Previously, you've likely been taught that good nutrition is about getting the right vitamins and minerals. It's been about having enough protein, and the right amount of fats and carbs. Certain foods are bad for you, while others are clearly the "good guys." And all this is certainly true, yet is woefully inadequate in describing our true and total nutritional reality. Assessing the nutritive value of a meal by the amount of vitamins and minerals it contains is like judging a great work of art by analyzing the pigments in the paint.

If you'd like to know if something is truly nutritional for your body, ask yourself, "Is this nourishing for my soul? Am I receiving my food with pleasure? Am I relaxed and receptive and taking time for my meal? Am I feeding my body quality foods - those that are grown with care, consciousness, and with respect for the Earth and it's creatures."
The inescapable reality is that we are creatures of mind, body, heart, and soul, and all these contribute to our nutritional status with equal power. It's no longer sufficient to focus exclusively on finding "the perfect diet," the cure-all miracle supplement, or the foods with the ideal nutritional profile. It's time to factor in who we are as eaters and what we bring to the table. And perhaps the ideal place to see how the mind powerfully influences nutritional metabolism under stress.

Can you recall what happens when you eat during a state of anxiety or stress? Most people report such symptoms as heartburn, cramping, gas, digestive pains, belching and intense hunger. During stress the body automatically shifts into the classic fight-or-flight response. This feature of the central nervous system evolved over millions of years into a brilliant safety mechanism that supports us during life-threatening events - hostile attackers, natural disasters, and anything we must quickly evade or forcibly overcome.

In the moment that your stress response is activated, your heart rate jumps up, your blood pressure increases, your respiration quickens, the hormones that help provide immediate energy (such as cortisol) are released into your circulatory system, your blood flow is rerouted away from your midsection and toward your head for quick thinking and to your arms and legs for the power necessary for fighting or fleeing. Most importantly, your digestive system shuts down. It makes perfect sense that when you are fending off an angry gorilla, you don't need to waste energy digesting your Froot Loops. All your body's metabolic functions must be geared directly for survival.

So picture yourself anxiously rushing from your apartment to the office while munching on a muffin, or grabbing a fast lunch while you're overloaded with work and thinking about everything but food, or eating a meal when you're upset because the universe is being uncooperative about conforming to your humble demands. During these moments, your body hasn't a clue that what you're experiencing is not life-threatening because it is genetically programmed to initiate the fight-or-flight response the instant your brain perceives stress. This means that, depending on the intensity of the stress you are experiencing, each of the physiological changes just listed that characterize the fight-or-flight response is activated, including some degree of digestive shutdown. So if you've ever eaten in an anxious state and had the feeling afterwards that food is just sitting in your stomach, that's exactly what it is doing. It's waiting between several minutes and several hours for your body to kick back in to normal, digestive output.

The key to understanding the profound link between nutritional metabolism and stress is the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Two subdivisions of the ANS help it accomplish its dual task of stimulating digestion or inhibiting it - the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches. The sympathetic branch activates the stress response and suppresses digestive activity. The parasympathetic branch relaxes the body and activates digestion. In other words, the same part of the brain that turns on stress turns off digestion. Conversely, the same part of the brain that turns on the relaxation response turns on full, healthy digestive power. This is perhaps the most profoundly important yet overlooked nutritional law etched into our DNA.

That's because we can eat the healthiest meal in the solar system, but if it's eaten during an anxious state, its nutritional value is dramatically diminished. Our mood has affected our food. Some of the more eye opening results of eating under stress or in an anxious rush is increased excretion of minerals, especially calcium, increased blood cholesterol, and elevated cortisol and insulin levels, which translates into a slower calorie-burning metabolism. Stress also leads to decreased levels of growth hormone, thyroid hormone, sex hormones, gastrointestinal reflux, gut flora die-off and impaired immunity. Eating healthy food is only half of the story of good nutrition. Being in the ideal state to digest and assimilate that food is the other half. This means taking time to create a culture around eating that includes joy, warmth, conversation, prayer and love.

So, if you care about nourishing yourself, relax. Literally. Take five to ten long, slow, deep breaths before you eat. In less than a minute, you can go from a state of no digestive force to full digestive and calorie burning power. And consider that your new paradigm of eating now includes some newly rediscovered "miracle" nutrients: vitamin O - oxygen, vitamin R - relaxation, vitamin P - pleasure, and vitamin S - slow. You probably won't find these listed on the side panel of your cereal box, but don't let their absence fool you. Nutrition is truly a juicy affair between body, mind, heart and soul.


(C) 2005, Marc David