Join Herbalist and Nutritionist Natalia Kerkham to learn how stress affects the body and how to eat – and drink- to overcome it.
When: Sunday 20th January 2019, 10.30am – 12.30pm
Venue: Cheshire Natural Health, Tarporley Road, Stretton, Warrington WA4 4ND
Cost: £25- includes all support materials
Some great tips from Natalia to give you a taste of what you will learn on this fascinating workshop:
Get a good night’s sleep
A bedtime drink to get you off to sleep
- chamomile or another relaxing herbal tea
- hot milk, nutmeg and honey: to a mugful of hot milk, add 1/8 to 1/4 tsp of ground nutmeg and honey to taste
A bedtime snack to help you sleep the night through
- a handful of nuts (also for B vitamins and magnesium)
- a couple of oatcakes with a little cheese or some hummus
- a small bowl of porridge or muesli
- a small portion of plain yoghurt with some berries and a drizzle of honey
Nothing too substantial, as indigestion will not improve your sleep quality! And nothing too sugary, as this may make your blood sugar spike and then crash, which will disturb your sleep.
Try liquorice tea for a non-caffeine boost if you’re tired in the morning and can’t get going.
Top up your stress nutrients
- B vitamins for energy from oats, nuts and seeds, red meat and salmon for B vitamins
- Vitamin C for a healthy immune system from fruit and veg
- Magnesium for relaxation from nuts, seeds and green veg
Eat to switch off stress
How you eat is as important as what you eat. Concentrating on your food and really enjoying it helps to switch stress – ‘fight or flight’ – off by switching digestion on. Any of these measures will help to reduce your stress levels – the more you can manage the better!
- Wait till you’re properly hungry to eat – if your stomach is rumbling it’s ready for food and will digest it properly
- Even if it’s just a Tesco sandwich, don’t eat it straight out of the pack. Put it on a plate and take your time over it.
- Move away from what you were doing to eat somewhere else, even if it’s just for 10 minutes.
- Eat sitting at a table. An upright posture aids digestion.
- Chew each mouthful to a mush. Chewing sends out the signals to the rest of the body that the food is on its way down. That turns up ‘rest and digest’ mode and turns down ‘fight or flight’, so reducing your stress levels. It also primes the digestion so that it’s ready to deal with the food when it arrives.
And most of all- enjoy it !
About Natalia
Natalia Kerkham is a medical herbalist and registered nutritional therapist based at Cheshire Natural Health in South Warrington.
She qualified as medical herbalist in 2003, with a first class degree in herbal medicine from the University of Central Lancashire, and more recently gained her MSc in Nutritional Therapy from the University of Westminster in 2015. Natalia is a member of the College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy (CPP) and the British Association for Applied Nutrition and Nutritional Therapy (BANT).
Natalia has a special interest in migraine. Her interest was originally personal – she has migraine herself, as do both her children. She completed her Masters degree in Nutritional Therapy with a research project on diet and migraine, has contributed articles on nutrition to Challenging Migraine, the newsletter of the charity Migraine Action, and gives talks to groups of both patients and health professionals.
