The KB Wellness Blog

If you are not going to the bathroom between one and three times a day every single day, you are constipated.

And if your stool is not easy to pass and passes in one soft piece, you are constipated. And if you’re constipated...you’re not going to be able to eliminate the waste products you need to eliminate to stay healthy.  

This failure to properly eliminate waste products can result in estrogen dominance, colon cancer, high toxic body burden, and more. So fixing your constipation is an important first step towards improving your health! 

7 Tips to Help You Relieve Constipation Naturally  

#1 Magnesium

Magnesium is an enzymatic cofactor to over 300 reactions in the body and has been shown to help relieve anxiety, relax your muscles, help you poop, and so much more! The main mechanism of action for magnesium’s constipation-relieving properties is its osmotic effect. What that means is that it draws water into the stool, which allows it...

To say 2020 has been rough is an understatement, so let’s get cheery for a min, k? 

I love to give gifts and I bet you do too. 

But here’s the deal….. 

Choosing Purposeful Holiday Gifts

I LOVE gifting my friends and family with presents that will make their lives BETTER and enrich them in some way. I don’t love the idea of buying something random...just because you saw it while you were wandering through the mall. I like my gifts to feel PURPOSEFUL! 

 One year some family members were doing Paleo for the first time, so I got them a subscription box to Paleo foods that delivered cool new Paleo eats every single month. 

Another year I got everyone I love Beauty Counter makeup and skincare (yup, hubby included - they have a men’s line!) so they could STOP slathering toxic chemicals all over themselves every day and improve their health and wellness. Then there are teachers' gifts. I usually do fancy essential oil...

 

Grounding, also known as earthing, is essentially allowing your body to come into contact with the earth, which I know sounds super woo hoo, but there are actually tons of peer-reviewed articles on the benefits of earthing, or grounding.

There’s even a great documentary called “The Earthing Movie” that goes into much more detail which you can find here: The Earthing Movie

 

What are the benefits of grounding?

Our cells hold a charge. That’s why we can shock people; we’re basically a giant walking battery! When we are in contact with the ground, we discharge the energy from that battery and exchange it for the earth’s charge, which is negative 20 millivolts. 

This exchange of energy with the earth has been shown to do several amazing things for our health: 

1. Ground lowers the viscosity of your blood. It does this by lowering something called a “zeta potential.” Thinner, more viscous blood is correlated...

Circadian rhythm is more important than you know.  

Circadian rhythms are 24-hour cycles. They are part of the body’s internal clock and are crucial to carrying out many essential functions and processes. One of the most important and well-known circadian rhythms is the sleep-wake cycle.

When properly aligned, a circadian rhythm can promote consistent and restorative sleep. But when the circadian rhythm is thrown off, it can create significant sleeping problems, impacting both physical and mental health.

How circadian rhythm works

Melanopsin plays a key role in regulating the circadian rhythm. Melanopsin is a photopigment expressed in the retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) of the eye that is believed to be our circadian photoreceptor. What this means is it senses light coming in and sends a signal to our brain about what time it is.  

It’s very sensitive to blue light. When it senses bright blue light, we become more energized and...

 You’ve been feeling really yucky for a while. You might have some extra weight you just can’t shed; you might be tired allllll the time; you might be anxious or irritable, or even depressed. 

 You FEEL like you’ve tried everything, but nothing is working – why not? 

 After working with hundreds of women throughout the years, I have seen certain healing roadblocks over and over again, and I’d like to share those with you today. Sometimes it takes an outsider looking in to point out the obvious, so consider me that outsider pointing at something you might not have considered…. 

Health Mistake #1:   You’re not doing what’s right for YOU 

 You are a unique individual. You have a different health history, different toxin exposure, different microbiome, different genetics, and different blood type than someone else, so what works for them might not work for you.

 When you’re working...

Our pediatrician did what they always do at physicals. Every year, he had my kids bend over and touch their toes while he looked at their spines. Every year he said they were fine. But they weren’t. So I urge you to read this even if you don’t have a scoliosis diagnosis, and I urge you to send it to other parents, too, because they might be like us.   

The Surprise Scoliosis Discovery 

A few years ago, one of my boys needed an MRI for something completely unrelated to scoliosis, but the surgeon noticed a curve in his spine and sent him for X-rays. Lo and behold, he had a pretty nasty C curve that wasn’t very noticeable to the naked eye, but it was REALLY bad on his X-ray. 

We then brought our other two other boys to the surgeon for his thoughts since the pediatrician missed theirs, and lo and behold, one of my other boys had a nasty S curve. It wasn’t the pediatrician’s fault. He’s a pediatrician, not an orthopedic surgeon...

Your brain wants to protect you. It constantly scans for danger. This gave us an evolutionary advantage when we lived in the elements and had to contend with wild animals and dangerous weather, but in today’s world, not only do we not need that constant scanning, but we have an extremely hard time turning it off. It’s constantly being turned on and triggered by the news, bad traffic, work deadlines, and more.

We need to help our brains relax and look for the good, not just the bad, so that “good scanning” becomes more habitual than defaulting to the “look for the bad” scanning mode. 

 Gratitude journaling is a powerful tool to help you turn off that constant danger scanning and focus on the good to rewire your brain for happiness. 

 Quick and easy tips to get started journaling today.  

1. Keep the journal out 

• If it’s hidden away somewhere, it will be out of sight, out of mind!
• Place it where...

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the U.S. age 18 and older. (aada.org)  

Anxiety can rob you of the life you’re meant to live. But if you have anxiety, you don’t need me to tell you this; you already know it. 

It can be debilitating and often feels like there’s no way out. But I found a way out for myself, so I have hope that you can too.  

What causes anxiety? 

I honestly have yet to work with someone that didn’t suffer from anxiety in some way, shape, or form.  Why is my patient population so heavily stacked with anxious people? Because I work with people that don’t feel good.

They have gut issues, autoimmune disease, thyroid dysfunction, or stealth infections. And when ONE THING is off in your body….EVERYTHING is off in your body. Our bodies are amazingly complex machines. No organ system is an island, my friend....

"I’m constantly searching for ways to make myself and my family healthier and more “bulletproof” as we go through life, and I want to tell you today about one of my secret weapons in this fight: SAUNAS."

My kids like superhero movies. Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Spiderman. All of 'em. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen every superhero movie ever made at this point, and they all have one thing in common, those people survive the most ridiculous stuff. There’s always a scene where something insane happens, like an asteroid falling on their head, and they get up and walk away unscathed, and I’m like, “Oh, come on!!”. But my kids? They love it. I think there’s something deep inside all of us that wants that for our lives. We all want to believe we can survive anything, and live forever, no matter what. We want to be Batman bulletproof.

Part of the reason why kids and teenagers do stupid things (like jumping...

HOW TO ACHIEVE YOUR OPTIMAL HEALTH

Do you want to kick ass at life? I mean, really take it up a notch and stop just feeling ok or good and feel amazing? Then it’s time to start biohacking.

What is biohacking?

It is the practice of using science and epigenetics to transform your body using food, thoughts, movement, light, and more.

To truly optimize your health and increase energy, longevity, and productivity along with decreasing disease, you must first and foremost lay the foundation. Just like you can’t build an impressive skyscraper without a solid foundation, you can't build impressive health, energy, vitality, and resiliency without laying the foundations for said health. 

Basic good health hygiene is that foundation.

If you’re not sure where to start for that, check out my post here on some key areas, including sleep, movement, vegetables, and more: “Why Health Coaches Don’t Count Calories, and What They Do Count.”