A Guide to Strengthening & Healing Your Adrenals – Izabella Wentz, PharmD. – #1042

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Dave Asprey. This episode is filmed live at my place in Austin, which I'm really enjoying because it turns out that when I'm in Austin versus my place in Canada, there's all these people here who want to be on the show, including what I think might be setting a record as our sixth time on the show, but someone you haven't heard from in a couple years. This is a good friend and master of some of the, we'll call them, endocrine systems in the body. A pharmacist known as the thyroid pharmacist. But today we're going to talk about adrenal function. And I want you to listen to this episode because you have an adrenal problem if you're alive today. And I say this as a guy who was born with adrenal problems, and we'll probably get into some detail about that. And having had stage four adrenal burnout and all that, I fixed it and I fixed my thyroid problems. And the most knowledgeable expert that I've come across around this, particularly with autoimmunity, particularly when it comes to things like toxic mold is and things like what gluten does to you and all that, it is none other than Isabella Wentz.

Hey, Dave. It's so good to see you again. I'm so glad that we're in the same city. We get to hang out.

It's so much more fun to do an in person interview. So this is awesome. And you have a five year old now, so we've hung out for lots of years. But now that you have a kid, I haven't seen you in a few years because I've been up in Canada now. I'm more mobile, so it's super cool just to get to hang out and to talk about adrenals instead of thyroid. And I'd say I don't know how many followers and whatever you have, but you've changed millions of people's lives with thyroid conditions.

I have. I started off myself in my twenties just being exhausted and chronically fatigued. I was this like, super ambitious person in my head, like, stuck in a lazy person's body, quote, unquote.

And that's another feeling. Were you overweight, too?

I was actually underweight. Okay.

The other side of it. Yeah.

This happens a lot of times. If you get diagnosed with thyroid issues later on in life, you might be overweight. If you have thyroid issues earlier on in life, it might show up as fatigue. In your 20s, it might show up as anxiety, like depression, mental health issues, so on and so forth. In your 30s, it could be fertility issues for women. And most of the time people aren't pregnant, properly tested. And in their 20s they're told like, oh, you are depressed, so let's give you antidepressants, you're anxious, let's give you antidepressants. Right, let's give you all these things rather than testing you for a thyroid condition. Because typically doctors, it's not on their radar until somebody's a bit older, maybe in their 50s.

Right, right. When I was maybe 24, 25, something like that, I was fortunate to go to an anti aging doctor back then, Dr. Miller, and he just tested me. He came back, said, I can test almost no thyroid hormone in your body. And when I took my first thyroid medication, I'm like, like heaven has opened up. I have my energy back now. I felt like, like I could finally press on the accelerator and then I would, I would move. But I didn't address my adrenal issues back then. And I'm noticing that, you know, your arc of information you've shared, you've really gone deep on the causes of thyroid dysfunction and how autoimmunity ties in. And one of the things I want to talk about as maybe a point of crossing over is I've seen a few people say, well, if you have Hashimoto's, which is autoimmune issues with your thyroid, you shouldn't drink the most sacred liquid on the planet, coffee.

Cheers.

So what's your take on coffee for people with Hashimoto's?

I mean, if it's your coffee, then we can drink it. Right? So generally there are a few issues with coffee. So if the coffee is moldy, then that's going to be an issue for you because mold can be a really powerful trigger for chronic fatigue syndrome from autoimmunity. Hashimoto's adrenal dysfunction. So you want to choose a coffee that's clean. You want to focus on like not the instant coffee junk because a lot of the times it can be cross contaminated with like gluten proteins. So, you know, choose wisely. Right. So that's going to be the first part of that. If you're somebody that has a lot of issues with estrogen dominance, perhaps that might be something to look into, doing a detox. Like my goal is not for people to like live in a bubble and live as saints. My, my goal is for people to like thrive and live fully, whether they have A thyroid condition or not, and figuring out, like, what's going on in your body? Why are we so sensitive and how do we build back that resilience? So, yes, you can drink coffee if you have a thyroid issue.

Oh, my gosh, you set so many people free. And to your point, there's a lot of people who said, you know, Dave, you're a con artist. There was no mold in coffee. There's 36 studies that say that that's true, and I didn't pay for any of them. So I'm going to go with those. And all the world governments and instant coffee is the most dangerous. The studies that show cross reactivity of coffee with gluten, I called the lab, Cyrex, and asked them what they used as their testing agent. It was instant coffee.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So bottom line, guys, if coffee makes your life better, I did give up coffee for five years because it was triggering my autoimmunity so much. That was why I created Bulletproof. And since then, the time that I was running Bulletproof, now, danger coffee, guys, dangercoffee.com, which has minerals that support thyroid and all that. But one of the things I also did is I said, okay, I'm going to go through this aggressive adrenal fix based on Wilson's book a long time ago. And so people say, well, I'm stressed. If you're chronically stressed, you get this feeling of like, I have no energy. And maybe it's thyroid, but maybe your body doesn't have an adrenal response. So I did the thing we'll talk about with shining the light in the side of your eye. In fact, why don't you tell me what that is and I'll tell you what happened when I did it. But that test.

