Jay Shetty & Mona Sharma ON Don't Let Stress Turn Into Disease

Are you just treating the symptoms while ignoring the root cause of your suffering?

In this On Purpose episode, Jay Shetty welcomes a globally recognized expert, Mona Sharma, whose work centers on transforming vitality by combining ancient wisdom with modern science. She is a nutritionist, entrepreneur, and corporate wellness strategist who creates personalized health blueprints for high-performing individuals. She believes we are our own healers, and her approach guides clients to reconnect with their bodies' innate ability to heal through stress resilience, holistic practices, and nutrition.

A Holistic Approach

Jay Shetty noticed that modern medicine often isolates organs and symptoms and doesn't always offer a holistic health approach. Mona Sharma's work focuses on linking ancient health wisdom with modern medicine while providing individualized healing strategies to her clients. She explained that those who seek her help are often ready to unlearn what they knew about health and open to a more comprehensive approach.

Mona Sharma explained that conventional Western medicine trains doctors to treat the symptoms without uncovering their origin. While she uses modern techniques to understand her patients' complaints (e.g., comprehensive blood panels, cortisol and genetic tests, MRIs), she also asks deeper questions to understand their limiting beliefs and core values around healing.

She told Jay Shetty that she underwent her own healing journey, which started at the ashram. There, she realized that a hardcore physical protocol failed, and that she needed deeper work to resolve her physical symptoms.

The Corporate Burnout

Before becoming a healer, Mona Sharma worked in the corporate cosmetic world, which eventually led to her burnout. She suffered from digestive issues and developed Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), and doctors warned her that she might never have children. The symptoms included severe heart palpitations that made exercise nearly impossible.

Mona Sharma told Jay Shetty that she wasn't interested in uncovering the root cause when she was in her 20s; she only wanted a quick fix because her life was too busy and hectic, and she couldn't afford to put it on hold. Cardiologists diagnosed her with atrial tachycardia, extra electrical valves beating in her atrium. The medication for this condition was a beta-blocker, which caused her to gain 45 pounds. The weight gain and lethargy from medication led her to lose all the excitement to live, and she started to feel overwhelmingly sad.

Two Failed Heart Surgeries

When she was only 23, Mona Sharma underwent her first catheter ablation heart surgery; it involves inducing palpitations using caffeine and adrenaline, locating the electrical valve, and burning it off. Mona Sharma described the process as feeling like an explosion in her chest. Yet when she woke up the next morning, the palpitations were still present.

Then, Mona Sharma had to undergo a second surgery, and felt her life flashing before her eyes. The doctors located a second and a third site for an ablation, but it would have been extremely dangerous to proceed. She felt trapped and helpless, wondering if this was what life would look like from now on. She told Jay Shetty that, in that moment, she realized she needed to uncover the root cause because a quick fix was no longer working.

Healing at the Ashram

Growing up, Mona Sharma's parents (Indian father and Danish mother) took her to an ashram in Quebec, where she did yoga and meditation camps, ate vegetarian food, and focused on the community. But it was only after the health issues that she returned to an ashram to seek healing.

Mona Sharma became a yoga and meditation teacher in the Sivandana ashram, then a Reiki master, a holistic nutritionist, and studied Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). She told Jay Shetty that she initially studied to alleviate her own pain. She also understood how hardcore exercise and diet, coupled with a hectic corporate life, played a crucial role in her health decline.

Mona Sharma healed after she applied the practices she learned in the ashram; her heart palpitations nearly vanished, she lost the extra weight, and she felt energized, calm, clear, and happy. This is when she decided that healing was more than treating symptoms, but it required a deeper understanding of the individual's situation.

Unregulated Nervous System

When we feel pain, the initial instinct is to take the easy path and pop a pill, Jay Shetty noted. However, Mona Sharma explained that the most common cause of illness is stress itself, which has reached epidemic levels.¹ She claims her doctors failed to ask her about the stressors in her life when her health condition worsened, and they also failed to ask about her nervous system.

Mona Sharma spent most of her life with a dysregulated nervous system. She explained that it has three stages, according to polyvagal theory²:

1. Safety, Rest, Digest: A state of calm, where digestion and sleep are optimized.
2. Activation (Fight, Flight, Freeze): This occurs during big projects or daily events.
3. Overwhelm or Shut Down: When living in fight or flight all day, people might shut down (e.g., drinking alcohol and watching Netflix); this mimics the safety phase but only shelves the stressors to be dealt with later.

Hyper-Vigilance, Trauma, and Chronic Stress

In the corporate world, Mona Sharma was compensated for her high-functioning hyper-vigilance; she kept chasing opportunities that pumped her adrenaline. She told Jay Shetty that trauma is nothing but the way our nervous system metabolizes an experience.

While obvious trauma is triggered by events such as abuse, it can also appear in more subtle ways, such as being humiliated or teased as a child. Mona Sharma explained that if these emotions are not processed, every similar interaction in later life will trigger the body to relive the initial painful experience.

The body's automatic response is to shift into fight/ flight/ freeze mode consistently, because it cannot regulate emotions by itself. Mona Sharma helps her clients recognize their hyper-vigilant state, which they often wear as a badge of honor, mistaking it for success. She told Jay Shetty that the goal of her approach is to return them to the parasympathetic nervous system, so that healing can start. In this state, the immune system is primed, and digestion functions optimally.

Finding the Right Dose of Stress

Mona Sharma urges the listeners to examine how taxing they interpret their stress. When someone views everything through a so-called yellow lens, they will perceive normal events as stressful, too. In this case, one may need coaching to understand that they don't need to be stressed in every situation.

