#159 Adrenal Glands: Our 2 Fierce Bodyguards for Optimal Well Being

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.

Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and today I want to explain all about your adrenal glands. I think about the adrenal glands as our internal bodyguard. If you think about what a bodyguard would do for you, they would protect you from danger, right? And they would help you be prepared for whatever's coming up. So if we have this internal bodyguards ready to protect us, we're going to be able to get through much more of whatever our life and day is bringing to us. But if our bodyguards get depleted and not as able to protect us, then what? Then we're at risk of danger and health issues. So if you start to think about your adrenal glands as your internal bodyguards, then I think we start to realize why it's so important to help them be performing their best. So I'm going to really be today talking through what are the adrenal glands, where are they? What do they do? Why do they get depleted? How does that look? How do we test for that, and what do we do to help them recover? Because ultimately, when our adrenal glands are performing their best, when our internal bodyguard is doing their best work, that's going to be helping us to prevent all different health issues, including infections and autoimmunity, let alone cancer and heart disease, and also going to be able to protect us on a day to day basis and increase our longevity, literally. Studies show that when humans have optimal adrenal function, they live longer, Right? So even if we just think of it that way, why are, why are humans living longer when they have healthy adrenal glands? Because they have fewer health issues and then they're being more resilient to whatever comes their way on a daily basis. So that's what I want to help all of you achieve and understand. Especially because this is not something that's addressed in the regular standard doctor's office. Even if you go to an endocrinologist who tend to specialize in glands that make hormones and they. If your adrenal glands completely stop working, then there are those situations. There's a small Percentage of cases where the adrenal glands completely bottom out or completely over the top over function, that's called either adrenal insufficiency or Addison's disease or Cushing syndrome. These are situations where the adrenals go really at the extreme. And those are important to see an endocrinologist and be addressed. But that's actually very small percentage of the case. Most of us, and the estimates are over 80% of adults have.

Less than optimal adrenal function, but not at the extreme of Addison's or Cushing's disease. So we're talking about the majority of us have less than optimal adrenal function. And it's predisposing us to, to all different health issues. And there's a lot we can do to help our adrenal glands. And it doesn't involve taking a prescription medication, it doesn't involve a surgery. It involves learning how to give the right support to your adrenal glands for them to function, including nutrients, herbs that can support them. Maybe some of you have heard of adaptogens. I'm going to be talking about that today. How do you know the best natural substances? Even natural things we do during the day, like what to eat and how to sleep in a way to help your adrenal glands function optimally? Because ultimately, again, when our adrenal glands are happiest, when our bodyguards are working at their best, we're going to feel our best, we're going to perform our best, we're going to be there for our loved ones and living our purpose and our passion because we're going to feel best when we have healthy adrenal function. Okay, so let's learn more about them. First of all, the adrenal glands, we have two of them, unless for some reason you have one removed. Just like we have two kidneys and they sit on top of the kidneys, right? So the kidneys are in your low back area. And so you have a kidney on either side. On the adrenal glands is almost like a little hat, a little triangle shaped hat on top of each of your kidneys. And there's separate blood supply to the adrenal glands. So the adrenal glands have sort of an outer section and then they have the inner core section. Right. And they make several different types of hormones and really hormones and neurotransmitters. So in the center part of the adrenal glands, that's where the adrenal glands make adrenaline. So this is one of our main stress responses responders, right? You see why I call it like a bodyguard? That's where our adrenaline comes from is. Well, one of the places anyway is from the middle of the adrenal gland called the adrenal medulla. And it makes norepinephrine and epinephrine. Norepinephrine and epinephrine is categorized as adrenaline. So a lot of times I'll say adrenaline, really, I'm referring to both norepinephrine and epinephrine, which is really a neurotransmitter, but it's the messenger that goes into our bloodstream and signals a stress response. We'll come back to adrenaline here in a second. In the outer part of the adrenal gland is where the adrenal glands make cortisol, our main stress hormone. And so that's where cortisol is