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Welcome to Living Well Daily, the newsletter serving up a daily dose of care designed to support you, cheer you on and remind you, always, just how wonderful you already are.

In Today’s Edition:

🥰Well-Being & Self-Care: Coming Fully Alive: Understanding Your Nervous System
💖Longevity & Wellness: UPF & Cancer Risk
✨Daily Affirmation & Daily Prompt

There are some inevitabilities of life, like
The sun rising, the sun setting and…
You being freaking awesome!

When people hear "nervous system regulation," they often picture a very particular thing: someone serene, soft-spoken, doing slow breathing, maybe near a candle. Calm as the goal. Stillness as the destination.

This is one of the most common misconceptions about what regulation actually is, and it quietly turns a lot of people off, because it sounds like being asked to flatten themselves.

Regulation doesn't mean calm. It means having the full range.

A regulated nervous system can feel grief deeply and not be destroyed by it. It can hold anger without it consuming everything. It can be moved by beauty, rattled by injustice, present for joy, capable of sitting with uncertainty. It can go up and come back down. It can be in hard feelings without being swallowed. And it most certainly can make space for the positive feeling things in life.

What regulation actually gives you isn't less feeling. It's more capacity, the ability to experience the full range of being human without getting stuck at the edges. Without the grief becoming shutdown. Without the anger becoming constant reactivity. Without the stress accumulating until the system breaks down. Without emotion being a scary thing that means something is deeply wrong. Because when you are blocking negative emotions you are likely unintentionally blocking some of the good too.

For people who have spent time in dysregulated states, this distinction matters enormously. If you've ever been told to calm down when you were having a legitimate emotional response to a real situation, the idea of "regulation" might feel like another version of that. It isn't. Your anger is welcome. Your grief is welcome. Your full emotional range is exactly what we're trying to restore access to. And full range makes lots of space for the positive alongside what’s hard.

The goal isn't less of you. It's more of you, able to be present, responsive, and alive in your own life.

✅ Action Step: Name one emotion you tend to push away or distrust in yourself, one that feels too big, too inconvenient, or too much. Just name it. You don't have to feel it right now or know what to do with it. Just let it exist for a moment without immediately trying to manage or suppress it. The goal of regulation isn't to get rid of this feeling. It's to be able to be with it without it running everything.

^{Love, Lola Graham}

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) supply nearly 60% of the calories consumed by the average American adult. A study published by Hunter Scott and colleagues in The American Journal of Medicine analyzed dietary data from over 17,000 U.S. men and found that those who consumed the most ultra-processed foods had approximately 30% higher risk of developing prostate cancer compared to those who consumed the least.

This association held even after adjusting for age, race, smoking, and income. However, they didn’t take into consideration exercise, which is a glaring hole in this study because men who exercise more do tend to eat less UPF. 

So keep this in mind: this is correlation, not causation, but most UPFs are nutritionally poor, so it does make logical sense that higher UPF intake would increase risk due to a greater chance of eating too many calories while not getting enough micronutrients. 

✅ Action Step: notice how much of your diet comes from UPFs and how much comes from whole food sources. Are you happy with the split or would you like to make some shifts?

^{By: Joshua Graham}

^{A supportive prompt to build health, nourishment, and long-term wellness.}

Move your body in a way that feels good instead of performative.

Before you go, let us know what you thought of today’s edition and if there are any subjects you would like us to cover in the future reply to this email and let us know!

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With love and care,

Lola & Joshua | The Living Well Team

^{Living Well Daily is for educational purposes only and is in no way a substitute for professional medical and mental health advice and diagnosis. Please consult a qualified professional for care unique to your needs.}

^{Remember: It’s okay to ask for help. Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 (Canada & US).}