I’ve had this conversation with a lot of you in my email and DMs lately where you’re telling me that you’ve been trying to do IE, and you’re sick of dieting, and you want peace with food – but you are also worried about your health…

Before we dive into our main topic for today, you know what time it is…We’ve got some Wellness Woo to talk about. 

Wellness Woo is the stuff that diet and wellness culture tells us we should do in the name of health, but it’s really based on pseudoscience, exaggerated claims, or just nonsense. 

Today’s Wellness Woo is: Jaw release to heal your trauma – Elsa

You may have seen some videos going around lately on social media where people are having these jaw massages done and they start crying and say that it has cured their trauma.

I saw one where the country singer Leann Rimes did this and it went viral.

So what’s up with this and is it in any way legit??

One thing we do know is that trauma does get stored in the body in various ways. There’s a book called The Body Keeps the Score…

And many people suffer from TMJ or lockjaw, and it’s really really painful.

With the emerging field of somatic therapy (which is a type of therapy where the focus is more on the body sensations than your thoughts), this concept of jaw release has become more and more popular. Now somatic therapy can be legit – my only caveat is it depends on what type of provider you’re seeing and how much legitimate training they actually have in it.

Through my research into this jaw releasing therapy, I came across so much wellness woo, including people calling themselves “holistic dentists” who are claiming that they can heal your trauma through jaw releasing, ozone therapy, “neuromuscular balancing,” and “Nervous system support” – which is a lot of buzzwords and the whole website was clearly written by ChatGPT.

This whole jaw thing is a classic case of a grain of truth being pumped full of steroids for wellness culture to profit off of it. Yes, many people hold tension and stress in their muscles, including their jaw. I wear a nightguard when I sleep because I grind my teeth. I also carry tension in my shoulders and neck. Doing things like PMR and yoga, and other ways of relaxing your muscles and releasing tension can be really helpful for this. 

But just because you relaxed your muscles or let go of tension doesn’t mean you healed your trauma. That’s a WILD claim. And it’s really insensitive to people who have very real trauma and PTSD. 

I went to PubMed to search for actual studies on this and it was hard to find anything (red flag). One that was published in 2022 said The evidence, albeit weak, obtained from the studies included in this review suggests a relationship between PTSD and TMDs. (same thing as TMJ)

Most of the studies relating to trauma and TMJ were from physical trauma like getting hit in the face by something like a baseball, or getting in a car accident. 

So yes, if you have TMJ you can get it treated and there are special massage techniques that can really help with this. But if someone is telling you it’s going to “release” your emotional trauma they’re lying to you. That’s not how trauma recovery works. Yes, trauma shows up in our bodies in MANY ways. And body-based interventions can be really powerful and healing, but reducing it to releasing your jaw muscles is a complete distortion and oversimplification of how trauma treatment and recovery actually works and I would recommend you see a licensed therapist if you have trauma. Sure, somatic work might be part of your recovery experience but you’re not going to go to a holistic dentist or a face massage person and heal your trauma. You’re just not.

If you have an example of Wellness Woo that you want to share, DM it to me.

Ok, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic…what to do if you want to support your health while also protecting your relationship with food and without giving yourself a bunch of strict food rules.