coming from. If you've heard about cortisol, it's coming from the outer part of your adrenal glands. The outer part of the adrenal glands also make something called aldosterone, which is job is to help regulate electrolytes in our bloodstream. So, like sodium, potassium, as well as the ph of our bloodstream, all very essential to human survival. You see what I mean? Like, if we don't have our adrenal glands helping us to manage our electrolyte balance, our blood pH, our stress response with our cortisol and adrenaline, we're really not going to be able to survive very well and not going to feel very well either. The adrenal glands also make a hormone called dhea, by the way, which converts into testosterone. So that's another hormone hormone made by the adrenal glands. And we can measure these various different hormones and neurotransmitters made by the adrenal glands. I'll tell you about that here in a minute. First, I want you to understand how the adrenal glands function in our bodies. So really it comes from a signal from our brain that tells the adrenal glands to produce cortisol and adrenaline when we're under stress. Right. And so the thing is, is that also our bodies make cortisol and adrenaline every day, all day, all the time. Right. We need an optimal amount of cortisol and adrenaline because just like you, you would have a bodyguard. You don't just have the bodyguard show up, right? Only when you're in danger. No, the bodyguard is there helping you all day, every day, and they're ready. And when the stress happens, then they respond. But you, it's there all the time. Right, so think about that. You, you don't just want cortisol and adrenaline when the stress happens. You want the cortisol and adrenaline there to signal healthy functioning throughout your body all the time. Because ultimately this cortisol and adrenaline is, is being, it's circulating in your bloodstream, in your nervous system all the time. So every cell in your body is constantly aware of what this cortisol and adrenaline is thinking, you know, and as soon as there's a stress response, right? So just imagine the alarm goes off. Your brain perceives it right? Through our senses, through your. If your eyes are open, you can see there's something dangerous happening, or you hear the alarm go off, or you, you maybe feel pain or you. Right, so that our senses pick up in our amygdala, in our brain picks up a fear response, a danger response that sends signals through what's called the HPA axis. Hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal axis. That's what HPA stands for. Hypothalamus and pituitary are in the brain. So the brain is perceiving, oh, there's a stress, there's a danger going on. And it's going to then send a hormone to your adrenal glands through the bloodstream to say, hey, adrenal glands. We need extra cortisol and adrenaline to help protect from whatever's going on, right? So now the, the healthy usual level increases and the body goes, okay, we're turning up the dial. We're going to put out more cortisol and adrenaline. Why? Well, because then that extra cortisol adrenaline tells all the other cells in your body, hey, we've got something dangerous going on. We need, we need to turn off certain functions. We're not going to need to digest food right now. We're not going to do reproductive function right now. We're going to be making sure that there's blood flow and that this, that this human can get out of danger. And so our heart races, our blood pressure increases, our right, we, we're going to then respond. We start sweating, we start getting ourselves out of danger. And sometimes you might even have felt some of these things, even when you're like, I'm not even in danger. But sometimes our bodies can even, even if you're watching a movie about someone who's in danger, we can literally get our adrenal glands to have a stress response by watching on TV something that's adrenalizing, right? When we say adrenalizing or even adrenaline junkie, or let's say, you know, when you go to do something exciting, whether it's skiing or skydiving, we're. You're putting yourself into a situation where your HPA axis is going to tell your adrenal gland, hey, there's a potential danger here. We need some more cortisol and adrenaline. And so it's a very healthy response. We, we want to be able to protect ourselves. So it's important to understand that we need our adrenal glands to be our bodyguard and do a good job at it when we need it. And at the same time, we also need our adrenal glands to be able to calm back down and chill out for a little bit, and so we can recover. We need that recovery, right? A bodyguard. They, they also need to go to sleep sometimes, and they train shifts, right, so one bodyguard can eat and sleep and recover. You know, so they're ready on their shift. So think of it like your adrenal glands do need time to actually, like, go, okay, now the brain goes, oh, the terrace is gone. Let's turn down the signal to the adrenal glands. And the adrenal glands go, okay, we don't need so much cortisol anymore. We don't need so much adrenaline anymore. Now it doesn't go to zero, but it goes back to an optimal. So I really want you to understand this concept of what's