However, stress isn't always bad, she told Jay Shetty. There are instances when a healthy cortisol spike³ in the morning fuels drive, ambition, and motivation. Yet living too long in a sympathetic state causes cortisol to spike at the wrong times, like waking you up in the middle of the night, worrying. Mona Sharma suggests asking yourself whether you feel happy and productive despite your stress; your answer will indicate whether your stress is the good kind.

Visualization and Breathing Techniques

Mona Sharma told Jay Shetty that, when working with high performers who constantly feel overwhelmed, the first step is awareness. They need to acknowledge that the current state is unsustainable and that it's essential to implement course corrections. Symptoms such as anxiety, digestive issues, poor sleep, muscle aches, low energy, or brain fog are signals from the body that mustn't be ignored.

Mona Sharma shared some strategies that can help change your state:

• Breathwork: Taking long, deep breaths immediately helps, and techniques like box breathing are particularly helpful.
• Mindfulness and Movement: Practicing meditation, going for a walk, yoga, and journaling.
• Visualization (Best Self Snapshot): This is a powerful NLP modality.

Mona Sharma guides her patients to envision their most optimal health, feeling joyful, with perfect digestion. She claimed that by visualizing this clearly and making it feel real, a physiological shift occurs and the body moves away from stress. She shared with Jay Shetty that it works best in the morning, when the mind is the quietest.

The Gut-Brain Axis

Ayurveda acknowledges the gut-brain connection; stress can trigger bloating, gas, constipation, or diarrhea.⁴ Mona Sharma explained to Jay Shetty that the vagus nerve runs bi-directionally from the brain through the heart and into the gut microbiome and the other way around. Therefore, stressful thoughts instantly impact the gut, and gut issues cause stress.

Additionally, in Ayurveda, digestive health is the foundation of health and disease prevention.⁵ Mona Sharma works with her clients to heal the gut biome, as long-term digestive imbalance leads to inflammation.⁶ When it comes to healing bloating, she suggests starting with the state of eating (not eating while stressed or doing other activities in parallel). Then, you need to improve the quality of food and avoid ultra-processed foods, inflammatory seed/ vegetable oils, and excess sugar.

Mona Sharma told Jay Shetty that a high-protein, high-fiber, savory breakfast can counteract the cycle of insulin stability. She recommends aiming for 30-40 grams of protein first thing in the morning, to stabilize blood glucose, have fewer cravings, improve mood and sleep, and increase creativity.

Change Your Habits, Improve Your Health

If you are prone to anxiety or hypervigilance, Mona Sharma suggests replacing coffee with Chai or mudwater. You don't have to change your habits right away; Mona Sharma told Jay Shetty that you can improve your lifestyle by integrating rituals, which you will eventually incorporate into your personality. You can also try habit stacking, which means merging an existing practice with a new healthy habit.

Sleep is another core pillar in your healing process. Mona Sharma suggests tracking your sleeping habits and hygiene and getting as much data as possible from your wearables.  She told Jay Shetty that it's worth performing a bedroom audit. Sometimes, it can be your environment (e.g., your mattress) that needs to be changed to ensure a good sleep.

And last but not least, it's essential to clean up your environment and create a sacred space or altar at home to anchor you in the highest version of yourself you are becoming. She told Jay Shetty that healing requires changing one pillar at a time, and building confidence, but by integrating modern medicine with ancient traditions, you can open the path toward more awareness and openness about human healing.

More From Jay Shetty

Listen to the entire On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast episode “Celebrity Nutritionist Mona Sharma: Stop Stress Before It Becomes Disease! (Do THIS Before Every Meal)” now in the iTunes store or on Spotify. For more inspirational stories and messages like this, check out Jay’s website at jayshetty.me.

Disclaimer: The practices described are based on personal experiences and preliminary research. They are not medical advice, nor are results guaranteed. Individual outcomes vary, and some claims are still being studied. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before beginning any new health, wellness, or therapeutic practice.

¹Piao X, Xie J, Managi S. Continuous worsening of population emotional stress globally: universality and variations. BMC Public Health. 2024 Dec 23;24(1):3576. doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-20961-4. PMID: 39716139; PMCID: PMC11668040.

²Porges SW. The polyvagal theory: new insights into adaptive reactions of the autonomic nervous system. Cleve Clin J Med. 2009 Apr;76 Suppl 2(Suppl 2):S86-90. doi: 10.3949/ccjm.76.s2.17. PMID: 19376991; PMCID: PMC3108032. 

³Tobias Stalder, Henrik Oster, James L Abelson, Katharina Huthsteiner, Tim Klucken, Angela Clow, The Cortisol Awakening Response: Regulation and Functional Significance, Endocrine Reviews, Volume 46, Issue 1, February 2025, Pages 43–59, https://doi.org/10.1210/endrev/bnae024 

⁴Steer E. A cross comparison between Ayurvedic etiology of Major Depressive Disorder and bidirectional effect of gut dysregulation. J Ayurveda Integr Med. 2019 Jan-Mar;10(1):59-66. doi: 10.1016/j.jaim.2017.08.002. Epub 2019 Jan 15. PMID: 30655102; PMCID: PMC6470311. 

⁵Chouhan, Poona & Rajpurohit, Hemant. (2024). Exploring The Ayurvedic Perspective of Gut Health and Its Correlation with Mental Well-Being. African Journal of Biomedical Research. 6601-6607. 10.53555/AJBR.v27i3S.5626.

⁶Di Vincenzo F, Del Gaudio A, Petito V, Lopetuso LR, Scaldaferri F. Gut microbiota, intestinal permeability, and systemic inflammation: a narrative review. Intern Emerg Med. 2024 Mar;19(2):275-293. doi: 10.1007/s11739-023-03374-w. Epub 2023 Jul 28. PMID: 37505311; PMCID: PMC10954893.