You Care About Your Health

• I already know you care about your health. You want to support your body. You want to be healthy…and the only way you’ve ever known or been told how to do that is through dieting and restrictive behaviors.
  • You were told you needed to:
    • Eat less, move more to lose weight
    • Create a calorie deficit
    • Avoid fat, avoid sugar, avoid carbs
    • Keep junk food and processed food out of your house
    • All of these things seemed reasonable
  • And then things got weirder and more extreme:
    • Carnivore diet
    • WFPB
    • IF and OMAD
    • Keto
    • And all of this harkens back to things like the cabbage soup diet, the grapefruit diet, the wine and eggs diet (yes that was a real thing in the 70s), the master cleanse
  • Somewhere along the way you started to confuse getting healthier with simply getting skinnier – at any cost. Because if we really step back and think about it, it wasn’t healthy to:
    • Not feed your body enough food
    • Avoid entire food groups
    • Obsess over food 24/7
    • Cleanse your body when your functioning liver and kidneys already do that for you (you were just giving yourself expensive diarrhea)
    • Smoke cigarettes or drink copious amounts of coffee or diet soda to suppress your appetite
    • Eat huge amounts of “free” foods like rice cakes or salads to trick yourself into feeling full
    • There are people who ate tapeworms, or who shove coffee up their butt, or who will go days without eating and call it “fasting” for health…things that are absurd and dangerous. 
• We’ve lost the plot as a society, and now you’re confused on what being healthy actually is and what that means for your eating and your body. You understand that your body needs balanced nutrition and a variety of foods, and that how you eat impacts your health. You’re not dumb.
  • But you’ve also been fed a lot of lies, manipulations, partial truths, and mixed pieces of information that makes this all really confusing.
  • So I want to help you to see what it really looks like to support your health in effective and sustainable ways, that are rooted in science, and how to do this while protecting your relationship with food and without piling on a bunch of strict food rules that you feel guilty about breaking.

We Need to Talk About What Health Actually Is

• Health isn’t a number on the scale or a BMI. The BMI is not a good way of measuring health at an individual level. Even the guy who invented it in the 1800’s said that (and there are a LOT of better ways of measuring your health besides doing a math equation on your ratio of height to weight.) Also – the BMI is problematic and unscientific in many ways, and I recommend you look up an article by Aubrey Gordon called “The Bizarre and Racist History of the BMI” if you want to understand this. She also did a podcast episode on MP podcast about it. 
• Health isn’t drinking green smoothies and taking supplements. I’ve never consumed a green smoothie in my life because they look disgusting to me. And if you’re already taking care of your health in ways that are effective you probably don’t need supplements. 
• Health isn’t a way of eating or exercising. There are many ways of eating and exercising that can support health. 
• How would you define health if someone asked you what that means? 
  • Most people would chalk it up to the absence of disease….not having health conditions.
  • But true health, as defined by the WHO is: a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity
  • The reality is that most people will develop some type of chronic health condition at some point in their lives
  • Supporting your health in ways that are 1) effective, 2) sustainable, 3) support your physical, mental and social wellbeing is what we want to aim for. (Dieting does NONE of these things…)

So HOW Do You Support Your Health?

• You do health-promoting behaviors, which we’ll come back to in a minute. I’m going to give you some specific things you can implement. 
• But first you need to have a big picture understanding of ALL of the things that determine your health. Because it’s not weight and it’s not just food and exercise. Yes, your nutrition and exercise impact your health, but in reality that’s just a small piece of the puzzle, and this is going to shock you because most people have no idea on what I’m about to tell you.  
• There’s a framework called The Social Determinants of Health. If you look it up there are some great resources online about this. The easiest way to think of it is like having a stock market portfolio (and don’t worry – this is not going to be confusing because tbh I barely understand the stock market myself) – but what I want you to think about is your “health portfolio.”
  • Diet culture tells you to invest 95% of your investment into weight and food. 
  • But what public health research actually tells us is that your health is determined by a LOT of other things, including:
    • Income, neighborhood safety, housing, transportation, access to healthcare, education, stress, discrimination (including weight-based discrimination), family support, social connection and your genetics. 
    • And if we break it into percentages, about 40% of your health is determined by socioeconomic variables like education, job, family support, income and community safety.
      • 10% is driven by your physical environment
      • 30% is health behaviors – which is where food and exercise come in. But those are only a fraction of this 30%, because it also includes things like smoking, alcohol use and sexual activity. 
      • 20% is the healthcare you receive – your access to it and the quality of it
• Using your stock market analogy, you want your health portfolio diversified, not all of your eggs in the food and weight basket. Diet culture wants you to obsess over that one stock that’s not even the biggest driving factor of your health. 
• Research is very clear that having access to safe places to move your body like parks or gyms improves health, having social connections makes people live longer, stress – including stress over your eating and your weight – correlates with worse blood pressure, blood sugar, sleep, and all sorts of health factors. 
• Another way to think of this is that if we have a pie chart, and food is only one slice of the pie that is about 1/10th of the entire pie, why are you putting 90% of your energy into trying to perfect this one slice that’s only 10% of the entire pie? It actually doesn’t make sense when you think about it that way.

