Resonance – Episode 5
Verbatim Transcript
Speaker: Viktoria Levenberg
Stress was like this glory badge for me. I am this high achiever, look at how stressed I am. I really used to be one of those people who would be the first in the office, the last one to leave. My naturopath said, your adrenal health is really struggling. It's like a dry patch of grass waiting to catch on fire. I know that there is a better way.
Alright, in this episode, you definitely wanna stay with me, because today I'm diving into epigenetics. We're diving into that hidden cost of stress that no one actually tells you about. And we start to draw the bridge between how the experiences of your great, great great, great great, great great grandmother may be shaping how you may experience stress today. This one's really juicy, you're gonna love it. Tune in, I'll see you inside.
Welcome to Resonance, a podcast for ambitious, heart-led humans craving more balance, depth and aliveness in their lives. I'm your host, Vik—health coach, yoga teacher, facilitator, and fellow high achiever learning to live in tune with my nervous system, not against it. In this space is here to remind you that you can have it all: the career, the success, the fulfilment, all aligned with your truth. Through honest conversations, expert insights, and practical tools, we'll explore how to work with your body, mind, emotions, and spirit, not against them. And the best part, you don't have to stay stuck in survival mode to get there. Because true well-being is not about being perfect. It's about being in resonance. Let's dive in.
I would love to start today’s episode with just a little moment to take a breath. So wherever you are—if you're walking, driving, folding the laundry, doing the dishes—whatever you are, just keep doing what you're doing. But can you just bring awareness to your breath? Feeling it moving in and out the nostrils. Maybe there's a little sigh. Maybe it even feels nice to give the neck a little stretch side to side. Ah, just noticing what's present for you right here, right now, as we drop into Resonance and today’s topic.
Welcome to today’s episode, and we are going to explore that hidden cost of stress that no one's really talking about. And then we'll also lightly touch on what you can do about it, so that you can move forward in your life towards thriving, towards living in resonance.
So as I was reflecting on what I wanted to share today, you know, life was just kind of screaming out in my face that I'm in it right now. Like I'm gonna be totally transparent with you, I am in this transition point where my stress bucket has been overflowing. And I've been getting signs both from kind of my physical body, my mental state, those around me, and kind of things in life—just the life in about—that are some of those indicators that things just need to take a moment, take a breather, you know. Hold on, just come back to yourself. And so that's why we will dive into this a little bit more today.
Now I want to start off with really what no one's talking about when it comes to stress. Hmm, when you think about it, it's like everyone's—look, I used to firmly believe that stress was just part of life. And being stressed was like this glory badge for me of, I am this high achiever, look at how stressed I am, look at how hard I'm working, look at how many hours I'm doing. You know, like, I really used to be one of those people who would be the first in the office at 7:00am, the last one to leave at 7:00pm. And you know, I wouldn't take a lunch break, or I would eat at my desk. And I almost wore that as like this prideful glory badge of, hey, look at how much I'm burning myself out and how stressed I am, look at how much I care.
Um, yeah. Doesn't sound sustainable, does it? And it wasn't until a little bit later on in life that I started to realize what was driving a lot of this behaviour. You see, um, you may or may not have heard of epigenetics, which is the study of our DNA, and how we have so much information in the cells of our body. And yes, there are certain things that determine how we show up in life, like the colour of our hair, the colour of our eyes, the colour of our skin, how tall or short we are, you know, our complexion, the features on our face. A lot of that is determined in our DNA and in our, um, genealogy. And there are also specific genes that are there, and they are dormant—so meaning they're basically sleeping—and they get activated depending on whether your environment, your lifestyle, your behaviour, your stress levels, whatever it is, make them wake up and come to life.
And that's been something that was like quite an aha moment for me, because I realized that, you know, so many of us tend to blame our family or our heritage or genetics, like oh well, I'm just genetically predisposed to, um, gaining more weight, or like I have a genetic slow metabolism, or whatever it is that we may say. Um, yes, and you still have a choice, right? You can choose to prioritize your sleep and get the rest you need. Or you can choose to stay up late at night watching Netflix and pressing “next” on that episode, or doom scrolling on social media, whatever kind of your vices are, right?
Yeah, so that's kind of just, without nerding out too much, a brief, um, intro into epigenetics. And how is that tying into that hidden cost of stress that no one's talking about? Well, imagine our ancestors, right? If you just go back down the line from your birth parents and your grandparents, and maybe you've heard some stories about your great-great-grandparents, or even just based on, you know, your ethnicity, your heritage, your nationality, you have some kind of sense of what these incredible people—your ancestors—have lived through, and how that may be shaping part of your genetic composition, part of who you are here today.
