Stressed? Eat This, Not That | Gut Makeover | Chocolates & Ice cream by Dr Marvellous Njoku-Adeleke

Dr. Marvy is back at the annual Stress Management Summit Africa with her signature blend of bold insight and practical science—this time, tackling the one stress-buster you’ve been overlooking: your plate. In this power-packed episode, our lifestyle medicine expert walks us through the gut–brain connection, the hormone havoc of cortisol, and how simple food swaps can turn your body into a stress-resilient machine.

You’ll learn:

• Why chocolate and ice cream are only “feel-good” in the moment (and what to reach for instead)
• The secret superpowers of leafy greens, fatty fish, and fermented foods for hormonal harmony
• How stabilizing blood sugar stops the mood-swing roller coaster
• The 24-hour gut makeover: Why your microbiome pivots on every bite
• Real-life “Jane” case study: From caffeine-fueled chaos to calm competence in just two weeks
• Bonus hacks for all-day energy—no coffee or energy drinks required

Whether you’re juggling deadlines, diapers, or both, Dr. Marvy shows you how to use nutrition as your fiercest ally against chronic stress. Tune in and start feeding your resilience today!

Transcript

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Thank you. Once again. Good evening everyone. Thank you so much, doctors in the, I'm happy to be sharing this with you today and, I want us to look at a very important topic. Really, when we talk about stress. Most people just think about, the headache they're having, thinking about sleep, thinking about so many other things, exercise. But really do people think about food and how food affects, their stress levels and how their stress levels affect. So we are looking at the link between stress and nutrition and the science of how food affects stress, and we break it down into what you should eat to help you fight stress, what you should not eat in the sense that, or things that you should limit or reduce if you're having issues with stress. In fact, basically everybody, because stress is a normal way of, it's a normal part of life. So we all encounter stress all day, but the problem is how the body responds to stress, right? So you want to make your body resilient to the effects of stress. Then we'll look at the gut, brain, and brain connection. How is your gut, that's your digestive system, related to your brain and practical and eating, eating tips for stress relief. Alright, so let's talk about stress and nutrition. This can lead to hormonal imbalances because hormones are, hormones govern the body. Basically in my, in my words, they are under, they are just behind the scene basically running things. Hormones affect everything, right? Different hormones affect different parts of your body. And for so many people, hormones or hormonal imbalances are usually missing link for many issues that they're having. But when it comes to stress, certain hormones will be affected, and it'll be out of balance. Even stress, there's a stress hormone called cortisol. You'll have a lot of issues and all of them will boil down to chronic stress. And the problem with stress is that over time inflammation would affect both your mental and physical health, right? So you are going to start having breakdown of the mind, depression, anxiety, and all of those kind of issues. Physical health, high blood pressure, diabetes. Alzheimer's and so many other issues. All this can be traced back to inflammation, imbalances and chronic stress. So this is a very important topic that we're discussing this evening, and nutrition plays a huge role in how your body responds. To stress. So it's not the stress you are going through that matters, it's how your body's adapting to it or how your body's responding to it that matters. If your body responds the way it's supposed to, you adapt to the stress and you'll get over it and you'll be fine. But if your body does not respond to the stress adequately, you are going to end up with, issues, with, both your mind and your body. So it is a bidirectional. Relationship food affects stress levels and stress levels affect food or food choices. So let's talk about, different kinds of food that we eat, right? So let's talk about junk food. For many people, junk food is what they would crave when they're, stressed out. So if you agree with me that whenever you are on that enormous amount of stress, your brain will tell you. Eat chocolate gets some ice cream. In fact, it's become a norm in movies that when somebody is feeling bad or has a bad day at work, the friends or the family will say, gets some ice cream. So it has become, accepted in society that, ice cream solves a lot of problems. Chocolate solves a lot of problems. Unfortunately, these foods are high in sugar and fat, right? So they might provide temporary relief. But your body would process it in a very negative way, which I'll be showing later, and it should now worsen your stress long term. So it's like you are feeling better today. However, you're not giving your body the tools it needs to adapt to that stress long term. On the other hand, foods that are well balanced, that are rich in nutrients. Who support the neurotransmitter production. So basically, it just means