Sure, one of the tests. And Dr. James Wilson, beautiful old school naturopath, and he coined the term adrenal fatigue. And we can kind of get into the nuances of that, but it's essentially how you're going to respond to that light. So are your pupils going to constrict when exposed to light? Because that's what they're supposed to do, Right. So when we have a balanced response between our sympathetic and parasympathetic, we're going to have these constricted pupils. But in people with adrenal dysfunction, with adrenal issues, they're not going to have that same reaction. And they may be walking around with pupils that are too dilated and their pupils might constrict and then dilate back up again. So what happened with you?

Well, the test. And you can do this at home. You take a flashlight, even your iPhone will work. And you look in the mirror and you shine the light in kind of from the side.

And.

And if your eyes, they. What's the opposite of dilating? Constricting.

Constricting, Right.

They constrict. So you have, you know, little pinpoint pupils. If they hold that way for it was like 30 seconds or something, you're fine. But if instead they start going, wah, wah, wah, wah, it's your body struggling to be able to maintain that, or. What it looked like for me was I couldn't drive to work without sunglasses because I just. It was too bright, and I didn't wear sunglasses at all unless, like, I'm skiing or something where there's just a protective thing. So what I noticed was I lasted for five seconds before my eyes would do this. And to this day, if I stay up all night, which I did last week, the next day I was light sensitive, so I took some cortisol, which is an adrenal hormone, and then I wasn't light sensitive anymore. It's kind of weird.

Absolutely. So we know that sleep deprivation is one of the fastest ways to disrupt our stress response and to put ourselves into that survival mode and that, like, fight or flight mode. And, like, when you have a night of going out on a town and having a good time or whatever you're doing, or, you know, staying up with the book deadline, whatever. Whatever it is.

Playing with ChatGPT.

Oh, my gosh.

I was at a party. I'm kidding.

ChatGPT, though, that's really cool. You end up being really sleep deprived. Right? And so the next day, maybe you get some sunglasses, you get a little bit more rest. Most people can bounce back from that, but there are people that are, like, chronically stuck in that state where they're walking around and they're constantly wearing sunglasses. They cannot be outside. They feel like vampires. Right? And that's a really, really big sign that something is off about your stress response, your circadian rhythm. You're probably stuck in that, like, fight or flight adrenal dysfunction state.

The other thing that happened when my adrenals didn't work was I would get sick all the time. So I'd get exposed to something, and then all of a sudden, it would just turn into a sinus infection over and over and over or just a cold. And it felt like I was just bouncing around. And when I managed to fix my adrenals and we'll talk about how I did it. I want to talk about how you do it. Cause you have a newer book that the Way I Did It. I don't get sick. It's very, very rare for me to get sick because my adrenals work. So when you have adrenals and thyroid, and heaven forbid your sex hormone's working, like, wow, you might have a really good life. Whereas so many people now are stuck with adrenals not working, maybe more so even than thyroid. In fact, what would you guess in terms of adrenal dysfunction and thyroid dysfunction in the population, which is bigger?

Definitely adrenal dysfunction. I just see it in so many people. So I've worked with people with chronic illness for over a decade now. And 90% of people with autoimmunity, with chronic fatigue syndrome, with Hashimoto's that I've worked with, and I've done tests for their adrenal function. 90% of them have some level of dysfunction, whether they're making too much cortisol, Cortisol at the wrong times of day, or they're hardly making any cortisol at all. This was so, so common. But now I talk to people all the time who don't have, like a quote unquote autoimmune diagnosis. They're just stuck in, like, that survival, fight or flight mode. And they're like, they have trouble sleeping at night, their energy is off. They're like, constantly feeling edgy. So they're like, oh, my gosh, I'm so scared. This person is out to get me. And it's just, I feel like, so, so, so common these days for people to feel that way.

I was really happy that you wrote your new book, Adrenal Transformation Protocol, because your thyroid book nailed it so well. And knowing that you're paying attention to this in your patients and in your own life, I think this is more important than thyroid. Even though thyroid is massively important, like you said, because it's affecting more people now. Because I run upgrade labs, I get to look at how people are doing. And for the first time ever, instead of asking for weight loss, people are asking for stress management more than losing weight. And that's just a symptom that our adrenals are just overworked, over taxed. And the other reason it could be chemical and toxic. It certainly has to do with social media algorithms, and it has to do with the behavior of the overlords.

I definitely think overlord behavior contributes to it. And so we have this bucket, right, that gets filled up with Stress. And let's say we're in a pandemic, right. There's a lot of stress coming from the television. There's a lot of stress coming from our personal lives. Right. Because everything's shut down because you lost.

Your business and you couldn't go outside and stuff like that.