What to Do Instead of Obsessing About Food And Weight

Instead of: “I need to lose weight.”

Try:

• Am I eating enough?
• Am I getting protein regularly?
• Am I eating fruits and vegetables most days?
• Am I sleeping adequately?
• Am I moving in ways I enjoy?
• Am I managing stress?
• Am I taking my medications?
• Am I attending appointments?
• Am I connected to people I care about?
• Am I engaging in meaningful activities?

The things you’re doing should make your life bigger and more expansive, not smaller and more confined. 

We want to flip the script here away from controlling your body to caring for your body. 

Supporting Your Health While Protecting Your Relationship With Food

I promised I’d give you some ideas and examples of specific things you can do, and this will vary depending on you, your body, your situation, and your specific health needs. So use these examples to get the juices flowing for you…

The main thing we want to think about for protecting your relationship with food is not creating diet-y rules or restrictions. Now, I also want to be clear that having gentle boundaries with food is not the same thing as restricting, and a lot of people have a hard time wrapping their head around that.

Ideas:

• Schedule your next doctor’s appointment. Especially if there’s one you’ve been avoiding. (annual physical, well woman exam, mammogram, colonoscopy)
• Make sure you’re taking your medications as prescribed (and stop living in fear of medication). Put your pills in a pill box, set alarms on your phone to remember to take it.
• Move your body on a regular basis. This matters more than your food or weight does for health. 
• Socialize. Be around people. Connect. Put plans on your calendar. 
• Prioritize sleep. Stop doing revenge bedtime procrastination
• Evaluate your alcohol use.
• If you smoke, stop.
• Figure out what your biggest life stressor is and address it directly. 
• Gentle nutrition:
  • Are you eating enough? Seriously…
  • Stop dieting. It’s bad for your health. 
  • Eat breakfast. Every day.
  • Combine c/p/f/f
  • If you have blood sugar concerns, make sure you’re pairing your carbs with protein
  • If you have BP concerns, consider eating at home more often, and adding in more K+ containing foods like fruits and veg
  • If you have GERD, eat smaller more frequent meals and less acidic foods. Let your food digest before going to bed.
  • If you have high cholesterol, include more unsaturated fats and fiber
  • Think about “nutrition by ADDITION”
  • When you truly are doing IE and master the entire non-diet framework, you’ll see that your health really is the north star. And you absolutely can eat the foods you love while also honoring your health and medical concerns in ways that legitimately work. You don’t have to have a crappy relationship with food or feel restricted and guilty all the time. You don’t have to choose between food freedom and your health. 

Wrapping Up

What I hope you’re taking from this episode is that the way you’ve been taught to think about and approach health is warped and not actually healthy. In fact, it’s led you to do things that are objectively unhealthy, and it’s led to you wasting a lot of your time and energy on things that don’t actually matter that much. 

Now that you see the bigger picture with the SDOH, and how health is more than just not having any medical diagnoses, you can use that concept of diversifying your health portfolio to help you see that there’s a LOT of things you can do to support your health while having peace with food.

And when it comes to food, the things that are genuinely healthy are more about what you’re including and adding in, not what you’re taking away. If you have specific health conditions or concerns, I obviously can’t give you blanket advice here, so feel free to reach out to me if you have questions and what to chat about doing some coaching or consultation on what is best for your body.

And above all, in case nobody has told you today – you are ENOUGH ALREADY. We’ll talk again soon.

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