So, and a really interesting piece that I didn't realize until just recently, is that from a DNA perspective, firstly our genes, um, we can be traced back as far as seven generations back into the past. And we can also, through our choices, through our behaviour, through our lifestyle, influence up to seven generations out into the future. So whatever you're doing right here, right now, you are effectively dealing with 14 generations worth of life. And I just wanna acknowledge, you know, the amount of stress and trauma and overwhelm and burnout and, you know, horrific and beautiful things that your ancestors and your descendants will likely experience. And even if you don't have biological children, there is such a thing as our collective experience. So even if, you know, you choose not to have children, or for some reason you cannot, you are still influencing future generations, believe it or not.
And so tying it back to these 14 generations of experiences—just imagine, especially as you trace back down into your family line. Right, like I'm reflecting right now on my family, and you've got kind of that Soviet Union going on, you've got concentration camps in World War 2, and in World War 1, and whatever else was before that that I may feel quite distant to. And yet I simultaneously understand that my family grew up in kind of that Soviet, Russian region. It's really cold, like it's really hard to survive. They survived on potatoes and vodka basically instead of, um—not so funny, but true. Um, and just how many heartbreaks, how many abuses, how many disappointments, and at the same time, how much joy, how much incredible appreciation of life, and reverence for their family to continue that bloodline down, there is in my DNA.
So, you know, we often tend to feel that we're quite separate and we're all in this on our own, and I'm just doing it by myself, and I'm working hard, and work hard, play hard, let's go get the next thing, achieve the next goal. And we don't stop to realize that there is actually so much more underneath the surface that is also fuelling and influencing that behaviour.
So we've established epigenetics, we've spoken about our genealogy going seven generations back, seven generations forward. And now this is where things get even wilder. When you were in your mother's uterus, right—think about that—you were one of her eggs. So you came from one of your mum's eggs that got fertilized by your father's sperm. Here we are, ah, lucky you, you were one of the fastest, you were the fastest swimmer, unless you're a twin, then one of the fastest. Now if you think about all these eggs that were in your mum's reproductive system, trace back to her childhood, and her being a little embryo, a little soon-to-be human, growing in your grandmother's womb. The egg that you came from was formed in your grandmother's body.
So as females, some of you may or may not be aware of this, but we are born with a specific amount of eggs. And we don't grow more eggs, we don't produce more eggs once we are born. It's just the set amount. And then once we hit puberty, we kind of start losing them if we are cycling one month at a time. And so all of these eggs were produced while we are an embryo of our mothers. Um, and that is basically meaning that you already existed back when your grandmother was pregnant with your mother. And any lived experiences, any stressors, any overwhelm, any overwork, anything that's been making your grandmother feel burnt out—likely, in some way shape or form, as information, as DNA, is visible in your body, mind, emotions, spirit, or all of the above.
And I just find that so miraculous, um, because even in my personal story, like my mom always says that I am so similar to my grandmother. And I didn't really learn or appreciate that much until she passed away, um, two years ago, almost to the day. And yet now that I have learned this, I'm like wow, that makes so much sense. Like I came from her, I was already there. Um, and the reason I am sharing all of this is that some of your stressors, or the ways that stress manifests in your life and then what it causes, may not necessarily even be a direct result of your choices or your personal lived experience. It could be coming from your ancestry, it could be coming from those around you, from your environment. There are so many factors.
Now that we've set this up, I wanted to share a little story with you. So about a year and a half ago, while I was kind of in the midst of this healing journey, trying to figure out what was going on with my skin, like even though I managed to heal myself and through holistic and alternative practices kind of bring myself back into resonance, back into alignment, I really wanted answers. And so I dove quite deeply into a whole lot of different tests and modalities.
I was also coming off of hormonal contraception at the time, because I didn't realize that was actually contributing to some of the symptoms and issues that I was experiencing in my body. And I'll make a side note to myself to definitely dedicate an episode to that because I can go off on a complete tangent, but we're gonna stay on topic here Viktoria. Stay on course, destination cost of stress haha.
Oh okay. So I ended up with my naturopath doing a Dutch test, which is a really comprehensive hormone test. For those of you who have never done it before or you're quite interested in it, it's effectively a series of five urine tests that you do throughout the course of the day. And there are specific things you can and cannot eat just for that day, and a specific amount of water to drink so that their results can be really accurate.
So probably from the sound of this you can already hear how comprehensive it is, and it gives you a really interesting deep dive into your hormones. And listen, the medical world is like still exploring and learning so much about hormones and how these things work and what they're impacted by. And we don't realize how much at the end of the day of the symptoms and the illnesses that we are encountering in our day-to-day lives come back to hormones.
