Dr. Trisha Pasricha

So a lot of my patients will come in and they'll say, I'm feeling stressed, like I'm having an anxiety attack.

And that's when I feel these horrible knots in my stomach.

What do I do in those moments?

And that's sort of the acute issue.

And what I tell them to do in those moments is

tapping into the vagus nerve.

Because the vagus nerve, when it starts to ramp up, it starts to slow things down.

So that colon that's rapidly emptying and moving and saying, we're having a problem, if you tap into the vagus nerve, it kind of just relaxes a little bit.

Sometimes I think if you're having this like acute moment of crisis, doing something as simple as box breathing, which is like where you take a deep breath in one, two, three, four, and then you hold it one, two, three, four, then you exhale one, two, three, four, and you're drawing a box, then you hold it one, two, three, four.

If you do that three times, that can stimulate the vagus nerve and

yes, you calm down, like your heart rate will slow down, but your gut will actually relax a little bit too.

So I think that's a helpful maneuver.

If I could pick just one thing, it would be to eat fewer ultra processed foods.

And the reason is that ultra processed foods are crowding out our opportunity to eat whole foods.

And we found that

There's certainly a link between mood and ultra-processed foods.

There's a strong connection between irritable bowel syndrome and ultra-processed foods, such that in studies when people cut down those ultra-processed foods, their IBS symptoms get better.

And with it, we know go hand in hand a lot of these mental health issues.

The more you're eating whole foods, the more you're incorporating fruits and vegetables and whole grains and these things into your diet, the better your mood's going to be because that's really strongly supported by the epidemiological studies.

Yes, the perfect summary.