My guest this week is Ashley James. We had planned to focus on anxiety in this episode, which we did spend a good bit of time talking about. But we also talked a lot about general health and nutrition, and the important role of diet in our physical and mental health.

This is a topic that’s gotten a lot more attention in recent years. For some reason it was quite controversial for a long time to suggest that what we put in our mouths could affect our minds and spirits, and could contribute to conditions like anxiety and depression. But now that the research studies are being done, we’re starting to realize how important diet can be—not just for our physical health, but for our overall well-being.

We also talked a lot about the body’s stress response and the release of cortisol through the HPA axis, and of adrenaline through our sympathetic nervous system (our body’s fight-or-flight stress system). And in the second half of our discussion, Ashley offers a simple technique that can lower anxiety and turn down the stress response.