How Mental Health Affects Physical Health

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.

Turquoise background with a photo of ice cream and text overlay about emotional health

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.

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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 (this could come in many forms, read my friend Juli's story about her path to healing with food.)

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.

Different Ways to Dig Deep

To find out what is happening at the core, we often need to look at alternative forms of medicine. While they may seem weird or different, they often give us a huge amount of information.

Muscle testing

Muscle testing is a treatment that uses energy to figure out what's going on with us. It is essentially just communicating with someones nervous system. Since energy knows no bounds, it can be done both in person and remotely.

We are electrical beings, we know through science that there are electrical currents that goes through us. This is all based on quantum physics.

NET- Neuro-Emotional Technique

Neuro-emotional technique is a fast technique that helps bring up any issues in our body that need to be resolved.

Using energy, our body guides us to the root issue. Whether it be a problem with a spouse, ourselves, friends or our kids. We often find it isn't what it seems on the outside, and need to dig deeper.

This isn't a guess, it is a precise way to figure out the trigger that is causing the emotional issue and clearing it out of our system.

One way it is cleared is breathing into it. While this seems simple and you may wonder how this can help, I have experienced this first hand and can assure you that the physical symptoms connected with my cleared emotions go away once the triggers are cleared.

Emotions aren't logical, most things are subconscious. They are buried deep inside, since as we said before, our mind is our protector. So often, when we look for these triggers, we focus on gut reactions. This is what helps release our subconscious.

Getting to the Basics

Often times when we aren't feeling our best, we jump to a big reason. A virus or sickness. We often forget to ask ourselves if we are giving our body the basic things it needs.

Our lifestyle plays a huge roll in how we feel. Sometimes, we neglect out basic needs when we jump into a full speed ahead type of life. The things we most often forget are:

Food- are we eating foods that nourish us?
Sleep- are we getting enough sleep?
Water- are we drinking enough water?
Movement- are we moving our bodies in a way that helps release endorphins, gets us to stretch and strengthens our body?

Working with a naturopathic doctor like Dr. Nicole Huffman, will get you to start with the least invasive support before moving to something more complicated. She always looks at the basics first.

It's important to focus on the whole body and what it needs so that you are moving things through your system and not creating an imbalance.

Food and Emotion

Other than some of us reacting to different types of food, you can also develop emotional reactions to food.

Much like the studies of Pavlov's dogs, as children we can have experiences that we attach to certain foods that affect us as adults. This is called classical conditioning.

As we grow up, we can find that certain emotions we experienced around these foods come through and begin to affect us. Dr. Nicole Krakora helps heal these emotions through her techniques.

So overall we see that emotion and health have a deep interwoven connection we often don't see until we dig deep. If you're looking for support with your overall health, I cannot recommend Dr. Nicole Huffman enough!

Check out her website and also connect with her on Instagram!