Ashley Mannell, a registered dietitian and nurse practitioner who owns Nourish Health & Wellness, a whole medicine practice in Richmond, touts the importance of good nutrition and stress management for physical and emotional well-being.
Ashley Mannell
She draws from experience: Mannell knows firsthand about the physical and mental toll placed on the body when you’re mired in the grind of day-to-day life and neglect yourself in the process. Juggling an accelerated nursing program at Virginia Commonwealth University while she was raising three children and then, later, as she was running a growing practice, it all caught up with her. “I was always tired, I craved sugar, I was overweight, and I felt like I was in a constant brain fog,” she says.
Mannell, who also has a master’s degree in nutrition, reclaimed her life. She took steps, including a focus on the healing powers of good nutrition, to recover and get back on track. A desire to empower others to optimize their own health "inspired me to go into mind-body medicine," she says.
Like a medical detective, looking for the root causes behind an illness, she develops personalized strategies to help clients in making sound choices for better health. Some factors that she looks at include nourishing food choices, healing the gut (which regulates the immune system), adequate sleep and stress management. While there is no blanket solution for everyone ("We are all biochemically individual," Mannell says), here are five of her recommendations for better health (check first with your doctor regarding any changes in diet or health practices).
Whole Foods
Give your gut what it needs, minimally processed food, and cut refined sugar in your diet. That may help reduce inflammation, which may benefit your immune system. "Eliminating all added and refined [processed] sugars from your diet is one of the most impactful nutrition changes you can make to your health starting right now," Mannell says. "And when people physically start feeling better then that translates into emotional well-being."
“When you start eating [less processed foods] that are whole, you start absorbing the nutrients and inflammation goes down. Optimizing gut function is really important.”
Eat the Rainbow
Naturally colorful foods, including carrots, kale, red cabbage and beets, are good for you, and the more colors you consume, the more diverse your diet. The gut microbiome benefits from a colorful plate because you’re introducing a variety of phytonutrients, beneficial compounds that help support the liver in detox and support the gut. "That is really important for two reasons," Mannell says. "The diversity in your produce versus the quantity impacts gut health. So if you’re eating a pound of broccoli and a pound of carrots every day, you’ve got the quantity, but that's still not as healthy as eating something red, something yellow, something blue, and having the diversity.”
Mind and Matters
Psychoneuroimmunology is a health field related to the connection between the mind, the nervous system and the immune system. Mannell says one tool that boosts this connection is meditation. It changes the brain, she says, adding that she uses it to keep healthy and balanced. Beyond meditation, there is a need to go beyond ourselves to find and develop real interactions and relationships. Even as we’re all connected via technology all the time, we are still isolated, Mannell says. “What I’m finding in the groups I lead is people are really craving community and connection again," she says.
Sleep Well
Prioritize a good night’s sleep, about seven to eight hours each night. Poor or inadequate amounts of sleep have negative consequences on your health, since sleep deprivation may trigger inflammation. Get to sleep by 10 p.m., so that you can benefit from deeply healing slow-wave sleep that helps strengthen the immune system, restores energy, and promotes growth and repair in your tissues and bones, Mannell says.
Know Yourself
History doesn’t have to repeat itself, and being aware of past emotional stresses in your history may help you heal.
"What’s important for people to understand is that the way they’re feeling now physically — the stage may have been set early on," Mannell says. "When you have the stress response activated when you’re young — say you’re growing up with an alcoholic parent, or seeing domestic violence, or anything that makes you be in that fight-or-flight mode — you're releasing stress hormones. When that starts earlier on, it tends to be very inflammatory for your body."
You can assess your past stress with an Adverse Childhood Events (ACE) questionnaire, available through the website of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.
“Knowing your ACE score can help you make sense of some of the mental and physical health symptoms you may be experiencing as an adult,” Mannell says.