And what is cortisol and cortisone? They are stress hormones, right? It's just like such a mind-blowing realization that a lot of our body mechanisms—basically everything that we do—is regulated by hormones. And yet we live in a world that is just like surrounded by hormone disruptors, right? Like we talking pollution and plastics and pesticides, and I could again get off on a complete tangent here, right?
But I just wanted to bring it back to the fact that you are not the only reason why you may be feeling stressed. Like there is so much around you that may also be playing a role. And so I did the Dutch test. You know, it was an interesting experience because if you know me, you'll know that I drink like three to four litres of water a day, and I only had to limit myself to a litre. So that was a bit of a difficult day for me.
Anyways, I ended up receiving the results and discussing them with my naturopath. And to be honest, what she shared with me on one side kind of felt like a big eye opener, and on the other side, I think there was a part of me that was like oh yeah, I definitely knew that. So let's start with just how my body breaks down oestrogen and hormones.
For those of you that aren't aware, oestrogen is kind of a real dominant hormone in females specifically. But it's kind of like the power hormone—like it grows things, you know, it's action, it's your kind of Beyoncé energy if you wanna think of it that way. And that's also what grows a lot of cancers, for example, in people's bodies. And that's why there's a lot of hormone replacement therapy and things going on with people who have serious chronic illnesses, is to slow the growth of these cancers or whatever they may be.
And so the way that my body likes to break down oestrogen—I quote from my naturopath—she said, "It's like a dry patch of grass waiting to catch on fire." So she had this pretty little graph of what kind of your normal ideal hormone breakdown should look like. And then next to it there was this little graph of my hormones and what that looks like, and you can kind of literally see in there it's the complete opposite of what it should look like.
And she's like yeah, the way that your body breaks down oestrogen puts you—what we see this come up with a lot of females who then develop breast cancer, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and just kind of listing all these potential side effects and illnesses and knock on effects. And I was like oh wow, like I had no idea. And yet there was a part of me I was like oh interesting. Pause, kind of, I'll put a little pin in this and then I'll share a few other things.
We then touched on the HPA axis, which is effectively the connection point between your brain, your pituitary gland, your adrenal glands, and call it your stress health, right? Like your stress hormones. And interestingly again she was saying like yeah, I see you're producing a lot of stress hormones, but your body's not breaking them down. Like your adrenal health is really struggling.
And I was not surprised to hear that at all at the time, because as I shared in the previous episodes, you know, I've been burning myself out. Even though I was doing what I loved and what I do continue to love, I was pushing myself a little bit too far, and that was showing up in my health. Even though it wasn't manifesting as an actual visible or sensational symptom, it was definitely coming through in how my cells were communicating to one another and responding to one another.
And kind of, you know, lots of other results, a lot of discussion at play there. What we then came back to was thank God that you have the lifestyle that you do. You know, like at that point I wasn't drinking, I'm very active, I was eating pretty well, you know, like a lot of plants in my diet. I drink a lot of water, I don't drink coffee, yeah, you know, I sort of moderate my sugar intake—it ebbs and flows with my emotional state if I'm honest—but it's much better than your average, say, like standard American diet, right?
And literally like my naturopath said, thank goodness you are looking after your body the way you are. Because there's all these genetic predispositions, you know epigenetics, right? The way that my body breaks down hormones—she said this is genetic, like this just runs in the family. The way that I process specific hormones one way than say a different person would another. So there are like these, there's this dry patch of grass right in my body waiting to catch on fire.
And with lifestyle choices, with the way that I choose to live my life, the conscious decisions that I make, it's like I'm actually watering that grass. I am turning that dry patch of grass into like this beautiful flourishing green grass so that it doesn't catch on fire, so that there isn't a bushfire. And look, I cannot foresee the future, I cannot guarantee you that I won't manifest any of these symptoms in the future. But what I can tell you right now is that the choices that I am making is what is keeping those specific genes and those predispositions dormant.
And this works as well if you flip the coin the other way around, right? So say I've got all this stress from my ancestors in my body, and then I am continuing to perpetuate that stress with my lifestyle and my overwork and burnout and clearly like the adrenal glands struggling. If I were to keep living like that and continue running down that stress highway, right to burnout Ville, then it's highly likely that I would awaken or stimulate some genes in my body that would effectively then turn into some serious chronic illness.
And I'm pretty sure that that's what happened when I had my massive skin flare up, you know, back in 2023, when I was oozing pus out of my neck and I couldn't—it felt like I was literally burning alive. Like I am pretty sure that my stress bucket was so full, it was overflowing, and that resulted in the body just screaming for help.