You know, you can't take your kids to school, so they're with you 24 7.

Yeah. That'll raise your trust.

Yeah. Just a little bit. Right. And you know, you're feeling like for moms, I know I have a young son and it was like, oh my gosh, like my child is learning how to talk and everybody's wearing masks. Is he going to learn how to talk? Right.

Yeah. Or how to look at facial expressions, Read facial expressions.

And so we have that. Right. So it's like the current stressors in our lives. Right. And then we have history of past trauma. That's a stressor that we're carrying around with us.

Thank you.

Yeah, yeah. We don't even know. Right. We don't even know that. Like there's something inside of us that's suppressing our resilience. The studies have shown when you have a history of trauma, childhood trauma, and all of these things that can happen to us where we end up suppressing and maybe feeling like, well, it wasn't really a big deal or I'm not going to, you know, it's not presently happening, but it causes low grade levels of inflammation. It shifts the way that you respond to stress. Stress. And studies have shown people are going to be at higher risk for autoimmunity, for depression, for, you know, you name it, they're going to be at higher risk for it because of that childhood trauma or early life trauma or even trauma in adult life.

Right after I started treating my adrenals years ago, I started doing personal development work. I was about 30 and I was like, there's no threats here. Like childhood trauma is nonsense or some like birth trauma. And I got schooled in the fact that it actually matters. And even in my book that just came out, I talk about the meat operating system and trauma goes into the body and then the body reacts before you get a chance to think about it. And it's the adrenal system that's a part of how the meat operating system works. So if you liked my book, you should read Adrenal Transformation Protocol because there's lots of things you can do to mitigate trauma which help with adrenals. Right. But you might want to support them biologically. As well. So how would you go about. You have a four week plan in the book. So walk me through what do I do over four weeks to address my adrenals.

So I know you and I like to talk about danger, right? And so the way.

Just a little bit.

Yeah, Danger coffee. There's good types of danger, like danger coffee, right? And then there are danger signals that we receive from our environment. And they could be like the news, right? This is a danger signal. Holy cow. We're in a pandemic. We're in a stressful time, but then there's signals that are coming from within our body, right? So there could be inflammation coming from the foods that we're eating. We could be sending our body danger signals by our habits. So if we're eating foods that are inflammatory, if we're not getting enough protein, if we're skipping too many meals and running too much on a treadmill, what does our body sense? Our body's like, oh, we're in a stressful time, we're in a famine, we're being chased, right? And so we're getting all these messages. And if the danger signals outweigh the safety signals, we shift into this survival mode. And our body's like, trying to preserve our life, right? And so rather than fixing ourselves, rather than working on our immunity, rather than giving us this beautiful energy and calm energy that we can have, we get stuck in that, like, anxiety, overwhelm, fight or flight. And so my approach to it is focusing on giving your body more safety signals.

It sounds like you're saying that eating less calories and exercising every day might be bad for you.

It can be, definitely. If you are with somebody that is in a burned out adrenal state.

But even if someone's not in a burned out adrenal state, limiting calories and doing cardio every day, is it ever good for you?

I can't say it's never good for anybody. But the people that I have personally worked with, I oftentimes tell them to cut back on cardio, and I oftentimes tell them to cut back on skipping meals. So because cardio is catabolic, which means that your body's gonna be breaking itself down, and if we don't have enough protein, then we're not gonna be able to repair ourselves. So part of what I do is I talk about you need more protein to help your body build itself back up to get into that anabolic state. And maybe instead of doing a lot of cardio, we focus on lifting weights or we focus on de stressing exercises like yoga. Right.

Wow. I know you're a fan of protein, so I'm just wondering, wheat gluten is protein. How many grams of wheat gluten per pound of body weight do I need to get enough protein?

Like, do you want, like if you want to be inflamed?

Well, maybe it's not just getting enough protein. What's the best protein?

I really love hydrolyzed beef protein. It's hypoallergenic and it is something that is going to be really helpful for you to feel better. And it's tasty. There are other types of protein people can utilize if they're not sensitive to whey protein. Getting like a really clean source of that can be great. Then there are things like egg white protein can be really helpful if people aren't sensitive. Right. And hemp protein for some people works really well as well as organic pea protein. But it just depends. I work with a very sensitive population, so we typically look at making sure that the protein source isn't inflammatory to you. Right. You know, ideally though, I do love red meat as a source of protein because it works. It does work really well. And what I've noticed in people with fatigue and brain fog and, you know, like muscle wasting, which is also a common pattern of people within that adrenal dysfunction survival mode. Right. Because they're in a breakdown mode, is they need carnitine. Right. And carnitine is a. Is, is the only place you'll find it really is in red meat or in a supplement. So part of my protocol does utilize including more sources of red meat into your diet as you can for protein as well as. Or, you know, if you're not comfortable with that, utilizing carnitine as a supplement. And this is actually one of a really big game changing supplement for getting rid of brain fog, getting rid of fatigue and helping you have better muscles. And it just. I love to look at products and protocols that have multifunctional use. And carnitine is one of these beautiful things. And it's found in red meat primarily.