the optimal level for normal daily functioning? We don't want to be at the heightened all the time, and we don't want to be depleted all the time either. We want, what's that sweet spot of cortisol and adrenaline? Because that's when a signal goes out through all of your cells, including to your digestion, and says, okay, it's time to digest again. Let's make digestive enzymes. Let's make healthy new intestinal cells. Let's support our gut bacteria. Let's absorb our nutrients, right? So we need time to eat and get our nutrients in and make sure our gut bacteria are healthy. We also need time for our immune system to rebalance and protect us from whatever we're exposed to, whether it's viruses or, you know, of course, we, we know now that we live in a. You know, we have besides a hundred trillion bacteria that live in our gut and all around our bodies. We have also just a general microbiome, exposure to certain viruses and microbes in our system that actually is part of our human existence and an important part of signaling to our immune system, our nervous system. That's why we call the gut brain microbiota axis. So what's happening in your gut is also communicating to your immune system, to your nervous system, and to your other hormones. So we need time when we're not in a heightened stress response so that all this signaling can happen. We need our thyroid to function and make that healthy thyroid. We need our blood sugar levels even more in a stress response. Our blood sugar goes up because we, our body wants to make sure we have enough sugar to respond. But when we come out of a stress response now, our blood sugar comes to an optimal level for cell signaling, for energy production, if, you know, you name it. Everything, even our nervous system. When we're under a stress response, our nervous system is going to burn through more serotonin and dopamine. Dopamine then converts into adrenaline. That's where adrenaline comes from previously is dopamine. So if we're under a lot of stress, we're burning through the gaba, serotonin, because our bodies are just needing to help us respond and, and stay balanced under stress. See, serotonin and GABA are our calming neurotransmitters. They help counterbalance the adrenaline. So if we have stimulating adrenaline happening, we also need a counterbalance of serotonin and gaba. I think of it like the gas and brake in a car, right? You need the gas pedal to go, go, go, get your brain going and responding. But you also need the brake pedal to be able to kind of say, okay, let's push on the brakes a little bit, calm things down and be able to take a breath and be able to calm your nervous system and collect yourself and recenter and make decisions. It's very hard to recenter and make decisions when you're depleted and you're calming neurotransmitters. But when we're constantly in stress mode, we get depleted. We can get depleted in our neurotransmitters. We can also get depleted in our cortisol and adrenaline production. That can happen where the adrenal glands, maybe they don't go to zero, but they just. Then what can happen over time is the adrenal glands are like, I can't even. Even if something stressful is going on. They're like, I can't even get my cortisol and adrenaline to come up. And we become more and more reliant on things like caffeine, because caffeine stimulates the adrenal glands to make adrenaline, right? So we go, oh, I'm missing a drink more coffee, and cause my adrenal glands to make adrenaline, but it's not actually healthy production of adrenaline. It's more like it's being stimulated by caffeine, kind of falsely stimulated. And so if you start to realize, oh, my gosh, I'm basically surviving on caffeine to keep me going during the day and then, let's say, alcohol to sedate me in the evening, then those are really, to me, those are crutches that tells me we're. You've been under a lot of stress, your body got depleted, and now you're finding external substances to try to get you through the day and get you back to being able to sleep at night. But it's not really get. You're not coming from a place where your body is naturally producing cortisol and adrenaline to get you through the day and naturally producing serotonin and GABA to help calm your nervous system and help you sleep at night. Because remember, serotonin gets converted to melatonin, which is our sleep hormone. So I'm giving you a lot of science quickly, but I hoping this helps you understand how these different systems are interacting and that it's not an all or nothing or black and white, you know, and. And there's no judgment either. This is all about just understanding our physiology and how our bodies work and understanding that if we can support our bodies, give them what they need, they're going to actually be able to better perform for us. And it's not that you never might want caffeine or you never want, you know, alcohol, let's say, but it's more like you just don't want to become reliant on it. That's. That's the only way you're getting through your day. If that's the case, then that tells me your adrenals and your nervous system need some recovery from stress. So I started researching this, I don't know, way back, even when I was in