizona will still experience depression.
And it could be a number of reasons. It could be just the holiday time. It brings a lot of emotional stuff up for people. Sometimes, grieving can affect the time that we should be celebrating. And it could be not just the loss of a loved one; it could be the loss of a job or the loss of the old self, whatever loss is for the individual, it can bring up a lot. But we also are eating a lot of processed foods and holiday foods that are not always the best for us. And so let’s talk a little bit about obviously, the importance of nutrition and exercise during this time. Those are really two big things that I explain to patients like if you’re eating and exercising, you really need to dive into it and be a hundred percent compliant during this time that no one is being compliant with their diet. So let’s go a little bit into that. Is there anything in particular that you work with patients around this topic?
Yeah, so for my clients, one of the things that I’ve noticed with a seasonal effectiveness disorder, I’m not sure if they changed the moniker on that.
They may have. Yeah.
They may have. Things are always shifting. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that for individuals, for me, it’s a year-round thing. So clients in Phoenix often we’ll get it in the summertime because we’re not outside as much. And people will say, well, I’m outside at the pool. Okay, but what are you doing when you’re at the pool? Are you drinking? Are you eating healthy? All these things, we need that vitamin D, which really is one of the reasons that we get depressed is that we’re lacking vitamin D. So clients in other areas of the country will get it in the wintertime because they’re not outside as much and the days are shorter. So it’s really getting outside when we can throughout the year. But then in those months, so for Venetians, it’s typically in the winter, we are outside, we live outside, and I know, at least in the little vacuum that I am in, we are always on mountains. We’re always hiking and camping and doing different things for people that the summer months or actually months that they go outside, really getting outside and getting that vitamin D when you have the opportunity so that we can fill what we’re using and we can fill the storehouses of vitamin D so that when we’re not outside as much during those winter months, it’s not as bad. Or if we do take a supplemental vitamin D, it’s not 50,000 IUs; it’s 2000. It can be, or we can supplement it with foods.
When I test all my patients, especially if they’re new, I test everyone for vitamin D levels. And unfortunately almost everyone is low and sometimes extremely low. And so yeah, if you’re low, if your vitamin D is low, you’re going to feel tired, you’re going to feel depressed are the common signs that we see. Obviously, it impacts your immune system and many other processes, but those are the top two that people will definitely feel. And I’ll tell you, even people who work outside here in Arizona, though it’s sunny, they’re still deficient in vitamin D. There are many reasons why people are deficient in vitamin D if they are getting sun exposure. You have to make sure your arms and your legs your body is being exposed to it for a good amount of time. But then, if we go home and shower, it stops the process of synthesizing based on the fat, the sunlight, the UV lights have to hit the fat in our skin to start the synthesizing of that vitamin D.
Right. And vitamin D, it’s a process that it happens. It just doesn’t come into your body and it’s activated. The digestive system is involved, your liver is involved, and the kidney’s activated. And so there are things that could inhibit the activation of active vitamin D in that. Do you know that fructose corn syrup will reverse an active vitamin D?
I did not know that.
It does. So, if people have diets, they’re consuming a lot of high fructose corn syrups, sodas and sauces.It’s going to reverse it. So you can be in the sun and do all that, but the kidneys will reverse it and put it in an inactive form. So what we eat matters. There’s a lot of inflammation, and these organs are not functioning optimally, so you’re not going to be able to process, activate and make it in the body even through the diet. I have even seen people who have so much inflammation in their gut. There are so many digestive issues that even taking the oral form and testing it a month later, they still don’t get the levels up quick enough with taking high amounts of active vitamin D.
Because I know someone’s going to see this, well, was it D3?
Of course, why would I give anything else? I know it was something else. That’s one of my pet peeves when someone tells me, did you know that this herb is good for that? And I’m like, yeah, thank you. Thank you for telling me what I know.
But yes, I do know that. So yeah, it’s D3 that I give patients, but even then, the people with digestive issues will have a hard time. And usually what I give is a liquid form.
It’s easier to absorb through the oral, the buccal, and then they only ingest the rest and it’ll help. So, what I find is that there are people who might not be able to get their vitamin D levels up because there are other health issues.