It is. In fact, I started on acetyl l carnitine when I was 24 and I've been on it most of the time since. But I found if I took too much of it, that it was probably ramping up acetylcholine as well. I was getting jaw tension from too much acetyl l carnitine, so I had to dial back on it. But it's a mitochondrial enhancer. So you like either red meat or L. Carnitine for people with adrenal dysfunction.

Or both.

Or both.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with both. Are crickets red meat?

I think they're green meat.

That was a good answer. But they don't contain carnitine or good fatty acids or high quality protein. It's so interesting.

I mean, but they're crunchy if you're into that.

It's true. But the deaths per calorie on crickets is really bad compared to cow.

I mean, if you're into crickets. No judgment here. I do think there are other.

You're very woke sources.

I am. I spent two years in California, so.

Oh, okay, got it. Yeah. I spent, Geez, like half my life in California, so half my life would have.

No, actually probably more than that.

Yeah. Okay, so there you go. By the way, I like California. It's awesome.

I love California too.

All right, so I think we settled. Red meat. By the way, guys, if you read smarter, not harder, you'll recognize some commonalities here. Our concepts about trauma, about the meat operating system, and even about sources of protein that work for people. I look at people with chronic fatigue, people with autoimmunity, and people who have their mitochondria, mitochondrial function taken way down. They're the test cases for what works for everyone. So you take people who are near the brink, and I know I was near the brink when I was really sick, and then when you take someone running at 10% of their capabilities and you double it, they're like, I got my life back. So if you take someone who's running at 90% and you put them at 100%, unless they meditate and they have self awareness or tracking, they won't feel it. So we go to our edge cases, whether it's an astronaut recovering from orbit or a professional athlete or a racehorse or something. And we look at those and we look at people who are really disordered and then they provide this beautiful lens on what makes the rest of us strong. So the things you're talking about here, even if you're not broken, if you don't want to get broken, like eat a steak or a hamburger.

I love burgers.

Now, I could ask about this. Hamburger is a relatively high histamine food because you get bacteria that break down all those little bits of ground up stuff. What is the role of adrenal dysfunction and allergies or long Covid or mast cell activation and stuff we seem to be seeing more and more of these days?

Sure. So when somebody is in that state of adrenal dysfunction, there's usually a lot going on in their bodies. And yeah, I think the old approach was like, oh, you're drinking too much coffee, you're not getting enough sleep, or you have a stressful job or whatever. There's a lot of arguing about what causes adrenal dysfunction, if it actually exists. People are like, no, no, it's not adrenal dysfunction, you just have mitochondrial issues. And that's true, you actually probably have both. Right? Or people will say, it's not adrenal dysfunction, it's mold exposure, or it's not adrenal dysfunction, it's H. Pylori. So, so on and so forth. So there's a lot of different causes of adrenal dysfunction where essentially what it is in very simple terms is this is how your body responds when it's under a lot of stress.

It could be a toxin, it could be a deficiency, it could be an external threat, or it could just be an emotional story you made up in your own head, which does happen, but much less frequently than people think. Usually like I have a toxin or I have dysfunction or something's going on. So my body's stressed, therefore I'm gonna find a stressor and it's my mother in law or whatever story you make up about it and say, I'm so anxious. And actually, no, your body's not working right and it's telling you to do something about it. And I think you cover that well in just the way you think about adrenals. It's really cool. You've got the biohacker brain, I love that.

And your bucket gets too full with all these triggers, right? And so a lot of times what I see in people is with histamine issues with adrenal dysfunction, sometimes the two go hand in hand, is that they likely have something going on in their gut. It's not that high. Histamine foods are evil. Like, you know, bananas are not evil, right? Chocolate's not evil. But what's going on is there's something in your gut that's causing you to produce too much histamine. It could be H. Pylori, it could be blastocystis hominis, it could be another type of protozoa. It could be mold colonization, could be mold exposure. Long list of things. Potentially. You are also depleting in some of the nutrients that help you break down histamine, P5P and methionine. I've utilized this protocol for people for quite some time now. And I was trained in IT actually, in pharmacy school at the Pfeiffer Treatment center back in Illinois, where there's a way to support your body clearing of histamine. What I found in people with adrenal dysfunction, adrenal issues, their B vitamin levels are just really, really low. So they're oftentimes going to be low in B6 or P5P. So they're not able to tolerate histamines, they're not able to tolerate glutamines, they're not able to clear out oxalates properly out of their body and they can walk around being super sensitive to everything. So part of that healing is figuring out how to raise your body's ability to fight infections. We do that with Sarcomyces boulardii. There's other ways to do this where you just raise your secretory IGA and then you clear out these infections more naturally. Like the protozoa pathogens just can. A lot of them can clear within 30 days of using that. And then we can also ramp up on some of the B vitamins and that will help you clear out histamine naturally out of your body.

