You have two adrenal glands at your back, just above your kidneys.
by Dr. Sara Gottfried, M.D.
saragottfriedmd.com
Do you wilt in the face of stress? Feel more anxious when you have to step up your game? Think you might be burned out?
It may not be you – it may be your hormones. Specifically, your stress hormones. Figure this out now, before you hit menopause, and your forties will be so very much easier. And, believe me, I speak from personal and professional experience.
Do you know if you have a problem with your adrenal function? Our adrenals sit like hats on top of our kidneys, and while they are small in stature, they are enormously influential in terms of your capacity to cope with stress.
What surprises me constantly is the number of empowered women I meet daily – entrepreneurs, lawyers, over-educated women with exciting lives who know their metrics inside and out from 401K to current home value – yet they have no idea what their adrenal numbers are.
Some of us, myself included, spend too much time in fight/flight/collapse in response to daily stressors. Over time, this ongoing state of hypervigiliance takes a toll – the cells of your adrenals can’t keep up with the overtime and burn out. How do you know if this has happened to you? Two options: take a questionnaire or test your levels of the hormones your adrenals make, namely cortisol and DHEAS.
Cortisol is like a General, in command of the army that is your body. Cortisol has its hands in many things – it controls how you use fuel, how much energy you have at your disposal, how you respond to a crisis, how you digest food, and whether to store the bread you just ate around your mid-section.
DHEAS is a hormone of vitality – it is a pre-hormone to testosterone, and contributes significantly to sex drive.
You can have either too much of these two hormones (stage 1) or not enough (stage 2) or adrenal failure (stage 3), a life-threatening emergency.
I’m an organic gynecologist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and adrenal dysregulation is the most common hormone problem I see. Typically, my patients report poor stress resilience, difficulty functioning well under stress or even to react to them, sometimes even bordering on paralysis, which is totally new (and often has an onset in perimenopause, that time in your forties when your periods start to get closer together and PMS reaches new heights). Adrenal dysregulation manifests differently in different people – sometimes it feels more like excessive sensitivity to human suffering, or excessive compassion for the pain of other people, or even excessive irritation at the suffering of others.
Both cortisol and DHEA influence other hormones too, and some you may know about. Excess cortisol inhibits thyroid, estrogen, melatonin, and growth hormone. Excess DHEA inhibits cortisol and stimulates testosterone.
Clearly, one has to juggle many hormones to feel most vital.
What do you do if you think you might have a problem with adrenal function, either too much or too little? I advise going to your doctor and asking for a blood test. See where you are right now, as a baseline. Know your adrenals at least as well as your 401K. Get as empowered about your health as you are in other realms of your life.
There are numerous therapies for wonky adrenals, and many of them have been tested with the tincture of time in ancient wisdom traditions such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Examples include botanicals such as Ashwagandha and Ginseng.
BUT.
I like to start with nutrition, Whole Foods Nutrition. And boundaries.
Folks with high cortisol tend to crave carbohydrates, the refined type. Sugar, chocolate, pastries, any flour-sugar combination, really.
We must change that. Pronto.
I’m a fan of several food plans, depending on your particular circumstances. Generally, I find the Paleolithic diet, based on fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry and fish, is best at optimizing adrenal function. Limited, sprouted grains. I also recommend removing refined or processed carbohydrates, particularly breads, cereals, pasta, and baked goods. Particularly good for your best adrenal function are lean proteins, and healthy fats such as coconut oil and olive oil.
Read the Full Article Here: http://www.saragottfriedmd.com/2011/07/22/its-not-me-its-my-adrenals-how-your-adrenals-govern-your-vitality/
Hypothyroidism: The Unsuspected Illness
by Dr. Broda Barnes
