Dr. Laura DeCesaris

Join me on Wednesday May 15th at 12pm EST as I partner with WellRight for a webinar all about stress, the brain, and burnout.

Rather than viewing stress as merely a symptom, we will explore its deeper roots and offer insights into fostering resilience, and how reshaping perspectives on stress is the key to avoiding burnout and empowering your employees to thrive amidst life's challenges.

Join us to discover actionable strategies to support employee wellbeing that start at the cellular level to improve health outcomes and better support mental health initiatives in the workplace.

During this webinar, you will learn:
- The connection between stress and mental health
- How to build resilience versus "managing stress"
- How to shift your perception of stress for long-term success
- How symptoms like anxiety, depression, and trouble focusing are actually your body's way of asking for help

You can register here: https://www.wellright.com/resources/webinars/countering-stress-burnout-mental-health-putting-the-brain-center-stage

I hope to see you there! 😍

⚠️ *ATTN: New interview on the connection between STRESS and THYROID HEALTH!!!*

I’m so glad I’ve partnered with Divya to bring you this never before seen interview on the stress-thyroid connection as a part of the free “Reset your Thyroid and Reverse Hashimotos: Simple strategies to increase your energy, replenish your hair, and relieve constipation so you can thrive! online series.

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This series is your ticket to thriving health. Claim your seat so you can join me and the rest of this remarkable speaker panel to discover:

⭐️Evidence-based, cutting-edge approaches to manage, navigate and potentially reverse existing thyroid conditions, heal inflammation, gut imbalances, food intolerances, and more.

⭐️Clarity on how our food culture and medical model have been leading you astray and how to get back on course.

⭐️Fresh approaches to health that actually work!

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👉Don’t hesitate for another moment, grab your ticket here: https://resetandreversehashimotos.com/01drlaura

👉And be sure to share with anyone you know who want to get to the root cause of your thyroid so they can potentially reverse their condition and thrive!

❤️ Hope to see you there!

🚨 New Podcast Alert! 🚨

Recently I sat down with Bria The Period Whisperer on her podcast to chat all things brain health for perimenopausal women. I met Bria Gadd at an event last year and loved her mission to help educate women in perimenopause on how to look and feel their absolute best!

We had so much fun and could have talked for hours!

Tune in and learn all about:

✅ How perimenopause impacts your brain
✅ 3 Simple ways to start taking care of your brain health for peak performance in perimenopause
✅ The ONE piece of advice that blew Bria's mind!

Listen here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-180-3-simple-ways-to-start-taking-care-of-your/id1617315546?i=1000645417349

I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as we did!

If I could have just ONE Nutritional recommendation I'd make for everyone heading into the holiday season, it would be to make good choices for your blood sugar.

Understanding how to avoid spikes and crashes, and the resulting energy swings, mood changes, and inflammation that comes along for the ride, will allow you to enjoy all of the festivities without hitting January 1st feeling like crap!

We all want to have more energy, normal blood sugar and optimal weight, but it’s hard to know where to start. Let’s change that! Join me in the Expert Diabetes Reversal Master Class and listen to an entire expert panel share their best proven approaches to doing just that.

Claim your FREE Ticket by clicking here !⬇️
https://bit.ly/bloodsugarsummit

You won't want to miss out on the 21 experts helping you to better understand your blood sugar! In my talk with Lucia, we went over how exercise can help our blood sugar, protein goals for women, and more!

Would you ever take a Cold Plunge?

This week on Dr. Laura' instagram account, we've been going through popular biohacking tools and looking at them through a female-focused lens.

Deliberate cold exposure is gaining popularity among high-performers as a way to improve brain focus and attention, improve metabolism, and speed up athletic recovery...all while improving a person's resilience so he or she can better handle daily stress.

It might seem daunting to *willingly* submerge yourself up to the neck in ice cold water...but the benefits are incredible!

Some considerations for women:

🤩 Don't try this tool out if you're in the middle of a LOT of stress.

🤩 If you have a menstrual cycle, try it out in the first half of your cycle and see how you feel. It might add too much stress + sympathetic nervous system activation in the days leading up to your period, making you inadvertently feel worse (though everyone is different!)

🤩 Start low and increase your time! 2-3 minutes confers a LOT of benefits, and you don't need to do it daily by any means.

Pick your goal and plan accordingly. Maybe it's workout recovery, or maybe it's just become a more resilient human. Your timing, frequency, and duration may need to be different depending on your goals!

Want to learn HOW to fit tools like cold exposure into your busy life? Doors are open to April's pocket coaching!