So you talked about P5P, which is a form of B6 that's methylated.

Yeah.

Now I have a bone to pick with you about this.

Don't take B6. Let's just say, let's just put it that way.

Oh, okay. Maybe I don't have a bone to pick with you.

Yeah, do not take B6.

B6 is dangerous.

Yeah.

Okay, now explain why.

So B6 is, you know, pyridoxine, It's a man made version of the active version of, of the vitamin. And what it does is it tends to accumulate in the body, not actually B6, but there's an intermediary metabolite that has a super, super long half life. Typically we say that most B vitamins you can take as much as possible and you just pee them out, not B6. You don't actually want to exceed more than like 300 milligrams.

I've actually 300 is a lot. It's like 10 milligrams is about.

Yeah. And I've seen people even reacting to small amounts of B6. The literature will say like 200 or 300. I actually don't recommend hardly any of it at all because it can have that intermediary metabolite where that sticks around for like 100 plus days and that can cause neuropathy and all kinds of issues. So like when you think about like a half life of a drug, it takes 100 days to get rid of half of it, right? To go to half of it. So if you've been taking it for a long time and I've taken people off of the B6 when they're like, I'm taking B6 and I have neuropathy, I'm like, get off of B6. So never, never take B6. You can take P5P and in smaller doses, you don't need doses that are as high and that doesn't turn into that intermediary.

There's no risk of neuropathy.

With P5P, there is a much lesser risk. But if you already have neuropathy from B6 toxicity, then I would consider holding off on that and really testing your levels. You can do like an organic acid test to see how like what your B6 status is, right?

Guys, this is really important. If you're like me and you take 100 supplements a day, lots of companies, especially cheaper supplement companies or even energy drinks, they'll just wantonly throw B6 into the formulas. And if you count all the B6 you're taking, you might be getting enough. And that's weird. I can't feel my toes. Maybe you should lay off the B6. And we have a thyroid pharmacist here agreeing with that. So thank you for talking about it. And P5P is the form that I use, so thanks for that kind of side thing. And if you're someone who has chronic allergies and all, look at P5P and look at methionine, which is, funny enough, it's an amino acid. We restrict on plant based diets.

And don't get me wrong, some people feel amazing on a plant based diet, but the people that I've typically worked with, they're struggling. And a lot of times if they don't have religious reasons or sensitivity issues, we really focus on getting clean sources of protein to them. And a lot of times it's meat based protein. And we're eating more protein and more fat throughout the day to try to get your blood sugar balance. That's a huge safety signal, right?

I love it. And you're just willing to completely call BS on stuff that doesn't work. Okay. Something else I would do that really made a difference. I've been recommending this since I started my blog is either mind salt or sea salt in water when I wake up as an electrolyte source and as a sodium source. What's your take on that? How do you do that? With the Adrenal Transformation Diet.

So I do recommend this, and I do recommend it in a glass where you sip on sea salt throughout your day to balance your adrenals. People oftentimes have what I call I just ate a whole bag of chips syndrome, right, where they're really craving salty things. And even if you're eating clean, you might be like, wow, this food that somebody made for me, or that I prepared, it's really missing salt. And we want to get a healthy salt source. We don't want to get, like, the iodized, bleached stuff, right? So we want to look at sea salt and you add that into a drink. And funny thing is, I used to call it Sol, but I think it's actually Soleil, if that helps anybody to be more fancy.

I just take a pinch of any of the salts I use. I like Oryx, I like Himalayan, I like Redmond. Like, these are all good salts. And sometimes, like, Celtic sea salt, that's all. You know, it might have microplastics because it's from the ocean these days, but still it's all the minerals. And I do that on all my food, and I do it in water, whenever I drink water. Or I'll put electrolytes that also have magnesium and potassium. Talk to me about potassium and sodium and adrenal dysfunction. Do we need more potassium than we're getting or not?

It really does depend on the person. Typically, I recommend doing electrolytes for most people throughout their day, especially if they're having morning fatigue. I will recommend giving them just an electrolyte drink in the morning to help support healthy cortisol levels, to help support a healthy blood pressure. People may want to play around with that a little bit. So I have a section on that in the book where if, you know, if you're feeling like you're having a lot of cramping, if you're doing a lot more exercise, typically you might need a bit more potassium and sodium than another person. Generally, what I find is, like, sodium is gonna be one of the first things that people need to address. And then we wanna look at, do you need more potassium as well?