naturopathic medical school and then when I graduated, and all through my practice over the past 23 years, and I've written about it many different ways. Maybe some of you have heard me talk about it, even on the How Humans Heal podcast. And. And also in my books. My first book was called the Stress Remedy. My most recent book, my fifth book, is called Master Stress Reset yout Health. And this really. Master Stress Reset, your Health is really about your adrenal glands. It's about how to help your adrenal glands recover from what you've been through and your nervous system and your gut health. Because ultimately, it's all interconnected anyway, right? So I, I start with how do we help your adrenal glands recover? But, and to me that when we say a root cause of health issues, when we say root cause, what we mean is we want to understand really the most core situation, that once we address it, there's a huge positive ripple effect where everything else improves. I know that I'm hitting the root cause of a patient's health issue. When I improve that then everything else starts to get better. That's what that means when we say root cause. And I think it gets misused a lot of times. But what I can tell you is addressing the adrenal gland function is to me the ultimate root cause of most all health issues. And I can demonstrate that in research. In fact, in this book alone, there's hundreds of references. So if any of you are like, I want to see research on this, just grab this book because you're going to find a whole lot of research, let alone if you just look on PubMed, you can, you can pull up tons of research on cortisol and adrenal glands and adrenaline. And everything I talk about has, I, I get by reading research studies and then working with patients clinically and then I'm looking for what's actually helping my patients recover. Because that's my, as a, as a naturopathic doctor, that's my, what my service I provide is actually helping people feel better and recover, not just get another fill in or a crutch or a temporary solution. I want you actually to address your root causes and learn how to keep yourself healthy over time. And so that's what I see as my role. So any of you who might be like, okay, maybe you want to consider having me help, you know that that's where I'm going to be coming from. I'm going to be like, okay, let's figure out and be detectives to figure out what had, what has been disrupted by stress and what is the state of your adrenal glands. So I can help them recover because then I can help you fully recover on every different imbalance in your body. But we, it doesn't work to just fix the thyroid or just, just address blood sugar or just address your gut biome. Yes, those are all important things. But if we only do that and we're not addressing your cortisol and adrenaline, we're really not getting very far. And this is one thing that I find often is missed patients come to see me sometimes with very complex cases where they've been in severe Fatigue or pain or distress, psycho emotionally for years. And they've been to see many other practitioners. And then when I meet with them, I'm like, well, have you ever had your cortisol and adrenaline tested, let alone your neurotransmitter levels? And I'm telling you, most people who come to see me have not had these levels tested. And to me, I'm like, wow. Because that, to me, is the key to transforming your health. And I hope that all practitioners are listening to this and start doing this in your practice, because I really believe that if we do start helping people really effectively with their adrenal health and they're in recovering from their stress response, exposure, and getting your bodyguard back to full functioning, then we can really transform so many health issues. So what are those health issues? Well, just imagine if you're. As I've talked about, the cortisol and adrenaline is affecting your digestion. So if, if you're signaling of cortisol and adrenaline is not optimal, you're likely to have any various different kind of digestive issues you can imagine, from IBS to ulcers to, to Crohn's to ulcerative colitis to bloating. I mean, you name it, any kind of digestive issue. What about immune system? If your immune system is not functioning optimally, you can have frequency to any kind of infection in the body, from eye infections to sinus infections to bladder infections to vaginal infections, including, like, HPV virus, which is a very common virus that most all of us are exposed to. And yet some of us are more at risk of. Of getting cancer from this virus. Well, why is that? Why is it that some of us are more likely to develop cancer from this virus than others? To me, the answer lies in understanding how your adrenals are functioning. If your cortisol and adrenaline are not optimal, you're already at increased risk of cancer from this virus, let alone the effects of stress. So if we know that your digestion is not as healthy, maybe you have leaky gut, you have imbalanced gut bacteria, then you have imbalanced microbiome. Vaginally, you become more susceptible to hpv. But where did it begin? It started with a stress exposure that disrupted your cortisol and adrenaline and disrupted