Jackie Sheppard discusses Stress, Sugar, and Santa

This is Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad to have you with us. 800-688-9522, and we're all about strengthening the family caregiver. We look at fiscally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, professionally, every way we can to help that caregiver stay strong. And we're going into a time of year where it's incredibly stressful for caregivers. The holidays are very stressful. I've told you over and over.

My favorite holiday is Arbor Day. You plant a tree. You water it. Say a prayer. You walk away.

Leave it to God. You know what my favorite holiday is? You should know this. Halloween. April Fool's Day. But the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and Hanukkah and New Year's and everything, this pretty much is going to be rough all the way through until about after President's Day.

I usually say about Epiphany is when... And I usually give up my New Year's resolutions for Lent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't quit your jig. But it's a stressful time for us. And so I've got a very good friend of mine. She's been on the show before, and I've just come to really rely on her insights and advice to share with us ways that we can push back against this.

The stress that we live as caregivers weaken us already. So Jackie Shepherd. Jackie, you with us? I'm here, Peter. Jackie's calling in from Kansas City, and she is the author of Silent Takeover.

How the body hijacks the body. Mind. And Jackie, you have been... You've spent a lifetime studying this and watching this and observing this in your own life. You've also served as a... You were principal of a school. Or did you... Yeah, you were principal of a school, weren't you? Well, worse than that, Peter. I was founder and director.

Oh, even worse. And so you watched the way students, the way their eating habits and everything else affected their ability to learn and so forth. And I thought, wow, there's just... The stress that happens with us as caregivers has got to affect us and weaken our ability to do a lot of things. So talk about that a little bit. Having to take care of someone you love, but you're also trying to take care of yourself so that you can take care of that person.

And you're absolutely right. As we move into the holiday season, it just gets worse. From about Thanksgiving through New Year's is, for most people, the most stressful time of the year. I'm going to change the name of that song, by the way. It's the most stressful time of the year.

I mean, it is. Gracie and I are going to do something different. We'll talk about that another day. This Christmas, we're doing something for ourselves different to avoid some of that because we try to cram surgeries into it. It's colder.

The traffic, everything about it is just nerve grating. And so you've spent so much time documenting all these things, what it does. And then you talk about the way we approach food, the way we approach life, everything else. Delve into that. Let's go deep into those waters. Okay.

Well, let's talk just a minute before I go, you know, Peter, you know me. Most of the teachings I do is on the body. Let me talk just a minute about the emotional stress that begins to put such a toll on our bodies that it affects everyone around us. And I think one of the reasons that holiday stress is so hard on us is because as we approach them, a lot of times it's with expectations. We can't meet everyone's expectations.

And more than anything, we usually can't meet our own. Also, there are regrets, memories of past holidays, lost family members, good memories, yes, but also some pretty bad memories adding to that financial pressure. And then how does this affect us? Well, most of us, as we move into the holiday season, we have times of great festivities which involves overeating. And that overeating a lot of times involves sugar. So I'm going to take a minute to talk about that.

And then I want to talk about some things that might help us. The reason that sugar is so bad for us, delicious, yes, I confess, if I could, I'd eat it. The reason it's so bad for us is it actually makes our white blood cells, now there are good guys, our soldiers in our body, the white blood cells are supposed to be out there killing germs and taking care of us. Eating sugar, for example, a liter of just any soda will make our blood cells 40% less effective at killing germs. It also suppresses the immune system for five hours.

Now that's a pretty long time. So you eat a piece of something really yummy. Let's say it's a double chocolate cake. No, let's don't say that. Let's don't say that. Let's just, let's don't say that.

Let's say it's something else. And your immune system is suppressed for five hours. And how it does this, Peter, is it actually, that sugar blocks the receptors that vitamin C should be going in. And what does vitamin C do for us? Its job is to destroy bacteria and viruses. It prevents scurvy, I know that. We don't want any scurvy up here, John. That's why.

And you have to watch out for that, you know. The more sugar that we eat, the less vitamin C we can utilize in our body. And Peter, one more thing on that note, and that includes fruit juice. And so many times people start their day with a big old glass, eight ounces of orange juice, delicious, true, maybe it is organic. Maybe it's from good old Florida citrus.

Maybe they should have been working more in the citrus these last few months. But a third of orange juice, just a third of a cup of orange juice, depresses the immune system. So eat those oranges and eat those grapefruits instead of drinking the juice. So Peter, the emotional stress just contributes to all of our nutritional decisions. And in order to make good decisions, we have to recognize that we are body, soul, and spirit. And we also have to recognize that we probably can't do it now with just diet and exercise, especially caregivers.

