Real Food. Real Conversations.

Real Food. Real Conversations.


How Mental Health Affects Physical Health

July 29, 2020

Our mental health affects physical health. Looking at the big picture of how our body reacts to things can be an integral part of our health and wellness.

My life changed for the better when I started opening my mind to other ways of healing. Dr. Nicole Huffman was a huge part of my plan for overall health and wellness.

Dr. Nicole Huffman- Naturopathic Medicine

Dr. Nicole Huffman has been an integral part of my recent healing. She practices functional and naturopathic medicine both in person in Colorado where she lives and also is able to treat some patients remotely.

She uses a combo of western and eastern medicine to treat her patients. She helps people with a variety of issues and believes the body is like an onion, having many layers.

She likes to let the body guide her in what it wants to heal first. As each layer is dealt with, new layers emerge. She says that most people's imbalances are 3 things: infectious burden (like chronic infections), toxic burden or emotional stress.

Her treatments have helped many people achieve their health goals. You can find her on her website and also connect with her on Instagram!

The Relationship Between Physical and Emotional Health

Every time you wake up feeling yuck, doesn't mean you have an actual cold. Sometimes, it's actually emotion playing a roll.

Ever since I started working with Dr. Nicole Huffman, I have had moments when I feel like a cold is coming on. Particularly issues with my right lung. However after a session with her tackling the underlying emotions, it's amazing how I clear up.

Sometimes, things that happen to us now are actually linked to things that happened when we were younger. These current events are triggers to these earlier events.

Once we uncover those root causes and clear them out, we find that these things don't bother us quite as much.

Our mind is a protector

According to Dr. Nicole Huffman, recent research is showing that up until age 8, we don't know how to process things, so experiences are often repressed and emotions can get stuck.

Our mind is there to protect us, so we may go through things at a young age and never deal with them until one day we find that we are having issues and don't know why.

It could be that we aren't ready to deal, and one day our body is finally ready to let go so this creates space for healing.

Root Causes of Symptoms

When we have a physical symptom and jump to medicine or a pill, most of the time it is just covering up the root cause of that issue.

The body can have an innate way of healing if given the right tools and the emotional piece is a huge part that can often be overlooked.

We've all felt the anxiety stomach pains or the rush of a near accident in our heart. But did you know that all emotions have a place in our body?

In Chinese medicine different emotions are paired with different body parts, so you store things in different places based on the emotions that come up. These are all studied phenomena.

Stress creates proteins and these proteins are stored in the body based on this Chinese science. So for instance the lungs are often associated with grief.

You can use different modalities to help release these store proteins. That is what Dr. Nicole Huffman does and how she helps people heal from emotional imbalance.