your digestion. So, yes, we can fix your digestion, but we have to also optimize your cortisol and adrenaline to fully help you fend off this HPV virus. And that's just one example. What about people who have Epstein Barr virus? Chronically or laughing or you name it. Even toxin exposure. People who are more likely to have side effects from mold exposure or other toxins, why is it that they are more sick? Well, because if their cortisol and adrenaline are not optimal and it's leaving them so much more vulnerable to the effects of the toxins or the traumas, why are some people more susceptible to anxiety, depression or whatever other mental health issue? Ocd, you name it. The health issues and insomnia, for example, are the effects of the nervous system, even neuropathies and pain of all types, even joint pains, muscle pains. Fibromyalgia is because the body was disrupted by various kinds of stress and trauma and the cortisol and adrenaline got thrown off. Optimal. They're either too high or too low. And when they're too high or too low, everything else is just a snowball effect. Everything else gets thrown off. I'm really excited to open enrollment in my new 14 day detox program. It's based on my experience spending 16 days in the Amazon. And I realized I really want to be able to support all of you to safely and effectively detox from home. The 14 day detox includes a kit with protein powder, including antioxidants to support liver detoxification, as well as an anti inflammatory diet plan, daily videos and tips from me, as well as my self care notebook, and lots of encouragement to spend time in nature to reset your circadian rhythm. I want you to be able to detox your mind, body and spirit so you can get back to balance and move forward in your life with resilience. I can't wait for you to join me in this transformational process. Now once the cortisol and adrenaline are thrown off again, the person's not absorbing nutrients, so they get nutrient deficiencies. The person's biome in their gut is imbalanced. So then that has all kinds of gut brain effects, let alone all the other effects that the microbiome has throughout our body and our immune system. Then the person has other hormone imbalances, thyroid, insulin, you name it. Autoimmunity can develop the nervous system, the neurotransmitters get out of balance. So of course we end up developing all these different health issues. But it's not just random and it's not just to be solved with another psychotropic medication or pain medication. We have to get the real reason is started to begin with, which is the effects of stress on our adrenal function, our cortisol and adrenaline production. Okay, so how can you know, right? Like I'm hoping at this point you're like, well, how do I know what's going on with my cortisol and adrenaline? Because this is the important thing is it's not the same for all of us. Even though we might assume, oh, we're all under different kinds of stress, our adrenals are all getting burned out. But is it the same for all of us? No. We don't all have high cortisol. We don't all have high adrenaline. It's unique, in fact, from the research and from my work. Clinically, it's pretty much as unique as your fingerprint because it's based on your genetics and it's based on your past stress exposure. It's even based on your parents and your grandparents stress exposure that influences how your body responds to stress today. So to really understand what your cortisol and adrenaline are up to at this point in time, we need to measure now. And whatever they are now, whatever they are now is actually a screenshot of where they have landed. Based on your genetics and your all of your past stress exposure. It doesn't change so much from day to day. It stays really pretty consistent day to day because that becomes your set point. That's just your kind of like cortisol and adrenaline set point and how you're going to know what your cort, your cortisol and adrenaline set point is. We have to measure it now. It's not measured in regular blood work. So you could be going to the doctor's office and telling them you don't feel good. You can be saying, I'm tired, I'm can't sleep, I'm anxious. All these symptoms we just talked about and the doctor can run regular blood work and it really is not going to show there. I mean, sometimes you can see imbalances in sodium and potassium, but that may or may not. That could be a lot of different things. Right. That could just be dehydration. So it doesn't really identify the issue with the adrenal gland specifically. Even if they do a blood level of cortisol, it doesn't address it because the range, the normal range for cortisol is quite wide. So it only identifies if someone's way too low or way too high. What if you're in the middle of this zone, but it's not optimal for you? It's not going to. You're not able to see it on the regular blood work. So the doctor will probably say everything looks normal, even though you feel awful. And so just know that this is not part of the standard medical workup at this point in time. Hopefully at some point in the future it will be, but it's not going to be. It's not going to show in a regular standard blood work. Also, because.

