In the first few weeks after your beak up- stress hormones are running rampant throughout your system making functioning shall we just say….. A challenge.
There are some really good natural ways to bring your stress levels down but perhaps if you’re like me you need a little bit more support and I know that I certainly did particularly in those first weeks post breakup.
I went on a search to find supplements that would support me, bring my cortisol down and even out my stress levels and in some cases even calm down my emotional pain. So I put together a list of high quality supplements that you can take but I preface this by saying that any supplement that you take should be checked with your doctor first, but I found these to be just a lifesaver for me and I hope that you find one in this list that will be a lifesaver for you too.
Lets Start with the Top Shelf Stuff!
The gold standard supplement is what I’m going to start off with and that is ashwagandha. Now ashwagandha is what we call an adaptogen which is known in herbal medicine.
And there actually is no modern medicine equivalent to an adaptogen. They’re extremely powerful. Now, ashwagandha is widely known for its stress relieving effects and it can lower your blood pressure, it can improve your sleep. It is quite an amazing little pill to take. So it works in the body by influencing the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis. ( Try saying that with a couple of drinks under your belt) And that is central to our stress response. It really helps by signaling to several neurotransmitters that they are operating with dysfunction and helps bring them back to baseline.
How much do we need? Around 600 milligrams a day of the root extract.
As I am at pains to say, not all supplements are created equal, so you need to make sure that you are getting a very pure and high quality 600 milligram a day to see some real benefits to your stress response.
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Lacking B-B-Bounce?
This next one was very literally my lifesaver and to an extent still is and that is a B vitamin. Specifically B12 if you are a woman, stress does leach vitamin B out of your body like nobody’s business and I started taking my daily supplements with a B vitamin soluble tablet. In Australia we call them Berocca, you might have different names for them overseas.
But let me tell you a really funny story. I seemed to be getting better and less crying jags and feeling much more like myself coming out of the back end of that horrible languishing the anguish time. But then all of a sudden I would fall into a heap again and I couldn’t understand it. I’d forgotten to take my B12 for a couple of days and I was a blithering mess by the end of it.
B12 really does help support your nervous system and put back the vitamin B that is being leached out of your system at this stressful time. For me this was an absolute game-changer.
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The Little Aussie Life Saver
Australia has some great things. Koalas, kangaroos, beautiful coastlines and one of the things that was developed in Australia is a little thing called Rescue Remedy. Now I was first introduced to Rescue Remedy when I was actually going through my exams in high school and a teacher put me onto it as a way to calm my anxiety. It’s a tiny little bottle of bark flower essence that are found in natives in Australia. You put a drop simply under your tongue and the flower essences help to calm your anxiety and can possibly bring you out of a fight-or-flight state pretty damn quickly. It’s something that I always have in my bag if I feel like I’m going into a really stressful situation. You can get pastels but the best is the dropper under the tongue and it gets absorbed into the body extremely quickly. It’s relatively low cost and it is a fantastic thing just to have in your bag for those moments that you need it.
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Cant Think Straight?
If you’re feeling a little bit brain fogged out and just a little bit all over the place and you really need to focus for something like employment for example, then a little thing called L-tyrosine is your friend here. It can affect your reasoning, your memory, your attention and your knowledge by decreasing those problematic neurotransmitters that pop up when we’re in a stressful situation or just getting over a stressful situation such as a breakup. It’s a fantastic little thing to have if you need to be on your game and you’re just feeling very very foggy. It will improve your mood generally but also really sharpen your mental capacity.
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Just Need to Calm The F%$k Down?
Magnesium is a handy little mineral that we can take as a supplement that kind of gives a lot of things a bit of a kick in the butt to get back into line. One of which is blood sugar which obviously goes absolutely haywire with the presence of cortisol in our body. Now it is naturally present in a lot of foods but you can take supplements as long as it’s not going to contraindicate with anything else that you’re taking. It’s also going to help you with muscle and nerve function as well as blood pressure regulation. So it’s a handy little one to have in your breakup arsenal if any of these things are playing up for you.
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Where the Hell Is Mr Sandman?! When Sleep is an issue
Now one thing that cortisol can play havoc with as we your sleep. And there is a temptation to go to the doctors and ask for a heavy sleeping pill. Sleeping pills can be problematic in themselves because they can be highly addictive and your body will then rely on them to fall asleep. So during this time something called melatonin may be very helpful. It helps to regulate your body’s circadian rhythm to get your natural sleep cycle back and it is also fantastic for immune function, blood pressure and getting those pesky cortisol levels down by regulating your nervous system.
You want to take melatonin probably about an hour to 30 minutes before you want to go to sleep and drift off into some slumber and get some of that important repairing sleep.
See if you can get to bed before 10 o’clock, that is also really key to getting your body healed.
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When You’re in Absolute Emotional Agony
This next one is possibly one of the standout five hacks that I have learnt while I’ve been going through this journey and I do put a disclaimer on it, handle with care and don’t use it to excess.
What I learnt was that the brain uses the same neural pathways for physical pain as it does for emotional pain. It can’t differentiate between the two. So when I really needed to function and when I had a big day coming up and I was feeling particularly fragile, I found that a paracetamol or an ibuprofen actually helped with my emotional pain and allowed me to function.
Now as I said it’s not something that you can use every day and certainly not for prolonged periods of time but if you are really struggling to get out of the house on a particular morning, one paracetamol or one ibuprofen may actually help to calm your nervous system down enough for your brain to stop registering it as acute pain.
Well there it is folks! A whole list there that you can draw from and some of those were absolute game-changers for me and definitely got me through some of my more challenging days.
Now as I said at the beginning of this blog you should not take any supplements without checking with your doctor first that is super important. The other thing that I’d like to mention is that not all supplements are created equal and certainly there are lots on the market particularly supermarket brands that don’t deliver the right dosage or are an inferior product.
Ive taken the guess work out of finding good quality products and included links to ones ive researched and can attest to their quality and dosage- however if you are visiting your health food shop- ask for advice on the best products for you.
Big Squishy Hugs
Louise