Type 2 diabetes will make you more difficult. Kidney disease will make it more difficult for you to sustain vitamin D levels that are at a good amount. And then obesity, people who have obesity will have lower vitamin D levels. And one of the things that our audience should understand and most do by now because it’s been talked about for the last four years everywhere, is that vitamin D is part of the steroid pathway. It’s not like B12 vitamin, where we can take B12 and will P it out. Vitamin D is bound to fat, and so that’s why we can’t have too much vitamin D orally take too much because it’ll stay longer in our body bound to a fat. So vitamin D is very key. And yeah, you’re right. Even in Arizona here, where it’s hot, it’s too hot, people don’t go out, they avoid the sun. So the little bit that we can get from being in the sun, they’re not getting it at all. But even then, I will still find people here in the valley who during winter months, they’re super down depressed. I’ve had a couple of patients that moved from Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, where it’s gloom and doom most of the time.They come here, and still, their brain has not been able to shake that off.
I was born in Seattle. My brother and I would call it People Under the Clouds,
People under the clouds.
So I lived on and off. I lived in the Seattle area mostly from Everett up to Woodby Island for 12 years, I believe it was like 12 years, kind of some other places I lived in between. And then I lived in the Portland, Oregon area for about five years. And when a newspaper article came out in Oregon that said that it had rained consistently for 120 days.
Oh, wow.
I was like, I am done. I called one of my girlfriends. I was like, where are you? She’s like, oh girl. I moved to Phoenix. And I was like, talk to me. Talk to me. And so I came to Phoenix to visit, and I remember my mom and my sister and I were looking for houses, and I was standing on the sidewalk with my arms out and my head up, just taking in the sun and receiving those rays.
Oh my gosh. And I was defrosting, so I didn’t know it at the time. I had Ray Nads, I have Ray Nads, and so in the Pacific Northwest, my fingers and toes were often purple and nothing I did would warm ’em up. And so I’m standing in the sun defrosting, and the gentleman showing us houses was like, what are you doing? He said, you can’t stand in the sun like that. You’re going to dehydrate too fast. And I’m like, what are you talking about? I said, it’s maybe 90 degrees. He goes, it’s 110.
And I was like, what? And so I walked into the shade and I was like, okay, talk to me because I don’t understand dry heat, apparently. So he gave me a breakdown. He said, if you’re going to live here, here’s what you need to do. And even with that, so I definitely would get depressed living in the Pacific Northwest here. I get depressed in the summer. And it took me forever to figure out what was going on with me. And really, it’s not even getting outside in the height of the heat. It’s when the sun is rising, go outside, sit, get some sunlight, 10, 15 minutes. It doesn’t take a whole lot. Don’t have sunglasses on. I can’t see anything when I take these off. But I take my glasses off and I just bask for a minute. When I see the sun setting, I run outside and I am doing it. Last night I’m helping my son with the homework and cooking dinner, and I’m like, let’s go. And he’s like, what? And I’m like, we’re going outside.
We need to be outside. We need to see our retina needs to receive the sunlight, not lights internally, but from outside. It does a lot to our pituitary. Our brain when we receive those rays, it helps to produce melatonin in our body and regulate our circadian rhythm.
I had insomnia for 30 years, so I personally could not live where it rains or it’s cloudy. I just couldn’t; that to me would be a lot
It’s a lot.
Yeah, just put me in a coffin. I couldn’t do it. Even here in Arizona, when it gets cloudy, everyone gives me a hard time like, oh, Anna, I can’t. There are some people whose natural constitution, it’s sunlight or some people can do clouds and rain and all of that. I don’t do clouds every once in a while. But you grew up here, too. Lemme tell you, I grew up here in the valley. We did not have AC units. We had swamp coolers. So here’s another thing too that I think has affected our physiology and our mental health a lot. Our bodies have adapted to the heat being here. So we have swamp coolers, which means it’s still hot and muggy in there. So we would be running outside on the hot pavement. No shoes. We were outdoors. It didn’t matter if it was summer. Do you know that kids don’t do that now? I don’t see kids in the neighborhood outside. And we would spend our time outside in the evenings. When it was summertime, we would spend most of the cooler part of the day. But our bodies adapted to that kind of heat. We had cars that didn’t have AC. We rolled our windows, rolled our windows down. I know you get that, too. We had some hot air blowing on our faces just so we didn’t suffocate in the running car, but our bodies adapted to that. And it was no big deal.
I have a harder time now with coming, being in a room that’s air-conditioned going outside in the heat into my car. That’s air-conditioned all that time that your body has to adapt to this cold room, to hot outside to a cold car and then hot. All of that back and forth. Our thyroid has to work to regulate the body temperature. And people who have thyroid issues notice that when there’s a weather change from cold to hot, well here we have two extremes, right?