Optimally, cortisol should be higher in the morning. That's why usually blood levels of cortisol are tested in the morning. So we can see what it is at the highest point in the morning. But cortisol should gradually decrease through the day. So it should be about midway in the middle of the day and then lower in the evening and then the lowest at night when you're trying to go to sleep. It's a stimulating hormone. So you want it lowest when you're trying to sleep. And then it's. So it has a circadian rhythm, a natural circadian rhythm. It's not that you should have the same cortisol all the time. It depends on the time of day. Right. And it depends on what's going on in your life. So when we measure cortisol, we need to measure it not just one time, but we need to measure it at different times a day to see what is your cortisol curve. Is it. Where is it when you first wake up in the morning? Where is it in the middle of the day? What about the evening? What about the bedtime? In some cases, we, if a person's waking up in the night, we could even measure their cortisol in the middle of the night and see what it's up to. We want to know, because we know from research, that when cortisol is following this optimal curve, that humans have the best health and the best longevity. And yet that's not what's being measured in the regular doctor's office, is not even being checked in the emergency room. So it's not going to happen there. And it's likely not going to get covered by insurance either. But if you are really committed to your house and you're. You're committed to getting at the root cause and preventing health issues, then this is something that becomes a priority for you, where you're like, I want to know my cortisol levels. And I really hope that at some point in time someone develops a test where you can even measure your cortisol instantaneously at home. It doesn't exist yet, you know, like where you can measure your blood sugar that way. I hope in the near future that we can instantaneously measure our cortisol levels whenever we need to know them. Same with adrenaline. But for now, There are tests you can do at home. Usually it's either saliva or urine. Right. Because you could spit in a tube at different times a day, you could pee in a cup at different times a day, and then you mail it into a lab that specializes in measuring cortisol levels, and there are several of them around the country. And then we can see your cortisol curve. Now, what I found from my research is if we only measure the cortisol curve, that's only giving us part of the picture of our adrenal health. Right. I told you, the adrenal glands do more than just make cortisol. They also make adrenaline. So if we can also measure adrenaline levels, we're getting so much more information about our adrenal function. Right. If we only know the cortisol, we're kind of like working with part of the information, and we're less likely to actually help transform your health if we know your adrenaline levels. Now we have a whole nother piece of the puzzle to help us solve it. So adrenaline can be measured in urine. This is back to the norepinephrine and epinephrine that I mentioned. This can be measured in the urine. And I'm not talking about, although sometimes this is also useful to measure the metabolites of norepinephrine and epinephrine. There are certain tests called organic acid panels that measure the breakdown of norepinephrine and epinephrine. But what I want to know is your actual norepinephrine and epinephrine levels. And there's only a few labs that measure this in a urine test. And that's what I offer through my office, because I go through analyzing different labs and different results, and I repeat the samples, and I determine this is the lab that's giving me the most accurate results. And so that's the lab I'm going to suggest. And you can order these tests through my office and through my website. I can put the links down below. So in a urine panel, so simply pee in a cup and send it in. We can measure norepinephrine, epinephrine. We can also measure your neurotransmitters like serotonin, gaba, dopamine, glutamate, pea, for example, we can actually see what your neurotransmitter levels are. And the research shows that measuring neurotransmitters in the urine is an accurate way to measure neurotransmitters, even though it's not a test that's done in standard medicine. Or even by mental health professionals, even though this is a test that's been well established. And actually urine neurotransmitters are used when they research and develop medications that affect the neurotransmitters. But still, the true, the testing is not considered standard practice. And so if you want to know your neurotransmitter levels, you have to pay out of pocket and work with a practitioner like me to get the levels measured. And I think