that there are certain chemicals that your body needs to make it feel good, to help it, to adapt to changes, to stress, right? So when you eat good food will nourish your body to give your body what it needs, nutrient it needs. To produce those chemicals that will make your body adapt because you see what you need in a stressful, time or even to cope with normal stress of life is not just temporary relief, although that feels good in the moment you want your body to be able to cope with whatever life throws at you without breaking down. You want your body to be able to, because you know the people that when they go through. Stress. They break down for three, four days. Their body was not able to handle that stress, right? So the immune system breaks down because stress is linked to immune system, right? So the person not able to, stave off things that ordinarily their body were able to fight, but because they're under stress and their body is not. Coping, all of a sudden, anything that passes, they catch, or just the body just breaks down and just needs to rest, and they just need to lie down and take some days off. So you need to eat so the body can produce the chemicals that it needs, right? To create the environment or the, the strength, the resilience to combat stress when it comes, and even the daily stress that your body undergoes. Of course hormonal balance, which is very important. And we'll be discussing that shortly. So we'll talk about the God Brainin axis. The gut is a digestive system. There are things living there, there are bacteria living there, there are good bacteria and they can, there can also be bad bacteria, but there are very good bacteria living in your gut. And that good bacteria controls the way you feel. It is so amazing because the gut is called the body Second brain. And we underestimate how, okay, let me give an example. You know how when you are stressed out and all of a sudden your tummy starts starting, have you wondered what is the connection between how I'm feeling and in my mind and my belly? Why do you feel that sudden or to use a toilet when you get bad news or something? That is the God brain connection, and I'll be explaining that. Eventually, so it influences your mood and your stress responses. Alright, so what are the foods that heal? Let's start with that. Alright? We're not talking about just temporary relief. You want to build your body to be an adaptive system that no matter what comes, your body can handle it. Leafy greens, vegetables. They are rich in magnesium. Magnesium helps to regulate cortisol. Cortisol is the stress hormone and also reduces blood pressure. It's so important. They also contain folates, which aids in dopamine production. Dopamine is a hormone. I talked about how hormones rule the body or how they govern the body. This would help you to regulate it and bring it under control. Then for it will help you to produce dopamine, which is another hormone that'll make you to feel good. So in spite of what is going on, your body's releasing dopamine because you know that will help you to feel good dopamine also controls pressure, motivation, action. Stress instead of you to go and crawl and be like, oh, there's this deadline coming, but I'm paralyzed. I can't do anything. My brain can't function. If you've been nourishing your body, dopamine will kick in and instead of the stress to ground you, it motivates you towards action. That is what a powerful place to be because the more you hide from what you're supposed to do, the more stressed you are, and you agree with me that happens, right? You keep hiding from that deadline. The closer it comes, the more scared you are. The more stressed you are. So we have enough dopamine kicking in, it's pushing you towards action and the stress level will drop. Example, our Nigerian has pumpkin leaves, spinach, kale, lettuce and so on. We have so many of them, a four euro and you a Forte, and all of that fatsy fish. These are high in Omega-3 fatty acid. Yes, they reduce inflammation. I mentioned inflammation earlier. This is so important. Inflammation is at the root of so many illnesses and it's very closely linked to stress also. The stress that comes on you from any external issues and daily stress everybody's exposed to. So when you eat fatty fish, it helps to, it gives you Omega-3 fatty acids, which will help to reduce inflammation and regulate your body's response to stress. Then this will reduce depression and anxiety example, macro salmon, sardines, and the fatty fish help us. With Omega-3 we want to use carbohydrate as much as possible. Choose minimally processed. Carbohydrates that still have their fiber. I talked about the gut microbiome. I'm gonna talk about it. As we go on fiber, those good bacteria that your body needs, they, feed on fiber. So when you're giving them food that does not contain fiber, they start dying. And when they start dying hard, you start having serious problems. The where you have healthy bacteria in your gut, my goodness, the, it helps you, to control stress. It helps your mind, how you feel. It helps to control your immune system. It helps so many things, diseases, and, will be far from you. There's something called prebiotics and probiotics. Prebiotics