Starting April 14...

Join a small group of other women as we really dive into tools like cryotherapy, sauna use, fasting, nootropics, microdosing, red light, and other tools, and create personalized plans on how to incorporate these into our lives - all with consideration to our hormones and unique female biochemistry 😍

You'll have lifetime access to mini-course material, and we'll have a weekly live session to go over integration, planning, and Q and A! Plus...there mayyyy be a pretty awesome giveaway that includes some biohacking tools!

10 spots total are available - send me a private message for the link if you're interested in joining us!

Ever dealt with acid reflux or heartburn?

If so, you may want to check out this case study I recently published with Rupa Health! It may have you rethinking your current approach so that you can find last relief 🥰

https://www.rupahealth.com/post/a-functional-medicine-approach-to-acid-reflux

A Functional Medicine Approach to Acid Reflux: A Case Study Acid Reflux is one of the most common gastrointestinal disorders, with a prevalence of approximately 20% of adults in western culture. A conventional approach to acid reflux is prescribing Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPIs).

🔥 Turn Up The Heat 🔥

You’ve probably heard of (or tried) an infrared sauna at least once!

➡️ Swipe through to learn about the TWO phases of infrared sauna use, and which one you should pick for your unique needs.

I personally love taking advantage of both phases.

Phase 1️⃣: All about relaxation and boosting my PARASYMPATHETIC nervous system. I opt for this phase when I’m super stressed, or the few days leading up to the start of my cycle.

Phase 2️⃣: This is the “workout” phase. It’s a stressor on your body, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing! As long as you’re primed to respond to it, it’s a great way to improve resiliency, increase metabolism, and support healthy immune function.

Have you ever tried an infrared sauna? What’s your experience been like? Tell me below in the comments! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

“Should I try Intermittent Fasting” is still one of the most common “wants” I see on new client paperwork!

🤓So many of you have heard of the benefits of fasting for longevity, metabolic health, and energy…

But please remember, fasting is a tool. It’s not a lifestyle 🙅🏻‍♀️

Intermittent (Adjective): “occurring at irregular intervals; not continuous or steady”.

More is NOT always better!

My tips if you want to try intermittent fasting:

🎯 Treat it like a muscle. You need to strengthen it, rest it, and train your ability to fast slowly and correctly.

🎯Do NOT use it if you don’t have a healthy relationship with food or eating. It can lead to more restrictive patterns and anxiety/guilt around food choices.

🎯Know your “why” - quick fix weight loss or because you’re afraid of eating a food group are NOT good reasons to fast.

🎯Work with a practitioner. If you’re a woman who is LOSING HAIR, GAINING WEIGHT, and feeling ANXIOUS OR EMOTIONAL when you’re fasting - it is NOT working for you, and you’re not respecting your female physiology. Help your hormones out and heal your body using other methods before you try this tool.

What’s your fasting questions? Have you ever tried?⬇️⬇️⬇️

Do you make a million decisions a day — at work with your team, with your parents, with your kids — and then spend all evening questioning if those decisions were the right ones?

Not only that, deep down, you know you are here to do more in the world.

Make a bigger impact.

Step into a bigger calling.

I am thrilled to be part of BRAVE, an online series dedicated to helping you embody confidence and step into your purpose with bravery.

It’s for high-achieving women ready to embody confidence, re-claim their power, own their worth and live from purpose.

This free virtual event is open to women like you, and it’s the easiest way to make sure you actually STEP into the life that’s waiting for you.

What are you going to learn?

• How to embody confidence every day�
• The essential components of living a BRAVE life�
• WHY it matters if you are brave�
• How to VALUE yourself and your worth�
• The key steps to unlock your purpose�
• Why NOW is the BEST time to step into your calling.�

It’s a powerful way to move into the end of the year.

AND, the series includes a FREE live workshop on 3 Simple Steps to Finally Discovering Your Purpose (and never get derailed again.)
It starts today! And I’ve got a complimentary ticket just for you.

Http://NicoleTsong.com/LauraDeCesaris

I’ve been sitting on this for awhile, this feeling of reframing aspects of health and performance for women.

I spent a lot of my 20s using a very masculine approach to my health. A lot of strategy, a lot of pushing myself, a lot of…well, a lot of hacking away at who I am in pursuit of better performance and “wellness.”

What I’ve learned is that as women, this only gets us so far. If we’re brave enough to tap into our feminine side and approach health and wellness in a more aligned way…then the magic happens.

