The Bathtub Formula for Optimal Health

E75: The simple way to achieve health and vitality without feeling overwhelmed

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I don't have them very often, but once in a while I love luxuriating in a bath with bubbles that cover me like a velvet blanket. 

I get the blend of hot and cold water just right, and the water level edges up - bubbles bubbling ever more - as I slowly submerge into a blissful state of calm and relaxation. 

And then, just as I’m drifting off, a jolt of panic surges when I realise that the bath has overflowed and the floor has flooded.

Yet panic makes way for calm and gratitude for the porcelator in the bathtub. Thankfully there is no flooded floor.

Porcelator + optimal health: the link

What’s a porcelator?

Well, it’s the little hole at the top of a bathtub that's used as a secondary emergency method for draining water before an overflow occurs.

What you might not know is that that tiny device is also key to optimal health.

Over the past few weeks, clients and friends have been telling me about challenges they have been having with their health.

Some are so stressed by the volume and intensity of work they feel at the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Others have been struggling with chronic conditions like IBS, and looking for solutions. 

We often forget about our health until something goes wrong. And then there's a flood of anxiety about how to restore it.

That's where the challenge begins because it is hard to restore optimal health when we're busy, stressed, and overwhelmed about where to start.

The Bathtub Formula for Optimal Health

In this edition of Effortless Thursdays, I'm sharing my Bathtub Formula for Optimal Health.

It's something I use to maintain my own health, but also when something's gone wrong and I'm trying to restore it. It’s something I’ve turned to in managing my autoimmune condition, psoriasis. 

Whilst the formula helps me with psoriasis, I also wake up feeling energised, sleep well, think clearly, and manage life’s daily stressors with an effortlessness that feels impossible, until you actually experience it.

Here's the idea behind the Bathtub Formula for Optimal Health.

Our bodies know exactly how to function in an optimal way. 

If we've picked up a cold, our immune system goes into action. 

If we've lifted some weights, our body adapts and builds muscle.

When we’re functioning optimally, that's when the water level in our bath is just right. And when it is, we can load up our bodies with more. 

We can do HIIT training four times a week

We can survive on a poor night's sleep

We can have a sugar-coated donut.

We can push on with work when we have a cold and dose up on a cold tablet.

These events are equivalent to filling up our bathtub with more water. 

Our bodies can cope, but we get closer and closer to the bathtub overflowing.

Most of the time we don't notice the level of the water rising. Until, that is, it's too late. When the bathtub overflows, the flooding can cause a lot of damage. What our bodies were once able to deal with, suddenly become overwhelming, and a cascade of downstream health issues can occur. That’s what happened with my flare up of psoriasis last July, as I’ll explain below.

So in order to maintain optimal health, our aim is to keep the level of our bathtubs at a level that allows our bodies enough wiggle room to cope with the inevitable, additional stressors and to adapt. 

The ideal level needs to be:

high enough so we can enjoy our bubble baths, but 

not too high that we're close to capacity and at risk of flooding the floor.

Benefits of the Bathtub Formula for Optimal Health

Why I like the Bathtub Formula is that it allows us to become aware that there are many ways to achieve and maintain optimal health. 

There’s not one magic formula, but instead we can see plenty of ways to achieve an optimal level of water in our bathtubs. 

It also takes the pressure off, and opens up possibilities to experiment with and try them out for their effectiveness.

Finally, it allows us to take into account our pre-existing level of bathtub water.

For example, if we’re going through a period at work of high stress, we’re not sleeping well, and we’re feeling run down, it helps remind us that our bathtubs might be approaching capacity and think, instead, about ways of reducing the level of water. 

For example, by pausing on high intensity exercise, or focusing on Eating Real Food.

Bathtub Formula for Optimal Health: Three Principles 

Alongside the idea of our optimal health as a bathtub, there are three specific principles in the formula to help achieve and maintain optimal health and vitality.

1. Fill your bathtub with what's good for you

2. A porcelator won't prevent overflowing if your bathtub fills too quickly

3. You might need to remove the bath plug as a last resort

Let's take each in turn.

1. Fill your bathtub with what's good for you

Fixing a flood is much more difficult than stopping the flooding happening in the first place. So, it's important to fill your bathtub with what's good for you. Here are some ideas that are likely to be familiar to you to help.