are the food that the, organisms feed on, right? Probiotics are organisms, basically that's, healthy organisms that are in your system. So the fibers are prebiotic, so the whole cap'cause of the fiber will stabilize your blood sugar. When your blood sugar is not stabilized, when you eat junk food, your blood sugar swings up and down. Which will be giving mood swings. If you have children around and you give them sugar, for example, you find that they're very hyperactive. After a while they crash, then they're not irritable, then they sleep off and all of that. It's called the sugar rush. We adults have the same thing, but it manifests. I take ice cream, I feel good, I'm happy. Then you'll crash. Is your blood sugar shrinking like a pendulum and it's terrible. It. Leads to a whole lot of other and ve fat, all of that. So you want to stabilize on blood sugar so that you stop having mood swings up and down. It starts with your food. Example of this, whole caps, beans, chick pea, rot or steel caught oats instead of the instant oat. And many of us is go for rot. Oats, you might not really find steel, got oats very much in an environment where you can buy road oats, right? Sweet potatoes, yam or fat rice, brown rice, quinoa, whole wheat, and so on. So the next, group of foods that are very good for us, unaid foods, I talked about probiotics. Alright. Fermented foods give us probiotics. They contain probiotics. They're high in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. So they enhanced gut health. So is combination of fermented food, which are reaching probiotics and fiber, which are prebiotics and is a wonderful combination, right? So this will help to control anxiety and stress. Example, kimchi, yogurt, pap, local beans for that, fermented oil, beans seed and so on. Foods that are fermented are extremely good for us. Berries, they're antioxidants are combat ulcerative stress. They are low sugar. Then tea. Caramel tea, which is very soothing and is known all over the world for helping people who have issues with sleep because it comes to mind. Green tea, matcha black tea, all of this, in the uk, every small thing, they want some tea. Whenever they're dealing with any, issues at the end of the day, stress, whatever. They take some tea, and I used to see it as a British thing. But recently I was under a lot of stress and I started taking tea. I was, lemme just try this thing. I told my husband a few days ago, I said, this thing works. So you know, you just be having, your head will be full like this after a cup of tea. You are just feeling so calm and the next thing you know you just can't see. But I'm like, no wonder this will been doing this thing for centuries. It works. But if you're having issues with the caffeine. Caffeine doesn't really affect me, but affects many other people. So you can go for the caffeinated tea, you can go for green tea, which has less, caffeine and then caramelo peppermint tea. And there's so many other teas that are very good. So other foods that are very good for stress. Garlic eggs not, and seeds. Dark chocolate cocoa. That chocolate is fantastic. It contains, migration, which talked about earlier, right? It's very good for stress, but please, it's not a license to go and to binge on chocolate. And also, when you are choosing chocolate, please choose 70% and above cocoa. Don't choose milk chocolate. Don't choose 30%. That one is just sugar that your company to your system, right? So choose 70%, 80%, even a hundred percent. You can buy unsweetened cocoa as well and take it, in place of. Avocados wonderful for stress. Other, there are hers like, ashwagandha, ULA that are also, that they, they're called adapto genes because they help your body to adapt to stress. So you can also get that into your regular, diet, but you also want to be careful to not overdo it. Many of them do not have research backing them for long-term use, so maybe use them when you are going through a, hard time to help you adapt to stress, and then you stop after some weeks. All right, so what are the foods that drain you? Sugary snacks, sugar, right? Hydrates, they lack fiber and essential nutrients, so you do not want to be eating a lot of them. You want to really limit their use because they affect how your body adapts to stress. You want to build your body to be able to adapt to whatever life throws at it, right? So you want to reduce sugary snacks and auto processed carbohydrates in your meal. They cause blood sugar spikes. They cause spikes and crashes, which will make it to be imitable. So you're feeling good. One minute, next minute to irritable. They also raise the stress hormone as the cortisol. The content trans fat, which will trigger inflammation. Trans fat, has been banned, but unfortunately it still features in a lot of the processed foods. It should be 0% in meals, but unfortunately. Okay. All this junk food contains grass fat, right? So its inflammation and which puts the body under stress. Cookies, cakes, put potato chips, so that as coke, and the rest are all sugar, snack and auto processs, carbohydrates, white bread, pasta, and so on. So you want to limit their use. And even when you want to eat white bread, for example, you want to add other things you know to it