I see so many women using these AMAZING tools:
🔥Fasting methods
🔥Red light therapy
🔥Saunas, cold therapy
🔥Breathwork and nervous system regulation
🔥Supplements

…but using them from a place of strategy alone. More items on a checklist every day. And ignoring internal cues of when they may not be the best strategy for you.

Take fasting as an example. I see many women take it too far, to the point where it takes their hair falling out and crashing their hormones to make them realize they overdid it (no judgment, I’ve been there 😅)

What about sauna use and red light? Are there times in our cycle we should prioritize this?

Nervous system regulation, too. Are we actually paying attention to what’s happening, or are we attending a breathwork class just to do it? Are we paying attention to WHEN we need this? And WHY we need this?

Supplements? Again, something that needs to take our unique female physiology into account. Bear in mind many studies have not been performed on menstruating women - you can’t always just extrapolate data from studies in a male population.

I want to use these tools from a more feminine perspective. After all, they are just elevating the power we already have in our cells. We don’t need to hack anything.

Just unleash and elevate.

✨

There’s a lot of talk about nervous system regulation for a more successful business, easier sales, more alignment in your life.

But really, I want you to understand what this means before you put it as another item on your to-list 😉 ✅

This isn’t manifesting, woo-woo, esoteric BS that’s floating around the entrepreneurial circles.

It’s evidence-led information that is at the core of how you manage stress, how resilient you are, and how much you’re at risk of developing inflammation, chronic illness, and accelerated aging.

And it can’t be taught by a protocol, can’t be achieved solely through a hack, and isn’t available in pill form.

Your HRV is the one biometric I think you all should take a season to evaluate and cue into. So many of you have been disconnected from your body’s internal cues and needs that you may actually need a data-driven way to reconnect and learn how to listen.

It might even surprise you when you learn what things have a negative impact on your nervous system. I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve had with commutes in busy cities who see a rise in blood sugar and a drop in HRV after a rush-hour commute 🥴

Information is power. Knowing what impacts your nervous system and stress response empowers you to enact change, be proactive, and create space for regulation when those stressors are unavoidable.

What are your questions on HRV? ⬇️⬇️ comment below!

how are you breaking the bias?

For me, it’s supporting women to find work-life alignment. No more burning out and sacrificing health to find career success! 👏🏻⚡️

You are completely whole and capable; everything you need for health, wealth, and success lies within ❤️. Let’s pave the way for future generations to reach their full potential, with a healthy understanding that you can reach your full potential in business AND health - this can co-exist.

Honored to be in this Forbes piece alongside powerhouse women like natashagrano and 🔥. These women are doing INCREDIBLE things to support and uplift other women! Thanks Melissa Houston, CPA, CGA for your thoughtful piece!

Let 2022 be the year you take back control from stress and overwhelm 💥

In case ya missed the Reel yesterday, here’s my fave ways to test cortisol:
➡️ DUTCH test for 24-hour cortisol rhythm
➡️ Serum morning cortisol, aim for ~10-15mcg/dL and test around 8AM
➡️ DNA testing to understand how you are wired to handle stress

Pair your labs with taking some time to understand your HORMONES ❤️. If you’re biz planning, cycle syncing is a natural tool you can incorporate for better quality of life and performance.

Last but most important, make stress your friend. You want SOME stress to perform well! You also want to have a good relationship with that stress. Don’t be afraid of it, welcome it as a learning tool and a gauge of your current lifestyle.

We’re heading towards the ACTION steps next! What do you want to hear first, tips for managing high cortisol or tips for low cortisol? ⬇️⬇️ tell me below!

🧠 YOU MADE IT THROUGH ENTREPRENEUR BRAIN BOOTCAMP 🧠

Our last Happy Brain Chemical is your ENDORPHINS.

I’ll keep it simple by quoting the words of a beloved lawyer 😉

“Exercise gives you Endorphins. Endorphins make you happy! Happy people don’t shoot their husbands. They just don’t!”

Stay happy, friends 🧠 ✌🏻

(And side note - after a weekend of technical difficulties, the brain masterclass is *finally* ready! Sending out a DM to all of you who asked for a copy tonight! Woohoo!)

✨With GREAT POWER comes GREAT RESPONSIBILITY!✨

Your dopamine is one of your superpowers as an entrepreneur - USE IT WISELY👀

I had so much I wanted to share that I ended up writing a blog post because dopamine is that important!! Use your reward pathways to skyrocket your business - and your impact - in this world!

Top Tips for my Dopamine-Driven, High-Achieving Entrepreneurs:

⏰ Time block when you need to be productive. Turn off the notifications. Let those short periods of productivity, like the blocks in a Pomodoro, light up your reward pathway.