It just all of a sudden happens. But when the summer starts, people with thyroid issues will feel tired because their body has to work harder to keep the body’s temperature cool.
And then when it changes to winter, boom, another shift in season where now it’s cold and now your thyroid, the thermostat, it’s working hard to keep your body warm at 98.6 degrees. So it’s not uncommon to see people who have hypothyroidism who have low temperatures. They’re 97 or so. That’s a sign that there’s a thyroid issue. Even if you haven’t been diagnosed with a thyroid issue, if your body temperature is under 98.6, you might have a thyroid issue with the seasonal changes into the cooler months. You’ll see people with thyroid issues, people who are iron deficient, have Iron deficiency anemia and vitamin D deficiencies. You’ll see these people really struggle throughout these months. Of course, people who have rheumatoid arthritis or arthritis in their joints at hands they hate the wintertime in so much pain because of the cooler. Even if it’s 60 degrees here, someone in another state like, oh my God, you guys have it. It’s nothing for someone who lives here. 60 degrees. 50 degrees. It’s a huge change from a hundred in hell.
And then I let people know that, too, and just trying to get them to understand. I’m like, okay, from 80 degrees to 20, is that cold? And they’re like, yes. And I said, exactly. It’s a 60-degree temperature drop. So when we go from 120 degrees to 60, that is a 60-degree temperature drop. It’s huge. But movement is huge.
Big time.
When you are recovering from trauma, when you’re in fawn or freeze, even in fight or flight, the movement that you do will affect your nervous system. It affects our joints. The older I got, I started noticing when I’m in moist climates, like back in the Pacific Northwest, I have arthritis in my hands. I don’t notice it here. It’s a dry climate. I’m constantly moving. When I do notice it, I take a small amount of boron and it completely goes away, which is amazing. I also want to make sure that I’m getting enough vitamins and minerals, eating healthy food, and getting outside when I can. Magnesium is huge. That helps raise vitamin D levels. I was one of those people where I was taking D three and it wasn’t doing anything. So I started getting outside, taking magnesium on top of it, and then my levels finally started to go up. So it’s like this puzzle, as in what we do, it’s helping find these puzzle pieces and saying, Hey, here’s what’s going to work. And okay, we have found everything, but there’s still a missing piece.
And sometimes, you know what? Sometimes it might just be you need to get up and move.
So I shared this before in another episode, but I’ll share it here again because it really ties in genetically; everyone is different. And so there are people who have, there’s a gene called the comp gene, COMT, and this gene, people can pay for it and get tested. And I know I did it several years ago. Cause I was curious, and this gene will tell you if you how your nervous system regulates and many other factors, other health factors, really, I did it for health reasons, but this lets you know how resilient you are to stress and to pain and many other factors. So, I have what’s called the warrior gene. So this gene, when people have that gene, what that means is that, for example, I make more of a particular enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are signals from the brain and it helps. Some of them are excitatory and some are inhibitory. So, they regulate emotions and many other processes in the body. But if my body is making more of this enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters faster, that means I don’t feel so. I’m not going to feel pain. My births were natural pain and I mean no pain medication.
And the doctors were like, that should hurt a lot. Are you sure you don’t want anything? I’m like, Nope. Nope.
I didn’t either.
Even if in the past, when I was in my twenties, I had migraines, never took anything for it. I would just tough it out. Natural things like that that I would do or I would just tough it out. But I do have a high pain tolerance, also. I don’t feel stressed the way someone else might feel stress. If I see a stressful situation, I am running to the scenario, to the scene, instead of running away from it. That’s me genetically. But that’s my personality, too. But the downside of those neurotransmitters being broken down so fast and not feeling is that it does predispose me to feeling depressed. Now, I might not have any social stuff going on, nothing. My diet could be right. I’m doing everything, and then I just feel like not stimulated, just down. And so, over the years, you have to learn and pay attention to yourself. And I know that in the winter months for me, I crank up my workout. I’m going to be hiking more frequently than I would normally do two or three. There have been years that I was hiking four or five times a week, which I woul
d feel guilty about because then I would feel like they were going to think I was being extreme. But then this is what I did. Audience: I sat my family down, and I had to address the shame in that I had to say. I told my husband, I told my mom, I told my girls, Hey, I know it may seem like I’m hiking a lot, but this is my antidepressant. So I’d rather get up in the morning and go hike for 30, 40 minutes, an hour and feel good the rest of the day instead of what? Turning to a substance, turning to food. And once I had that conversation, they’re like, yeah, that’s fine. So I went hiking. Part of my medicine, working out at the gym is my medicine.