like eggs, avocado. Vegetables. You want to pack it so that it doesn't go in and heat your, blood sugar and cause a spike. So you want to pad it up, but limit the same with pasta, right? You want to add vegetables, beef, chicken, all those kind of things to limit how it heats, your blood sugar, but limit use. Alright, so the next, caffeine. Many people cope with, their daily load of, let's say, many work with caffeine. They wake up in the morning, they don't sleep well at night, they take caffeine and it keeps them going throughout the day. Unfortunately, caffeine stimulates overstimulates, the body stress response. So you are going through stress, you're taking caffeine to cope with it, and you find that you are now. Over stimulating the body. It also disrupts sleep, especially if it's taken after 3:00 PM for example. And caffeine can come in different forms, right? So if you're taking it for whatever reason, it might affect your sleep. Unfortunately, like a vicious cycle, when your sleep is affected, your body goes under even more stress because sleep is extremely important for stress control. Sleep is your body stress control mechanism. So when you take something to help you and it's now disrupts your sleep, you are just, in fact, you are going to wake up the next day worse than you were the previous day, right? So it just keeps going like that. There's also something called caffeine crash. You take caffeine, it spice you up, you feeling good, then you crash later in the day. Tiredness, inability, loss of focus. You have a memory fog. We start feeling foggy. For most people, when that hits them, they take even more caffeine to, and so on and so forth. So that creates a dependence on caffeine. Without it, you can't function. Coffee, soda drinks like Coke, energy drinks, black tea, all these content, caffeine. I talked about black tea. And you want to limit the use of this in your diet. Alcohol. Many people, especially men and women. The other day I was not give that example, but I saw my neighbor, a lady, and older lady train away like eight bottles of vodka. I was like, wow, mama had a good time. Alcohol, many people take it to cope with what they're going through. Unfortunately, it disrupts sleep patterns and can. Make depression worse. So it take you to feel better and it makes you forget for some seconds, for some minutes, for some hours, but it can worsen depression, right? And even put you under more stress. Because even when you are now drunk, you can even do something that will now worsen your problem, right? So your actions are affected. Excessive drinking, disrupt the body's natural ability to cope with stressful situations. I said earlier we want to build a machine that can cope. So when you're not sad over drinking, it starts to disrupt how your body would normally adjust and adapt. And then this will also promote anxiety and chronic stress. So let's talk about the gut-brain connection quickly. The gut and the brain communicate constantly via hormones, nerves, and immune signals. There's a hormone called serotonin, right? Is the body's mood boost. Is it really a hormone or n transmitter? We fast for both, but it's produced primarily in the gut. You can imagine that something that is your body's mood booster, you would think it'll produce more in the brain, right? No is your guts produces those micros. Microbiome just all this is talked about earlier, they're the ones producing it. So when you are not eating what you should eat, you find out that your mood will always be down. Research has shown that people who eat a lot of junk food are prone to depression and anxiety. This is why. But when you're feeding your gut very well, they're happy. So they're producing your, your mood booster they're producing will make you be happy. Only 10% is made in the brain. So this shows you how important your digestive system is, that what you eat affects your mind. God's health affects how your brain reacts to stress and emotions. So when you are feeding well, you find out that you are out there. People that are doing very well. You can see the discipline because discipline in diet usually reflect on, in your looks. Fun enough. And do you find that people are, they have steady mood, they control what they eats and it's something that, you know, if you're in the workplace, if you're in business, you need to start looking at what you're eating because it can give you a competitive edge over, others when you are steady, where your health is steady, your stress, you can manage anything that comes, you can go long hours because you are not up and down. You are steady. It's very important. So where your gut is inflamed or imbalanced from poor diet, from stress, from illness, it can lead to mental health problems like anxiety and depression. So this happens through something called leaky guts, which allows, so leak gut is basically when there's inflammation. Let's say your gut is a tissue, right? So it's supposed to digest food, and then it has small soft holes that not let up nutrients into the blood gradually. Then the nutrients will not go and do what they're supposed to do, like releasing energy to your brain, to all the organs and all of that. But when you not have inflammation because you're