Got it. I typically would say almost everyone is deficient in potassium compared to historical levels. And so when you're stressed, you need more salt and your body wants it, and you should give it to your body, and then you'll perform better and feel better. Right. Whether you're putting healthy salt on your food, you're putting it in your water, but as your salt goes up, you Want your ratio of potassium and sodium to go up as well. But what I would have happen before I was on top of my adrenals, I would try to take potassium in the morning, and it would just trash my day because it would drop my blood pressure. So when you're chronically fatigued and your adrenals are not producing enough cortisol, which is where I ended up, then you don't have enough blood in your brain. And if you do that, you can even have something like POTS where you start to pass out when you stand up. I found out after a lot of testing and all, that I have a condition where my body never has made enough cortisol, even as a kid. Like, it's a genetic thing. So I've been low cortisol. I supplement with bioidentical cortisol. I have for a decade now, and it makes a huge difference. But if I take too much, I get a little bit puffy. So there was a time about, like, four or five years ago where I was starting to get a little bit moody because I hadn't backed off. As my health got better and better, I needed less and less cortisol to maintain healthy levels. But if I went off thyroid hormone and I went off cortisol and I went off testosterone, right now, I would probably age 20 years in two years, and I would likely die.

I'm with you on that. There was a time when I did an experiment when I came off of my supplements and all of my health habits, and I was like, I gained, like, 20 pounds in, like, two months. How did this happen? And everybody's like, oh, you're just genetically or naturally thin, or you just always. There's no way you were ever sick. There's no way you ever had chronic fatigue. And I'm like, yeah, I did. And it happens. If we don't manage our health and if we don't learn how to let go of that stress and if we don't learn how to shift into more of a thriving state. Right?

It's true. If your adrenals are trashed, you're walking around going like, I can't bring it. Like, no matter what, I'm just. I don't have any energy. And everyone says, but you look fine. You look healthy. There's nothing wrong. But, you know, like, you really know there's something wrong. And it's a really disturbing feeling when you're trying to do something and you know that you ought to be able to get up off the couch, and you know that you Ought to go do this for the kids or do this for work or whatever. And it's just not in there. Like, there's no more gas in the tank.

It's super frustrating. And I know I, I, along with many people with autoimmunity or health challenges that maybe, you know, maybe you look thin or you don't look like you're sick, you get this message, but you don't look sick. But you don't look sick. And people think that you're just lazy, right? And people are like, well, you should just exercise more or you should do this or you should do that.

Maybe you should go plant based.

You should. Yeah, exactly. But people, people with those flatlined adrenals, they end up, like, doing exercise and it makes them feel worse, right?

For days.

Yeah. They, like, if you've heard of the analogy of a spoonie, they only have so many spoons per day to use up for their energy. Like the average healthy person with healthy adrenal function, healthy thyroid function, healthy hormonal function is going to have unlimited spoons, right? And these people are walking around with like six or seven spoons. And if they go out with friends, it's like they have to recover for three days after that, right? If they push themselves, if they do an exercise regimen that's too long for them or too intense, they're going to be bedridden. Their body, like, doesn't know how to recover from stress, right? And so, but there's a way out. So if you have pots, if you're a spoonie, if you're chronically fatigued, like, there is a way out. And it can take like three to four weeks, right?

Three to four whole weeks to get out of that. I mean, geez, guys. I mean, it's almost like you might want to read the Adrenal Transformation Protocol. I'm not kidding. It took me a couple years to dig out of that. And I did reach the point of exercise intolerance. It was a while ago, but I would just, like, lift and not even that crazy. And then I would just be completely wiped for three days. Like, I would need 10 hours of sleep. I'm a six and a half hours a night kind of guy. That's all I need. Like my, I get an hour and a half to two hours of deep, and I'm like, I am so high energy. But I wasn't then. And it was like, how am I going to work today? Like, I know I'm supposed to work, but I try to look at my computer like, My eyes glaze over and, like, there's just nothing in there. One of the things that I did do is I went off coffee because I read it in that old book that said it was somehow bad for you. And I did the salt thing. And I've maybe twice in my life got into really deep adrenal dysfunction. And the second time I'm like, you know what? Fuck that. You're supposed to have higher cortisol in the morning, and that's how you get out of bed. And a glass of coffee is life giving to people with adrenal fatigue in the morning, if it's clean coffee, not 10 cups a day, but one in the morning with some salt to get things going so you can have a quality of life while you heal. Am I on the right path or not?

Yeah. So I've actually gone into adrenal dysfunction three times. So I have experience with all of the things. And the first time I healed, I focused on utilizing hormones, right? So pregnenolone and dhea, some cortisol, getting all of the things like putting the caffeine and so on and so on forth. Then that helped. But it does take, like, three months to two years to work. And one of the unfortunate side effects I had with some of the hormones is that they gave me chin hair and back knee, which, you know, you don't really want when you're a woman. But the second time I was like, okay, I don't want to. I don't want to go through the whole hormonal route. And it was like, during a time when I was working through. I launched a documentary series and a book and just was like, burning the bridge at both ends.

Yeah. You were on the show during that time, right?

Oh, I was. That was fun.

I noticed your goatee at the time.