Eat Real Food

Sleep well

Find ways to manage your stress

• Clients, family and friends have found Non-Sleep Deep Rest (also called Yoga Nidra) really helpful. 

• Here are two guided NSDR practices you can try:

  • Ally Boothroyd’s Rapid NSDR

  • Andrew Huberman’s NSDR

  • One of the reasons NSDR so powerful is that it flushes out cortisol (a stress hormone) from your system

Since I was diagnosed with psoriasis - an autoimmune condition - at university, I've been able to keep my psoriasis under control - without any steroid creams. The primary way was through Eating Real Food. 

But last July, that approach stopped working, and I had a bad flare up.

2. A porcelator won't prevent overflowing if your bath fills too quickly

Porcelators are designed for emergencies: if you forget to turn off the taps, you won't have a flooded bathroom floor..

But porcelators have a maximum overflow capacity. If there's too much water flowing into the bath, the porcelator won't be able to cope. 

That's what happened when I had my psoraisis flare up last July. Despite years of Eating Real Food and exercising, there was still too much water flowing into my bathtub that wasn't able to escape quickly enough through the porcelator. 

What causes our porcelators to exceed their capacity?

Levels of inflammation that exceed what our body can deal with

Not creating the conditions to allow our bodies to repair, recover and heal in the way they are designed - in other words, overloading our body’s capacity to heal

So what are some common sources of excess inflammation and overloading our body’s capacity?

Not giving our bodies enough time and space to recover after hard exercise, lack of sleep, or stressful periods at work

Piling stressor on top of stressor - eg being stressed at work and not prioritising calming our nervous systems by meditating, or walking outside, or doing an NSDR practice.

Exposure to:

• mould (eg most commonly from water-damaged buildings)

• heavy metals (eg mercury fillings in our teeth)

• chemicals from personal care products and cleaning products (take a look at the EWR list)

• pesticides we ingest from fruits and vegetables

• unnecessary antibiotics (eg from high-intensity, factory-farmed meat) or antibiotics that aren't strictly necessary to treat health conditions

And what about examples of the conditions that allow our bodies to repair, recover and heal?

Getting good quality sleep

Managing stress through practices like meditation, yoga or NSDR

Enjoying social connection - meeting with friends and family

Eating Real Food

Sweating to release toxins, like mould and heavy metals, through sauna and exercise

Our aim here is to keep the level of water in our bathtub at that ideal level by reducing our sources of excess inflammation that overload our body’s capacity, and maximise creating the conditions to allow our bodies to repair, recover and heal.

3. You might need to remove the bath plug as a last resort

Sometimes, even if we're filling our baths with what's good for us, and taking active steps to stay within the overflow capacity of our porcelators, our bodies can say "Enough is enough!!!".

That's what happened with my flare up of psoriasis last July.

After some stool, blood and urine tests, I discovered with the help of my Functional Medicine practitioner that my body had:

Excess mould in the form of Ochratoxin A

Excess yeast in my gut

SIBO (Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth) - in other words, an overgrowth of bad bacteria in the wrong place in my gut

Excess heavy metals

My bath had overflowed, and despite filling my bathtub with what was good for me, and trying to keep within the capacity of my porcelator, my body couldn't cope any more, and this was the result 👇

Fortunately, after three protocols to remove yeast, mould, heavy metals, and SIBO, the symptoms of my psoraisis have disappeared. 

The upshot is that sometimes we do need to give our bodies an extra hand by removing the bath plug and getting to the root causes of what's causing our chronic health conditions.

👉 Over to you!

What insights do you have from this Bathtub Formula for Optimal Health?

1. What steps do you want to take to fill your bathtub with what’s good for you?

2. How might you keep the level of water in your bathtub at an ideal level by reducing your sources of excess inflammation that overload your body’s capacity, and maximising creating the conditions to allow your body to repair, recover and heal.

ps If you’re an entrepreneur, a lawyer or another high-flying professional - who’s looking to connect with your optimal health and experience life that feels effortless, get in touch and let’s have a conversation.

That’s it for this week!

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To your health and success!

Eric