not eating well, because you're stressed, there's some that cause leaky gut, those tiny holes in the. Gods now expand and become larger. So food that should not pass now begins to pass, right? So things that are bigger, things that are not yet, they've not gotten to the point where they should be released into your blood may maybe not digested enough, they start going into your blood, then they not cause even more inflammation because now the body is seeing things that should not be, these things are not flying around. So it, and even some of them are harmful, right? And there's now even more inflammation. What your body, your brain. So leaky gut will cause the immune system to release chemicals. Now, when those things now are rise to your bloodstream, your body sees them as the enemy system, as foreign materials, things to attack, then the weather immune system will not release chemicals to fight those things coming out from your gut because these are not supposed to be unfortunately. Those chemicals will not travel to the brain and trigger mood issues, right? So these things that are causing inflammation can now link link to memory loss, anxiety, depression. It's a very fascinating topic and one of my favorite topics in the world but please pay attention to your gut. It's extremely important. Probiotics, which are the good bacteria we talked about earlier. They can reduce anxiety and depression. This is proven by science. When your bacteria in your gut is happy, you'll be happy. They help to restore gut balance. They reduces inflammation we're talking about and improve your brain function in both animal and human studies. Probiotics worked as well as some antidepressants. You can imagine that for people who have depression, improving their mood and lowering stress hormones like cortisol, fermented foods are rich in probiotics. We talked about this earlier. Your gut bacteria, can change within 24 hours based on what you eat. If you make the change today, by tomorrow, there's already a change. So you can, and this change can happen positive or negatively. Within 24 hours, your gut bacteria can start to change and start doing those bad things I talked about earlier, based on what you eat. But you can also make a reverse and. Start eating something nice and just four hours, there's a change, right? Diets high in sugar. Processed foods are low in fiber, promote unhealthy gut bacteria. I talk about this why fiber reach whole foods feed the good bacteria. These are called prebiotic. So that combination of probiotics and prebiotics. Want to be right. Alright, now I'm gonna use an example, run through an example, a case study to show you how you can begin to transform your stress through diet. And this is a lovely lady. We're going to use it. Let's call her Jane, 37 years old Jane. She's the marketing executive in Lagos. If you lived in Lagos you understand what I'm trying to say. She has early mornings. She has to leave very early to get to the island. She lives on the mainland. There's traffic, so she has to go late night. She comes back home very tired, late at night. So she doesn't really sleep well, just sleep very late and wake up very early. She's on Corona mixed stress because of her job targets, right? All these banks, God had missed your bonus. She has a very used target and she has to commute. There's a lot of stress on this quality. She's not sleeping well. She's dependent on coffee. She's always carrying a flask, of coffee early in the morning. She's drinking it on her way to work throughout the day. She's, taking more coffee, even energy drink just to keep up because she has a long day ahead of her. All right, so was intervention for gene meal planning because one problem beyond under stress is that it affects your diet. We talked about that earlier. Number one, your body will be craving sugar and if you are under stress. Due to job, demands and you will not really be eating well apart from the fact that your body's craving sugar. Because when you are under stress and a body's telling you eat something fast, it's something to flood, with sugar so that you can have a high. And people like that many times feel their belly with junk food and rather have to have a proper meal. So what will help Jane? Number one, meal plan. Plan your food. The truth is that you eat what is available no matter how you want to do your resolutions from today to tomorrow, it's what is your heart you're going to eat? It's what you have. If you are craving sugar and you corn, or apple, you eat apple. Why? Apple is sweet, but it's a better kind of sugar than Fanta. So if you plan your meals, you don't get to the point where you're even very hungry. Once you are hungry, you eat the people that they don't have anything to eat. So they will walk and walk and walk until when they're not about to faint. Anything that they see is food. So plan your meals. It helps. Number two, colorful plate. The more colorful your plate is, the v, in a variety of nutrients that will feed your gut. So you have red apple, you have Greenwood tables, you have yellow. What's yellow pepper. You have, different things. So plate is looking fine. A plate is looking great. That's variety of, variety of. Nutrients. Also hydration, more