Dear friend, dear friend,
Today, I offer you an interview with Bénédicte Van Craynest.
It’s a bit like the interview for the start of the school year in January. She offers you a good resolution at the end of the interview that is simple and, I hope, easy to keep.
Bénédicte is a nutritionist. She sees patients in her office every day who are trying to adapt their lifestyle and their diet to feel better.
Despite her long experience in the firm, Bénédicte always seeks to progress. She devotes precious time to researching information, in particular by following continuing education courses at ECIM, the European Center for Integrative Medicine.
She works with a network of therapists with whom she exchanges a lot of information that she is always happy to share with her patients or with the general public through her book or her conferences.
The next one takes place in Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium on February 18 during a day on mouth and health (program and registration ici).
Health Alert Letter : What is your patients’ concern at the moment?
Benedicte Van Craynest : Among my patients and around me, the subject of the moment is chronic fatigue and the influence of stress on this poor state of form. To tell the truth, I sometimes have the impression that there is a general exhaustion! Of course, we are in the heart of winter, which necessarily plays a little but, there everyone seems abnormally exhausted.
Health Alert Letter : How do you explain this phenomenon?
Benedicte Van Craynest : I explain it by all the economic, emotional or other concerns that play on cortisol, the stress hormone. Cortisol goes up and down. He does roller coasters. However, it is the conductor of energy because it is able to block or on the contrary to “overactivate” the metabolism of sugar.
In addition, when you are stressed, you are much more likely to consume sugar compulsively. And sugar, as you may know, is deleterious to your immune, inflammatory, and hormonal health. Because cortisol plays on insulin which is a hormone.
That’s not all, alas! Cortisol keeps you from getting restful sleep. You may wake up at night, especially in the second half of the night, around four or five in the morning. Your sleep will no longer be restorative!
You then risk entering a vicious circle: you feel tired, you have not recovered enough from your night and you plunge into addictions: sugar, coffee, chocolate. You’re off on a roller coaster of blood sugar and cortisol cycles with spikes and dips. It’s an exhausting life!
Unfortunately, in my patients, blood tests often show surprisingly high cortisol levels!
Health Alert Letter : Is there a direct link between blood sugar and cortisol?
Benedicte Van Craynest : Yes. I like to use an image when explaining the role of cortisol to my patients. I evoke a soldier with two spears posted on the drawbridge of a fortified castle. This soldier is blocking the entrance. Cortisol does the same in your cells. It prevents glucose from entering the cell and being the cell’s powerhouse.
Glucose then begins to coast out of your cells. Your glycemia, that is, the level of sugar in the blood, becomes unstable. It varies with ups and downs that are difficult to control. This situation can cause insulin resistance. In this case, the blood sugar is very high and you may be diagnosed with pre-diabetes.
So when you’re chronically stressed, cortisol recurrently blocks glucose and your blood sugar keeps rising without it having anything to do with your diet.
Many people are unaware of this phenomenon. Someone under stress, even if he does not rush on sugar or alcohol, risks ending up in hyperglycemia.
I happen to see people whose diet is perfect but whose sensitivity to stress makes them ultra-sensitive to hyperglycemia. Doing sports, eating well is not enough, you also need to breathe and support your stress.
Health Alert Letter : Is there more alcohol consumption among patients than usual?
Benedicte Van Craynest : Indeed, the consumption of alcohol seems to have increased and that of drugs, in particular cannabis, which is the sign of a malaise.
Health Alert Letter : Does it have an effect on the digestive system?
I have not seen any studies on the subject but it is possible that there are. You would have to look. On the other hand, it is certain that the consumption of cannabis has an effect on the vagus nerve. This has an effect on the nervous system that is called “sympathetic”. In response, the parasympathetic system can completely trip.
The sympathetic nervous system is the one used in the event of an alert. It is he who tells us whether to flee or fight. It’s an archaic system designed to survive an impending crisis. It is not made to be solicited permanently. However, this nervous system is also ganglionic: it is associated with ganglia which function like switches or a traffic light to take another image. It is either green, everything is fine, or red: it is the general alert!
Your body should avoid getting stuck in red. Your parasympathetic nervous system is made up of two branches, one on the right and one on the left of your body. The connection between the two is made by a ganglion located at the level of the stomach. And that’s why, when you’re stressed, you have a lump in your stomach. This whole sphere crystallizes the emotions linked to stress. The liver, for example, is often associated with anger. But it’s the cortisol that comes to wake everyone up and create the permanent general alert, the lump in the stomach that never relaxes.
If we put the same quality plate to two people, one being stressed and the other not, the blood sugar curve will not be the same. The stressed person will have much higher blood sugar. It is the same for sedentary people. Those who never move have very high blood sugar.
Don’t forget that blood sugar gives you the energy you need if it is at the right level, but when you have too much sugar in your blood, it creates inflammation in your body and puts you at risk. flat your immunity.
For example, if you have a dame blanche at the end of your meal, it’s just three scoops of ice cream and a bit of chocolate and yet this dessert completely destroys your immunity. For hours, the white blood cells are completely asleep. Your defenses against pathogens will be very weakened.
Health Alert Letter : Because of the sugar?
Benedicte Van Craynest : Sugar, cold, lactose, all types of sugar that are in this type of product. It must be emphasized: sugar, and in particular industrial and refined sugars, are the worst enemies of immunity.
This is partly due to the stomach emptying out in hypoglycemia. Complete emptying is when your blood sugar level is low. And if you consume a large amount of sugar, your stomach will take longer to empty.
So finishing a meal with a very sweet or cold dessert prevents, for hours, the stomach from emptying completely, which is necessary for the proper functioning of your metabolism.
Health Alert Letter : What advice do you give your patients to avoid all this ambient stress?
Benedicte Van Craynest : Put on your sneakers and go for a walk in the forest. Today’s sedentary lifestyle is absolutely deadly! You absolutely must take your 6000 steps every day. It is necessary that the blood, the lymph, the muscles, etc. move. Otherwise everything stagnates, and this is the beginning of disease!
Thank you Benedict! (To attend the conference day in Belgium with Bénédicte Van Craynest, go to ici).