Absolutely.
Yeah, it’s good to look good, but I do it to feel good because I don’t want to be on antidepressants. I’ve never done antidepressant drugs. I’ve never done any medications. I’ve done herbal stuff and so forth. But even then, those things had a limitation. So I could have a clean diet, I could have all these herbal stuff, the homeopathic, all of these other practices, but ultimately what I needed was to move my body because when we move our body, those neurotransmitters and hormones, everything changes. You are stimulated. I literally have to cause some pain and discomfort in my body for my brain to feel good. And I bet you that a lot of people who are watching this say, I’ve suffered from depression, get moving, move your body. The hard part about it is starting. I know you don’t want to, there are days I don’t want to, but then I’m like, Hey, I know the moment I get going and I’ve told you this before, I was not going to work out today, but I’m going to do it and then I am so glad I did it. I feel better about doing it. So there’s that part. You cannot move your body.
Plus, if you’re outside in the elements, you’re going to get the sunlight. So you’re getting your vitamin D synthesizing there, you’re getting fresh air, you’re out in nature. There’s nothing technology and other things that are stimulating to you, but just moving and flowing in that state. What do you do to help yourself when you’re feeling like, I don’t even like to call it depressed? I say when I’m feeling down.
Yes. So for myself and even for some of my clients, they’re like, I don’t want to go to a gym. And I’m like, you don’t have to. How about you walk 20 to 30 minutes and just make a goal to do? Start small 20 minutes three times a week. And when that becomes a habit, move it to 30 minutes three times a week. And when that’s a habit, do pushups and you don’t have to go to a gym. We need physical pressure on our muscles, not just to have strong muscles but to have strong bones as well.
Absolutely.
And a lot of people don’t understand that. So working out is not so we look a certain way. I mean it can be absolutely if that’s our goal, but it is so that this curated machine that we’re in can function properly.
Go made the body to move.
We have to move.
We talked about this last week.
Yes.
We had a little conversation and we’re like, how can people not believe in God? When you study the body, the human body, and you understand all the different processes that are happening. This couldn’t have just happened out of a boom, out of a bang.
Yeah. I say, we didn’t crawl our way out of the primordial goo, and this is it. And I think I’ve been slowly inching my way through this book that is a broad sweeping explanation of neuroscience and just being able to move my hand without it being a forefront, conscious thought and how the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems activate slow down. There are things happening in my brain, in my neck just to move my arm. This is phenomenal and how beautifully it works. And that there are things that we can do that inhibit that not moving is one of them. The foods that we eat cause inflammation, and we could be taking supplements that are not right for us.
Absolutely.
And one of the things that I let my clients know, I say if you take a supplement and you take it for a while and it’s working, but then it starts making you sick, that’s your body talking to you. Stop taking it.
Don’t take it. So for myself, one of the things that I do is, especially in the summertime, when I do feel down or there are times when I have an absence of emotion, I’m not happy. I’m not depressed, I just am blah.
Just like a neutral.
Yeah, I’m here. I’m existing. I don’t have to be high or low. I just am. And I had a conversation yesterday with my son actually about the absence of emotion does not equal depression. We can just be and exist. And I think we’re very comfortable in our society thinking that we have to feel intensely.
I agree with that.
Some days just are, some moments just are, there’s no, we really don’t have to be on these high highs or low lows all the time. So I do notice that if I have several days where I just am I’m like, am I moving enough? Not that I have to have a high, high, but I’m like, where am I at mentally? Where am I at emotionally? Yeah. I check in with myself. What am I doing? I go to the gym a lot. There are days when I go to the gym and I just don’t have it today, but I’m going to move for 35 minutes. So I get on a treadmill, I’ll do a rower. The gym that we go to has the circuit. And so it’s just a circuit. You don’t even have to think. You just go from one machine to the next, you get a full body workout and then you can leave. It is really actively moving my body, making sure that I’m not giving in to those cravings.
People say, well, I wanted it, or I deserve it. Or we make excuses for things, and I’m like, yes, I am craving cupcakes and an entire bag of chips. However, if I eat that, how am I going to feel? My soul might feel good now, but tomorrow, I’m not going to feel well.
Your body and your brain.
Yeah, Absolutely.
So, making sure my diet is on point, making sure that the supplements that I’m taking, I’m not going to get them through osmosis just sitting in that cabinet.
Oh yeah, take that.
Right? I’m like, I touch them and I get them.
If you don’t take them, they don’t work. It’s usually what I tell people: have you been taking this? No. Well, then, it’s not going to work.