water, less caffeine. So Jay needs to step down on her, coffee intake and energy drink, and start drinking more water. Mindful eating. She needs to be mindful of what she's eating and how she's eating it, right? So no careless eating. Somebody will tell you, I'm not eating this morning, doctor. But if you calculate everything inside the amount, it's more than 2000 calories. I've not eaten anything. For eating plantain chips, you've picked,'cause you're peckish, you are having cravings all over the place. And that can be linked to both stress, poor sleep, and blood sugar swinging up and down. So incorporating leafy greens, whole foods that we talked about, fatty fish and fermented foods into her diet is what, Jane needs to do now or what she's doing. Let's doing sleep hygiene. So Jane now needs to start planning her sleep. There's no more careless. Coming back from work and they pressing her phone. She whenever sleep no. She comes back, she has her bath. No scream. She turns it off. She keeps it. She's now more conscious of the, of getting up to seven hours of sleep so that she wakes up the next day refreshed exercise and meditation. She comes back, she sits in one place, whether in the night or the next morning, just for her brain to come to, to be calm and to face the next thing. So what is your result of this intervention? The outcome? Reduce anxiety levels. She's facing the day now like a bus. There's no more running up and down before the day even starts. Hey, oh my, no. She has packed her meal. She has meditated. Her brain is now intact. She knows what to do. She knows where to go. She's thinking straight. She's sleeping better, so in two weeks, her whole life has changed. No more dependence on coffee. She has her craving, has come under control. She's sleeping better, so no need to pick me up with coffee. She's healthier and she's stronger. All right. Now, that was actually the end of my presentation, but I promised you in the invitation video? I want to show you how to stay a lot all day without caffeine, coffee and energy drinks. So just run through this in the minute and have just one minute. Number one, when you wake up in the morning, get some sun exposure or bright light if you are waking up. Too early for the sun. Get bright light. 30 to 60 minutes of waking up. Extremely important. You want to reset. I talked about hormones, right? You want to set your body's internal clock to know that it's morning, wake up. This is important. If you do not get exposure to sun or bright light in the morning, it's going to affect your sleep. The next night is so powerful, Bright light, it'll boost your serotonin which is extremely important for you, and regulate your internal clock. Drink water, either one glass or two glasses. That's two 50 to 500 meals of water within 30 minutes of waking up. If you're someone that doesn't really like taste of water, add lemon, pinch of sauce, whatever. Dehydration will make you to feel tired first thing in the morning. Eat a blood sugar friendly breakfast. You don't want your blood sugar swing it up and down. How do you do that? Enough protein, fiber as whole foods and healthy fat like avocado fish to stabilize your blood sugar. Stable blood sugar means stable energy and less cravings. So you are stable. Move your body early day. It can be something very simple. You can squat while brushing your teeth. I know you don't have time. Just let your body start moving it. Just let things start flowing right. So morning light and movement will help ate the circadian rhythm. And increase a alertness. Take breaks, breaks every two to three hours while you're at work. Move around. Breathe in. Breathe out. More oxygen will go to your brain. It means your brain will be more fired up. Perfume more refreshed. Breathing is underrated. You need to start breathing more deeply. It'll help to boost clarity and reduce stress. Number six, power naps. During the day, if you're somebody that your energy level drop, you can just bow your head two to 3:00 PM and just take very short naps. Not too much. There's a research that NASA did. With power naps, where every of their staff, take Power Naps 26 minutes, I think every day. It helps them when they wake up as if they just woke up the next morning. It's, a research, actually, you can read about it online. They wake up feeling energized. These are beyond nutrition, but I had to add that as a bonus for you so that you know that. Caffeine, right? So mission is a powerful tool in managing stress. Prioritize whole nutrient dense foods. Be mindful of foods that may, make stress worse. Include other lifestyle changes like restorative sleep. Make sure you're sleeping well low. It's extremely important for you. Small consistent changes can lead to significant improvements. Start today. Start more. Keep going. Thank you very much. Oh, beautiful. Oh, thank you so much. On Instagram, my, my handle is as Dr. Maby. Ask Dr. Maby. You can follow you on Instagram or Facebook. My name marvelous. And then we can join my community. Asbi community is free anyway. So where I teach, it's easier for me to teach, in that community than just if I'm only on social media. So that's how you can reach me. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.