☯️ Learn to match your creative flow with your cycle. Use dopamine and hormones like estrogen to your advantage to create, dream big, and find new ways to solve problems for your audience. First half of your cycle is going to help you here!

✅ Delegate the things that don’t light you up and that cause you to feel frustrated and too “in” your business, taking away from that time and space to be creative.

🚫Turn off phone notifications. Seriously. Whenever you can, but especially when you need to be productive OR while you’re in a creative flow.

☀️A few times a week, take a walk, use a float tank, go do something where you’re NOT multitasking with a podcast or book. Let your mind wander. You’ve trained your brain to NOT do this, but if you allow your dopamine-driven mind to have that space, your creative genius is really going to flourish.

🧠I cannot WAIT to help you optimize your brain chemistry in my upcoming masterclass! I’ll teach you everything you need to know for better focus, motivation, and joy - in and out of your business.

🧠I’ll also be covering nutritional strategies, biohacks, and cutting-edge functional lab testing to help you streamline your path to Brain Harmony. Details coming soon.

The LOVE AND TRUST Hormone: Take advantage of it to drive business performance and create that sense of work-life alignment you crave!

Female entrepreneurs generally LOVE finding community. Whether it’s for business development, personal development, networking, or just to have a friend to text and say “dang this is a TOUGH week wearing all of the hats in my business” - we tend to thrive financially, mentally, and physically when we have communities that we are part of.

It can be SO tempting to try to “go it alone” at first when you’re an entrepreneur. But I promise, if you take the leap, you’ll be setting yourself up for success not just from a business development perspective, but also from a biochemical perspective.

YOUR brain is your business as an entrepreneur 🙌🏻

You create, you decide, you delegate, you think, you share. Support it AND take advantage of all of the cool sh*t it can do for you! When you are around women who are supporting other women, you make oxytocin and feel that sense of warm, happy belonging that we NEED as humans!

Join that community.
Go to the workout class.
Text the person you met at a networking event.
Host a virtual meet and greet with other women.
Tell another woman today, right now, that you admire the heck out of her and she’s doing great - you BOTH are going to get an oxytocin hit!

➡️ Want to learn how to optimize YOUR brain chemistry so you can better show up as your highest self?

🤌🏻 I created a special masterclass since you’re all digging this series so much! Drop me a DM and I’ll send you the link!

Calm the “rush” in your head, find the happiness you’re frantically looking for 🤩

Some more SEROTONIN today! Let’s look at serotonin in the bigger picture of stress, brain health, and how to “spend” our days as entrepreneurs, shall we?

🙏🏻 Mind-body awareness is SUCH a fundamental starting place if you’re looking to really optimize your health and brain performance. If you can’t identify when you’re in a state of rush, of stress, of worry…it can be challenging to take the steps to find and center yourself.

Swipe through above for the wordy explanations, but here’s your takeaway:

➡️ Unchecked stress and worry can mess up your hormones and brain chemistry, leading you to feel down, anxious, and unsure what you need to feel better.

➡️ Your brain will try to define what you need - food, wine, a hug, an argument, a new job - to find balance again.

You have the power to define this narrative, however. Your serotonin (that happy, content brain chemical we love) can drop with….
😬chronic unchecked stress and worry
😬right before you get your period (or whenever estrogen runs low)
😬when you don’t get natural light exposure
😬when your nervous system is constantly in a state of panic

So what do you do?
❤️Redefine your relationship with stress. What’s the upside? How can you manage it and not let it run your life?
❤️Support your body with nutrition, enough protein, and unconditional love
❤️Get out in the sun, especially in the morning
❤️Learn breathwork, meditation, or any mind-body techniques that’s going to help you regulate your nervous system
❤️Figure out if you have gut issues or hormonal imbalances that need to be addressed and work with someone instead of DIY-ing it. Your happiness, your business, your brain chemistry depends on it

Save and share with a girlfriend who needs less stress and more happy in her life 🙌🏻

This is a HUGE topic to unpack, but it’s SUCH A GAME-CHANGER for skyrocketing your mood, your outlook on life, and your business success!

Meet your FAB FOUR support team when it comes to a happy, balanced brain:
✨ Dopamine
✨ Oxytocin
✨ Serotonin
✨ Endorphins

I’m going to be diving into each of these separately, but today I want you to understand that you can optimize these brain chemical pathways and make them work better, for you!