Yeah. I purchase the supplement thingies that I put all my supplements in to prepare. I do a meal and I make sure that I am taking those supplements regularly. For me, fish oil is huge.
Huge for the brain. Huge. The brain needs that. Omega-3
The brain is mostly made up of nothing but phospholipids, which are fat. So it needs to have healthy fat. So if people are suffering from depression, they need to make sure they’re getting enough omega 3’s in there. Absolutely. I mean, to reduce inflammation, it’s going to help and enhance your mood, your memory, all of that. It’s very important. The nutrition part of it is just key. Getting the healthy fats, getting enough protein, reducing the sugars, things that cause that inflammation.
Also, focus on foods that are high in tryptophan. So I’m allergic to dairy, so that takes out a number of things. But there is: poultry is fantastic, oatmeal is fantastic. Eggs, if you can eat them, focusing on foods that are high in tryptophan, which is a precursor to serotonin, really helps to just give our body a little bit of an edge up. We can take tryptophan, we can take 5-HTP, we can do things to supplement, but if we’re focusing on these foods, just eat the food.
It’s just better. Other things that you’re getting from the egg are omega, protein, selenium, choline, and cholesterol.
Yeah. You’re getting all these other things that it’s almost more cost-effective to eat. The food literally is what I tell people. I do these neurotransmitter tests in my office. It’s a urine collection that the patient does at home, and it looks at all these neurotransmitters. You do the salivary testing as well. But what’s very interesting about these tests is it’s always hand in hand with the person, how they feel and what they’re experiencing mentally or physically. And so a lot of these supplements, you can get over the counter and people just read online and they think, oh, I should take this to help me for that. And I oftentimes find like, oh, you’re taking GABA. Your GABA is way too high. Let’s stop taking that. And even without the supplement, their GABA is too high. So now we need to do things to help bring it down naturally through diet and lifestyle changes. But neurotransmitter testing is something, is one of those tests that people don’t know about, and it is an option. And yeah, your medical doctor’s not going to tell you about it. They don’t do it. Even urologists won’t do it. This kind of testing. And no, your insurance company won’t cover it either, but $200, $250 for this test can be so critical for some people who can let me know.
I was just wondering how much it costs.
That is for me. It’s $250, guys. I mean, people spend that eating out on a night out, literally. And this is telling you information that what your body is doing. People who tell me, I have A-D-H-D-A-D-D or these neurological conditions, I’m like, okay, well let’s test because if that’s what you have, the neurotransmitters are going to show this one’s too excited to worry or inhibitory, and so it’ll give me real information. And then there’s the guidance of this is what you do, nutrition. This is what you do with physical activity or herbs in medicine, natural herbs or supplements of what we need to do or avoid to regulate that. And it’s a game changer. You don’t have to guess to know what to take.
I want to say thank you. I’m not going to let this moment go. You said some things that really spoke to me and I just want to say thank you because even as a doctor, sometimes we know too much.
And we get caught up in all the information and all the things that we know, all the tricks and tools that we have at our disposal. But I want to address the importance of that. You’re right. Our society either we somehow get in our minds that we either need to be up or down. And then when you’re in this neutral state of I am, there’s so much peace there that it feels off. It feels off. Because when you’re around other people, they don’t have that. And I’ve been feeling like that for a long time since my dad passed away. So several months here. And I have moments where I just feel so neutral. I am not sad, I’m not angry, I’m not irrit. I just am.
There’s no better word than to say, I just am here right now and I’m good. And people don’t get it. It’s like the outside world wants to see me falling apart or crying or dramatic, or I just am. I’m in peace. Isn’t that the ultimate goal?
That’s the goal.
But the world for myself, it’s our goal. Anyone wants that. But when you’re there and you’re consistently in this space of I am, I am okay. I am blessed, I am peace. I am love. I am safe. I am safe. That’s I am healthy. Yes, yes. I just am. I just am. And it’s okay. And it’s more than okay.
Yeah, that’s the goal.
It’s good. So, thank you for sharing that. That is one of the things that I struggled with. I started taking a supplement for A DHD because it started the older I got and perimenopause. At one point, I found myself, I was literally so overwhelmed that I was walking in circles in my kitchen and my husband stopped me. He grabs me and he’s like, what are you doing? And I started crying. I go, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing. Everything has to be done right now. And so him and I together researched supplements for A DHD. I went through a couple until I found this one and I could feel my brain shifting. And for months, I kept talking to my girlfriend saying, I think I’m depressed. I really think I’m depressed. And then I got to the space where I’m like, I’m not. My brain is so calm and so at ease I can finally prioritize things. I can make a list and stick to it. It’s amazing. I can do one thing at a time and complete the task. I this a lot, right?