Did you? Well, I didn't use the hormones then, so maybe that was just my natural look that I was going for. Okay, but thank you. I'm going to go look in the mirror now when I get home. And so the second time, I just really focused on lifestyle. So I was like, let me sleep 10 to 12 hours a night and let me, like, quit all the caffeine and whatever and just, like, let go. Just start saying no to a bunch of. And so I was able to recover my adrenals within 30 days. And then I got pregnant and had a beautiful baby. And then, you know, throughout that whole process, I had been telling people, like, you need to quit caffeine. You need to do this to really heal your adrenals you need to take hormones, so on and so forth. And it didn't work for. It worked well for a lot of people, but then there were some people that were like, I'm not going to quit caffeine. And there were people that said, I don't want to take hormones. Or they would take the hormones and they would overconvert to, like, estrogen and cause more estrogen dominant.

That happens to me. You give me 5 milligrams of DHEA and I have no libido for a week.

Okay. I was gonna say maybe you have man boobs. And I was kind of looking.

Oh, I've had some A cups before, but I don't have them now. But, yeah, if I don't like that stuff, I have very low dhea, but I cannot take it because, like, I mean, I don't like having nipples that sensitive because it's distracting.

I mean, it works well.

It's just not good for me.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. It works well for some people, but for some people, it doesn't. And then I got into that adrenal dysfunction for the third time when my son was eight months old. Right.

That's such a classical time because of all that lack of sleep and lack of nutrients. Because babies steal your food.

Yes.

Oh, my gosh. What happened?

Well, I was like, okay, I'm not sleeping. And I know that I can't go back to my adrenal protocols of sleeping 12 hours a night. Like, that would fix me, but I can't do that. Like, I'm taking care of. I'm taking care of a baby. And then I was like, I can't take hormones because, again, I'm feeding a baby. I don't want chin hair. I don't want my baby to have chin hair. I don't want him to have that.

Right under your chest hair or your chin hair. It'd be great.

Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry that I told you about this. And then I was like, there's no way I'm giving up coffee. Like, this is how I function. This is what. How I get through. And then it finally, like, occurred to me that I was like. Some of my clients, who. I told them to quit coffee, but they were like, okay, so I quit coffee.

Just quit life at the same time.

They're like, you know, I was having. They were tired throughout the day. They were drinking lots of coffee, and then they were having anxiety, they were having headaches, and then they were waking up all hours of the night I was like, okay, quit coffee. And they're like, I quit coffee now. I'm still tired, I still have, have headaches, still waking up all hours of the night. But now I have like lost the joy as well.

Like my morning went away.

So this is even worse than like, you know, the thing of like going, being sick and drinking coffee. Right. If this is how you want me to heal, like, I can't do it. And then I was like, oh my man, I get it, I get it. Like I get it as like a new mom and drinking coffee. And then I kind of realized I was like, oh, this is what people are doing with the coffee. They're self medicating.

Yes.

Yeah. They have low cortisol in the morning. So coffee raises our cortisol.

Coffee and salt in the morning equals water.

Yeah, absolutely. And then in the evening time, a lot of times people would be self medicating with alcohol. Right. Even worse with wine because they have high cortisol in the evening and their cortisol curve is flipped. So the pro program, and you'll be very happy to hear that it doesn't tell people to restrict coffee. It doesn't tell people that they need to go off of coffee. We actually focus on building their energy levels first and aligning them with the circadian rhythm so they have lots of energy throughout the day and sleep at night really, really well. And then some of them, if they choose to, they will wean off of coffee naturally over time. We typically, if you know, having a cup of coffee a day, two cups of coffee for most people is great. It has health benefits.

This whole anti aging thing. Even three to five cups in the studies. I don't do well on five cups of coffee a day.

Me neither.

So I do if two or three of them are decaf. But one to three cups for my body weight anyway works really well. And I just want to thank you for telling people with adrenal dysfunction that if you're using caffeine in the morning to raise your cortisol so you feel good that it's okay. Because I think it's actually very mean spirited to tell people with chronic fatigue and exhaustion, the one thing that's working for you, stop doing that. It doesn't work for the vast majority of people. Or like you said, it can take two years.

Absolutely. And there's other things like you talked about utilizing sea salt or stepping outside and getting some sunshine that can raise your cortisol levels naturally when you sleep better, that's going to help you Build that morning cortisol when you get rid of some of the inflammation in your body so you can enjoy your coffee, but, like, not be dependent on it. Like, if you're drinking. I have people that have gone through the program that were drinking six cups of coffee a day, and their goal was to wean off. And so by. Usually by week three, when they have enough energy, we're like, if this is an optional wean and this is how you do it, so you don't do it cold turkey. I tried that once, I think. I like. Yeah, that was not fun. Right?

Just switch to aspirin if you're gonna do that.

Yeah, yeah. And so you can do it gradually over time, where maybe you cut down by 25% and then you get to your goal. I still drink, on average, two cups of caffeine a day. If I go any more than that, then it's a gateway drug to overwork for me, which.