Think of a time in your business journey when you were lonely and stressed. Didn’t finding a support network, like or , make it feel a bit easier? Didn’t moving your body or going outside help, at least a little bit? What about snuggles with your dog or your other half - always makes a rough day easier, doesn’t it? These things are ALL stimulating one of the brain chemical pathways above!

As women, some of them are also closely tied to our hormones. Oxytocin is produced in high quantities with breastfeeding, helping us bond to our littles. Serotonin is related to estrogen levels. When our estrogen drops right before our period, as we hit perimenopause and menopause, or if we’re overly stressed…serotonin also drops, and this can lead to feelings of depression and anxiety.

What if you could understand each of these amazing brain chemicals and how to optimize them to work WITH you? How cool is that?

Tell me in the comments, which one do you want to hear about first?

“Laura, everything feels impossible when I just can’t sleep”

Same girl, same.

And while those CBD-melatonin gummies may be *delicious,* there’s a bigger picture problem I want to help you kick to the curb.

It’s ongoing brain inflammation.
It’s allowing stress to rule your life.
It’s forgetting that your brain needs some rest and recovery too, just like your muscles after a tough workout!

(Side note - if you’re a mom of little ones reading this..we all salute you 🤗 try to squeeze in a nap while your littles nap here and there!)

Start with the simple tips on the slides above. Need more help with your sleep? Send me a DM and I’ll be happy to point you in the right direction 🙌🏻

Burnout is more complex than just “having too much on your plate.”

➡️ SWIPE THROUGH the slides above to start reframing how we think about stress, and the implications that honoring our mind-body connection can have for our health + happiness ❤️

I always get asked if there are “functional labs for burnout.”

There’s not a lab test for burnout. It affects every body system, from brain health + performance to hormones to recovery and inflammation.

Here’s my top labs that I like for women experiencing a high stress load who are feeling like they are headed for burnout (or are there):

✅ DUTCH testing to evaluate cortisol + female hormones
✅ Thyroid panel
✅ NutrEval Metabolic panel to see your body’s nutrient needs, inflammation index, mitochondrial health and more
✅ COMT gene testing - because how your body is equipped to handle stress is important, too

Eradicating burnout goes beyond nutrition and labs. It’s evaluating your relationship with your daily habits, your mindset, and your perception of stress and your purpose. I’d love to help you - drop me your questions below! ✨

❤️

Unpopular opinion: The phrase “I’m a work in progress” is not helping you effectively reach your goals 😪

The phrase “work in progress” - to me at least - falls in the same category as “falling off the wagon.” It’s a commonly heard phrase that really is meaningless when we look at how people effectively make lifestyle changes when working towards health and wellness goals.

Instead, adopting the mantra of being a “work in PRACTICE” allows you to stay in a positive, forward-thinking, non-perfectionist mindset. Practice is what makes progress. You can’t skip the practice part!

Whether your goal is better focus, fat loss, adopting anti-inflammatory nutrition, or building muscle…start practicing one thing each day, over and over, to work towards that goal.

Calling yourself a work in progress means you’re unfinished. You’re imperfect. You need more work 🤯

None of that is true. So stop shrinking yourself into that box and shift towards a mindset of practice ❤️

It’s *really* difficult to make the concept of “slowing down” sexy.

You’re surrounded by the “no pain no gain” mentality, and have grown up with the idea that more is always better.

Let me ask you this - how long have you been pushing forward, both feet on the gas pedal, doing intense workouts, eating on the go, multitasking ?

I see you. Heck, I AM you 😆

I’m not going to tell you to stop exercising, to stop taking on new projects, to sit on the couch and watch Netflix “to relax”. That’s not you, and that’s okay.

➡️➡️➡️Try these THREE simple “slow it down” tips in your day and day like and watch how things like bloating, anxiety, fatigue, brain fog, and plateaus in the gym start to become a distant memory.

1️⃣ GYM: Stop combining your weight training with jumping jacks, treadmill lunges, or whatever else the new “cool” thing is. Lean muscle is the result of consistent routines, muscle memory, and progressive overload. Not fancy, but the results are definitely sexy.

2️⃣ FOOD: Watching someone almost choke on their food they’re inhaling? Not sexy. Enjoying every last bite of your delicious meal that you GET to have, and not having burping or bloating after? Yes please!

3️⃣ BREATH: The basis of your nervous system’s ability to regulate itself in all of the situations we put ourselves in daily. It’s an amazing tool, yet most of us don’t actually know how to breathe correctly. It’s free, it’s energizing, it’s powerful ❤️

See? Slow can be sexy! Who’s slowing down this week? 😆