I hear this a lot from patients because you know why? Because what happens is your norm was revved up all the time. So when you’re normal, you don’t know. It’s a new norm for you. I see this with children that I work with have a DHD or have other neurological conditions when they’re regulated. I do a lot of cranial sacral hands-on therapy. When they’re calm, they’ll say, I’m tired. And I’m like, no, honey. This is what it feels like to be calm. And so they’re like, oh. So it’s interesting. It takes time for the brain to adapt to this new normal. Your normal was not what you were before. That’s amazing. Before we wrap up, you shared a story with me and I want you to share it with our audience. You’re talking about the hummingbird hawk moth. Tell us quickly about that.
So I absolutely love this story. So we had a garden in our backyard and we noticed that one of our tomato plants was completely getting decimated. And so I’m looking and looking, and I finally find this hornworm, and it might be a caterpillar, but it’s called a hornworm. I haven’t looked too hard into it, but it’s green, and it will eat everything in your garden. Any gardener will say, give it to the chickens, throw it away, kill it. It doesn’t matter. These things are horrible. They will decimate your garden. They will completely destroy everything.
One day I’m walking outside, it’s nighttime, and I hear this noise across the way of my yard, and my mother-in-law lives with us, and she has flowers all over the place, which is great. She can actually grow things, whereas I can’t. So I walk over to where the Holly Hawks are and they’re six feet tall, and I’m looking, and I see this thing flying around and my brain is struggling to grasp what I’m even looking at. And I’m like, is it a hummingbird? Is it a moth? What is this thing? So I film it just so I can try to figure out what I’m looking at. And I run in and get my husband. I drag him outside and he’s like, what is this thing? Lo and behold, it is a moth that flaps its wings as fast as a hummingbird and pollinates flowers at night, like a hummingbird.
It looks like a hummingbird, but it’s a moth and it’s a hummingbird hawk moth. And I’m like, where do these things come from? Lo and behold, they come from the hornworm. And I was sharing this story again with my sister-in-law who has these six-foot-tall weeds all over her five acres, and they were covered in hornworms. And I was like, look, don’t kill these things. I said, one, they’re going to eat your weeds. They’re gardening for free. But even when we look at something in nature that is causing destruction, especially my goodness with hurricanes and stuff like that, but often in respect to people, we look at people in their journey and we say, look at all the destruction that they’re causing. They’re a horrible person. How could they be like this? We look at these stories of people in the Bible and they wreak havoc all over the place, but we uplift them when they have conquered.
But we don’t do that today. We look at minuscule aspects. We look at the hornworm. I’m eating the tomato plant and say, you’re ruining my life. I don’t want you here. Or look at all the destruction that this person is causing. But literally, that destruction is the very growth that they need. That’s the food that they need to encourage them to morph into something more beautiful. So I really sat in processes where I realized that my journey and I laid waste to certain friendships and horrible habits with myself. All of that brought me to where I am today, and I’m in the midst of my journey.
It’s not even done yet, but I was like, yes, I have completely, by the grace of God, transformed into a new being. Whereas before, everything I was was destructive to myself and those around me. But God used that to bring me to the place that I am today, where my goal now is to help people. Mostly, I can help people around the world and within the United States, but really focused on Maricopa County. I really would like to help people in Maricopa County with trauma and substance use recovery. I started teaching teenagers practices, nutrition, and wellness practices to help them when they are catapulted into adulthood at the age of 18. And a lot of resources are cut off at that point and helping them so they don’t struggle as I did.
Amen. Beautiful story. It is just such a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing that. How can our audience, if they’re interested in reaching out and working with you, what’s the best way that they can do so?
Yeah, so on my website, https://nutritionwellnessaz.com/ has all my contact information. I’m on a number of different social media platforms at Christina Nutrition and Wellness. You can find me and email me there or just absolutely get in touch with me through my website.
Okay. Thank you, Christina, for joining me in this episode and sharing that beautiful story. We’ll make sure to link Christina’s information on this episode in the previous one as well, so that way if you’re interested in reaching out, she can work with you and customize a nutrition plan that works best for you. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode on nutrition and exercise and the importance on mental health during these seasonal changes that we go through. Thank you for joining us. I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation, and until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message, and reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.