So when I was younger and growing my Silicon Valley life, I would go on this cycle, like, one cup, two cups, and just keep adding coffee throughout the day. And then I'd go, oh, I have to do something. And then I would go cold turkey for two weeks, and then I would slowly climb up. I would just say, if you find you're constantly adding cups of coffee, something is not working. And I've been at the fixed level of coffee, which is, I don't know, about three cups a day forever. And maybe it's five sometimes, but I'm doing espresso, which is half the caffeine of normal coffee. So if I do five of those or three cups of normal coffee, same difference. But I've been that way for a long time, and I don't want or need more. And so the deal is, if you need more coffee, you're probably doing it wrong. And yes, guys, I sell danger coffee. And I'm telling you, drink the right amount for you, but don't do more than you need. And if it's a dependency where you can't get through the day at all without increasing your consumption, you have a problem. But if you need a cup of coffee in the morning so that you can feel like yourself, you probably should work on your adrenals. But you don't have to give up the coffee to work on your adrenals, because if you do that, you won't have the energy to work on your adrenals like that. That was my experience.

Absolutely.

So here's what I would tell someone. I want you to, like, poke holes in What I do, okay, I'm lazy, I'm a biohacker. I like results in the smallest possible amount of time. And my strategy is generally, oh, you have a problem, let's just do everything that'll work all at once, as long as they don't counteract each other so you get results and then you can back off and see what actually worked. Because I just want you to have your state. And this is one of the criticisms I had of, of just Western medicine in general. They're like, well, let's try one thing and see if it works. And three months later we'll try another thing. I'm like, I only have that many three month periods in my life and I'd like to have those maximizes where I'm like, awesome. So someone came in with really clear adrenal fatigue, I'd say, all right, here's what I want you to do. Have a cup of coffee in the morning, have some salt in your water in the morning. Have some magnesium too, and take the supplements and all that. But I also want you to take relatively high dose adrenal glandulars. I want to take licorice root extract and I want you to take 2.5 to 5 milligrams of Cortef in the morning and at lunch. That's bioidentical cortisol, guys. It's prescription. And then I want you to take whatever you need to go to sleep. Not alcohol. You can use kava from Tru Kava if you want to, or you could use any of the sleep formulas, like the Qualia formula. I think you can use Code Dave or something for Qualia. So sorry, guys, I don't remember the code, but I'm an advisor to them. But like any of the sleep formulas that you like, and if you just do that for the vast majority of people, you're probably going to be okay. So poke holes in that. What's wrong? What's missing?

Oh, my goodness. Okay, where do I start?

Shred me here. I see what works.

Okay, so starting off with glandulars, I think they could work really well for some people. They are amazing. But if you get the whole cortex extract, you can actually get some adrenaline into your system. So that's not super fun.

Doesn't that feel good though?

No, you feel like your heart is racing and you're having a panic attack. So I've had people that have my clients that have come to me or people just commenting on my Facebook page that said, I tried this adrenal extract and I Went to the emergency room with a panic attack. Right.

Oh, my gosh.

And if you do doses that are too high, this can happen. If you dose them at night, as well as dose hydrocortisone at nighttime or too late in the evening or a dose that's too high for you, you can suppress your pituitary axis, and then your body won't make its own cortisol. Right. So this could be an issue for a lot of people.

Yeah. Cortisol at night is rough.

It can be rough like, and just like applying topical steroids for prolonged periods of time, all of these things. It's like our body is a feedback system. So if you're giving yourself external hormones, your body's going to say, huh, we're good. We don't have to make our own. Right.

Is that a bad thing?

It is a good thing if your body physically can't produce those hormones. But if your brain is disconnected from your adrenal glands, which is what's happening in HPA axis dysfunction, then perhaps there might be another way to wake up and reestablish that connection again. But there are ways to reestablish that connection really, really well. And a lot of it is focused on some of the lifestyle tools and shifting your body, teaching your body how to naturally get out of that survival state and teaching it to go into a more thriving state. So we talked about the glandulars and then, like, kava. Right. And so utilizing things at bedtime. Kava can be a helpful supplement for some people. And then there.

As long as it's clean, because that's another one with a hysterectomy. That's why I do the true kava stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. There could be some issues with it. Right. Like you said. But generally there are other ways to really support your circadian rhythm. Right. So if you're having trouble sleeping, then there are some considerations. It's not always, like, a melatonin issue. It's not always, like, because you're kava deficient. Right. So.

Or Ambien.

I mean, or Ambien deficient. Right. Don't get me wrong. I think there's. I am always like, there's more than one way to skin a cat. And I think I'm supposed to say there's more than one way to peel a potato these days. But the issue comes up with people where they are just disconnected from the circadian rhythm, which is the majority of people that I work with. And there's a way to connect with it again. So the bright lights in the morning, right? Eating in daylight hours, spending time in nature, spending time outside throughout the day. This is going to be great. That lets your body know it's wakey, wakey time.