I cannot imagine how they can eat proper diets and get the exercise they need to be healthy. So they're going to have to add other things for the health they need. That's one of the things you and I have talked about for a while. You put me on something that I've been doing for some time. I try to get away from a lot of prescription things. I've cut those out. I've been watching all the things that I eat, and you've helped me do this a lot for about a year now.

A little over a year, I guess. And I have found some pretty good success with this. But what is it doing for me? I still don't quite know all the science on this thing. What is it doing for me? What am I accomplishing with this? Am I rebuilding something or am I supplementing something?

Or both? You're doing all of the above because it's like flipping a switch. Most of us know what dimmer switches are in a house. We also know what the fuse box is. So if you flip the fuse box, of course you're no longer alive. But that dimmer switch seems to get dimmer and dimmer as we age and as our bodies decline.

So the beautiful thing is that there are certain herbs and plants that at certain proportions, certain formulas, can turn that dimmer switch back to bright light. So the one that, Peter, that I recommended to you and that I recommend to everyone actually, well, I would say almost everyone, is what we call an NRF2 cell activator. Very quickly, not a long science lesson here, cells communicate with cells. Damaged DNA signals I'm damaged. And when it signals that, the other cells are supposed to respond with what the damaged DNA needs to be repaired. It's also designed to regulate survival genes so that they'll get in there and do their job. But the signaling pathway is this NRF2 activation.

It's cell to cell, and if that's not strong enough in your body, the good guys are not called to go get rid of the bad guys. So, yes, the supplement that I recommended to you upregulates some extremely important things in your body. Probably number one, it upregulates glutathione. Now, as we're moving into the cold season, clinical trials are showing that when you can upregulate glutathione, not necessarily take it, but make your body make more, the stats are 25% of the people who were, well, there was a clinical trial where people were actually injected with the flu virus. Those who had been able to upregulate the glutathione, only 25% of them got the flu. And the group that did not have the glutathione upregulation, 79% got it. There's actually another clinical trial that says if you can upregulate this little signaling pathway, getting that little trumpet blown, in essence, the flu virus cannot live.

Doesn't mean you can't catch it, but it means it can't live. Well, this is, and so the stress is damaging us. The, you know, the environments with it, and then our diet, all these things are just compounding to work against us. And in the past, when we've gone to any type of nutraceuticals or things like that, I've always looked at people that didn't shampoo their hair and wore Birkenstocks a lot that were into that. And now that's becoming a little bit more- Look, just tag me in the post next time, all right?

Just tag. But now that's becoming a little bit more mainstream in our society. We realize, you know what, all these chemicals we've been putting in our bodies that pharmaceutical companies have been pumping at us and everything else are not really doing the work for us that we think they are, that we hope they are, that we're paying for them to do. And we end up creating more and more problems with this, and so I think there's an educated population of the society now that's saying, you know what, we're going to have to turn back just a little bit more natural things to start building up our bodies. This is what you've done with me.

And I'm not going to say that I'm smarter or anything else because I have too many people lined up that would disagree. But I have seen some real improvement in my life. And these, what are they, NRF, what do you call those, Nerf Blockers or something? Well, the NRF2 is such a long word you don't even want to hear it. But the letters are just, the scientific term is shortened, and it's just a signaling pathway. But Oxford University says that this little pathway is the key to health and longevity. So you're feeling better because your cells are getting more and more production of enzymes back to the level of your youth.

We decline 10% every decade with the good guys. That's why aging actually occurs, as well as chronic health. So if you can, in essence, by giving your body one little pill a day, cause your body to be able to make more of the things that you need to stay healthy physically and mentally and emotionally, then you're in a better position to help other people as well as yourself. Well, this is what I have done. I don't like to talk about anything that I don't do myself. I use myself as a guinea pig.

And I've actually used Gracie on this one as a guinea pig, which is, that's even higher on the list. And, you know, the results speak. She's cutting a new record, she's going to, she just got back from Africa, she's going on television, she does a lot of things. She's being more and more active than she's been in the last decade.

And the surgeries haven't necessarily stopped with her, or the challenges because her body is so broken, but that's architecturally. Internally and mentally, what it's done for both of us. I'd like to say, John, I've improved mentally. Can I say that, John?

I have many, many lengthy logs and statistics on this. So, you know, but I think the overall well-being of this, and it's not, there's no kind of magic bullet, but I think there is a point where we're shoring up things for me as a caregiver with the stress that's on me, for Gracie with the stress that's on her with chronic pain. We've seen that with this particular path that you've taken us on, Jackie.

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That's 855-25-SHARE. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? I'm Gracie Rosenberger, and in 1983, I experienced a horrific car accident leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me.