So bringing it back to that hidden cost of stress that no one tells you about. See, you know, I could and I likely will talk on this podcast about the obvious things, right? Like the irritability, the fatigue, the lack of want to do anything, dissociation, feeling like you're over it all, being extremely triggered by like the smallest inconveniences. Yes, these are all real costs of stress and they are incredibly important, and they can be quite a lot at the time.
And like, I just really wanted to bring your awareness to the hidden cost of stress that people aren't talking about—is that it could cost you your life. And I'm not saying it just in the sense of your quality of life, right? In the way you feel and live and wanting to thrive. I'm talking about the fact that we don't know what we may or may not be genetically predisposed to.
Like yes, there are tests for some of the common things and the big things, and that's if you're like on top of your health and getting your annual health checks done proactively and all that sort of stuff, right? Which let's be real, like when's the last time any of us did that? I mean, I did mine last week, but that's just because I'm trying to walk the talk, right? It's part of my job as a health coach to do this stuff proactively.
And like you, you don't know. You don't know what may be fostering in your internal system, that every time that instead of spending time with the kids or the dog or the family member you open the laptop at night, you are pouring more water into that stress bucket. You don't know that every time you are tensing up and just holding it all in you when you get that annoying email or that annoying ping from that co-worker that just frustrates you like ugh—and you don't have an outlet for that anger, for that stress, for that overwhelm—that stays inside.
And like with anything, if you keep adding to the stress bucket, eventually it will overflow. And this is why I do what I do. I just want you to be happy. Like I hope that you can hear this in the sincerity of my voice. I want you to thrive.
I know that there is a better way. That we don't need to be exhausted, burnt out, hating everything and everyone, and withdrawing ourselves and sacrificing ourselves and, you know, just pushing away things that bring us joy to what—to work, to achieve some goal only to then go after the next goal. Like, no. There's so much more to life than that.
You can be happier, you can live freely, you can be in resonance. And I know that may seem like a really distant future right now and it may seem like La La Land, but I promise you, if you keep coming back into this space, you keep listening to the stories, you keep hearing the examples, you start to tune your receiver, your little antenna of awareness into this world and this possibility, then you will navigate your path in the best way for you.
You will be thriving. You will finally feel like you can exhale and just ah let it all go. And I'm not saying that you're just gonna drop everything and move to Bali and like be on a retreat 24/7—even though that's lovely, sometimes we need it, it's my dream to facilitate retreats, don't get me wrong.
But if you stay with this work, you'll actually learn how to let life do all of its lifey things and trigger you and stress you out and keep testing you as it does, because that's what we're here for. And you will also know how to come back to yourself, how to come back into resonance, into alignment with what's true, what's in integrity, and what really matters for you.
Thank you so much for being with me here today. I wish you a beautiful day and I'll see you next time.
Alright listen to this—I get asked by overworked, overwhelmed, burnt out high achievers how they can release their stress without sacrificing their productivity all the time. And that is because I have been one of them. I've been able to heal my relationship with stress, all the while increasing my energy and achieve more than ever before at the same time.
So for the very first time ever—I'm so excited about this—I am going to be pulling together and teaching a really small, intimate, select group of students how to detox from stress so that you can say bye-bye to burnout and overwhelm, and instead you can skyrocket your energy levels all the while being more productive than ever before with ease. Doesn't that sound amazing?
So if that's something that you're interested in, if you are done struggling with stress and overworking and you'd like to be a part of this special training, send me a message and let's have a chat. I'd love to see you there.
Thank you so much for tuning into Resonance. If something in today's episode stirred something in you, maybe just take a moment and notice what's resonating and what isn't. No judgment, just awareness. And remember, you're not broken, you don't need fixing. You are just naturally responding to a world that's been a little bit too much for a little bit too long.
And perhaps you feel called to follow the show, leave a review, send this episode to a friend, or text it to a family member. Anything you do will really support this show, and it will be really appreciated. You'll find both links in the show notes below.
And until next time, stay curious, stay kind, and stay connected to your resonance. So much love. Vik. Bye for now.
The views and opinions expressed by guests on Resonance are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of me, Viktoria Levenberg, LVN Health, or anyone working within the LVN Health brand. This space welcomes a diversity of ideas, experiences and stories, and part of Resonance is learning to take what aligns and gently leaving the rest.
Also, while I am a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach and deeply passionate about well-being, this podcast is intended for educational and inspirational purposes only. Resonance does not substitute personalized medical, psychological, or therapeutic advice. Always seek guidance from qualified professionals for any physical, emotional, or mental health concerns.