But over time, my questions changed, and I discovered courage to trust God. That understanding, along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs, led me to establish Standing With Hope. For more than a dozen years, we've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies.

And with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standingwithhope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up.

That's standingwithhope.com. I'm Gracie, and I am standing with hope. Welcome back to the show for Caregivers About Caregivers hosted by a caregiver. I am Peter Rosenberger bringing you three decades of experience to help you stay strong and healthy as you take care of someone who is not part of that is learning what works for you, how to help shore that up. We just had a great conversation with Jackie Shepherd, author of Silent Takeover, How the Body Hijacks the Mind. Jackie, I had to cut you off real quick because we were going to a break. Tell me this. Best way to get in touch with you is through this email, gettingstrongnowatoutlook.com. Is that correct?

That's right. Okay. Getting strong now. I'm going to post this, by the way, on our podcast. It's a free podcast we have. We'll put it out there on our social media pages as well, on Twitter and our Facebook pages, hopeforthecaregiver.com.

Just one more thing. We're just putting it out there for fellow caregivers to take advantage of. All I can tell you is this is what I'm doing.

I've been a caregiver now for 30-something years through a pretty significant medical journey. This is what I'm doing. This is the results I'm getting.

I'm seeing better numbers for blood work, all that kind of stuff. I'm pushing myself hard to be able to better equip myself for the journey. Gracie's doing this for herself as well. With all of her stuff that's going on, just go take a look at standingwithhope.com and see the pictures of Gracie.

Judge for yourself. If it works for Gracie, it's going to be helpful to just about anybody. Jackie, I want you to know how much I appreciate you coming on the show. Sharon, we're going to have you back, okay?

I'd love to. Thank you so much, Peter. Thanks for giving hope to so many people. Well, thank you.

The book is called Silent Takeover, How the Body Hijacks the Mind. We've got to be smart against this. With the stress that we have and the things that we have in our lives, we've got to play smart as caregivers.

Hey, it's been a great show. There's more that you can see out at standingwithhope.com. Get involved with what we're doing. It's for the wounded and those who care for them. We started a prosthetic limb outreach and now we've expanded that to the family caregiver.

And you can be a part of what's going on there. With our prosthetic limb recycling, we're getting ready to ship over some more supplies to West Africa. And they're waiting on them. We're going to ship them hopefully this week or the first of next.

We'll get them in the air. And we recycle the parts for prosthetic limbs through a partnership we have with CoreCivic over in Nashville. And inmates at a prison that they run disassemble used prosthetic limbs so that we can take the parts like the knees, the feet, the pylon, the adapters, the connectors, sometimes even the screws. And we'll ship all that over there. And then on site in Ghana, working with Ghana Health Service, workers over there will then take those materials and we'll fabricate a brand new leg for those patients. And use those recycled materials to help get them walking and leaping and praising God. It is an extraordinary ministry envisioned by my wife laying in a hospital bed following the amputation of her remaining leg.

She'd already lost her first one four years prior. And here she is as a double amputee. And she said, I'm going to put legs on my fellow amputees and we're going to tell them about Jesus. And that's what we do. So you can be a part of helping that at standingwithhope.com. We'll put this show out there.

You can subscribe to the podcast out there. My new book, Seven Caregiver Landmines, it's available in stores this week and all the dot coms. And John, guess what?

What's that, buddy? I'll be with Mike Huckabee on Tuesday evening. We'll be taping the show and it'll be broadcast next weekend. OK.

So by this time next week and then last week I was on with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business News. That's right. You didn't see that, did you? No, I didn't. You should have. They told me they're going to give me five minutes.

They gave me two. Well. And then Steve Forbes challenged me. Hey. You got to go see it because see how I did with a former presidential candidate. I sparred, John. And but I think I did OK. Well, you both have great hair.

Yes, we do. And and I didn't embarrass her or anything. Well, I think that that threshold is mighty low. I was going to say. All right.

Listen, we're out of time. Hope for the caregiver is more than just a show name. It is a conviction that you, me, we can all live as caregivers, a calmer, healthier and even more joyful life.

Hope for the caregiver. That is our that is our mission here. And we thank you for joining us. There's so much more at standingwithhope.com.

Would you just take advantage of it? Subscribe to the podcast. It's free. Get our newsletter. We send out all wonderful kinds of things out there. Gracie will write articles so far. Look at the blog.

There's music, there's books. We put it there. Would you take advantage of it and get involved in what we're doing? Be a part of this.

Standingwithhope.com. We'll see you next week. We've got lots to go next week as well. Today's a great day to start being healthy.

Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. This is Peter Rosenberg. We'll see you next week.