part of it is that the treatment for imbalanced neurotransmitters is nutrients. And most practitioners are not trained in how to use nutrients to rebalance your neurotransmitters. Plus, nutrients cannot be patented by a pharmaceutical company. So pharmaceutical companies are not going to be very interested in, in helping people to address their neurotransmitters with nutrients. Right. You have to think it through this way. You have to realize that they of course, are going to make us think that we need a prescription pharmaceutical, so then we're going to buy it from them. But I want you to know that your human body can make neurotransmitters like serotonin. Our bodies do it every single day from protein in our diet, which turns into amino acids like tryptophan, which converts to 5 HTP, which converts to serotonin. Your body knows how to make neurotransmitters. It's just you need to make sure your body's getting the right nutrients. And if your body gets very depleted in serotonin, let's say it may take some time to get it built back up again. So having a dietary source of protein might not, it's going to take a lot longer to raise your serotonin back up. Whereas if I can guide you with what's called amino acid therapy, which is nutrient based approach to helping you get your neurotransmitters back to optimal, we can use the precursor nutrients. This is all just based on nutrition and biochemistry. We use nutrients that are the precursors that your body needs in order to make more of these neurotransmitters so you can actually recover from depleted neurotransmitter levels, including dopamine, GABA and serotonin. So if your neurotransmitters got depleted by stress, I can help you to get them back to optimal again. And if your bodyguard or adrenal glands got depleted by stress, I can help them recover as well, because the adrenal glands can recover from stress. I've worked with even severe cases of depleted adrenal glands and over time, and really, with my protocol, we're able to get adrenal function to improve. This is the thing, is our human bodies are very able to recover when we give them the right support. So just like we can, we can grow back. We grow new healthy skin every day. We can. If we get leaky gut, we can grow new, healthy intestinal lining. When we. When we get depleted in neurotransmitters, our body can make more when it has the right nutrients to do so. If, if our adrenal glands get depleted, they can be recovering by getting the right nutrients and other things like herbs, to help them recover their functioning. So the key is to know that these things can recover. But the. How do you know the right treatment? And I can't tell you how many people come in to see me. Maybe they even saw a practitioner who identified that they had suboptimal cortisol levels. And yet the practitioner gives them the completely incorrect treatment. Even functional medicine, integrative practitioners are giving incorrect treatment every day, all the time, because they're not getting the right training. I also didn't get the right training when I was in school 25 years ago. I had to figure it out along the way. And that's why I felt so compelled to. To write, well, five books, including this book. And so if any of you were like, okay, I really want to understand more about my adrenal glands and how to help them recover. That's what this book is about. It has exactly the nutrients and not just throw them all in at once. Not just randomly take a bunch of nutrients. We need to be precise about this. As I said, it's different for each one of you. So not everybody needs the same adrenal treatment. Not everybody needs the same amino acid. Not everybody needs the same herb or adaptogen. We hear this term adaptogen a lot, which is a beautiful thing, actually. I love the idea of adaptogens because the word means adapt, right? It's helping us adapt to stress. These are substances from nature that help humans adapt and recover from stress. How cool is that? And they're things like plants we can make as a tea or take as a capsule. Mushrooms even are known to be adaptogens, helping humans recover from stress. How cool. The thing is, is there some of them that work in the middle, that can work for everybody, right? Like, we can get, like, let's say you're only 10% off, let's say your cortisol and your adrenaline, or either 10% one way or the other. If I almost think of it as dials on a, you know, like if you have a radio and you're trying to, you know, the radios where you had to spin the dial to tune in to the radio station. So if you were only like, let's say 5 or 10% off, you just have to dial it in a little bit, then you could probably take a general adaptogen. You could probably take, let's say Rishi or my talking mushrooms. These are beautiful mushrooms that have all kinds of ability to help our adrenal glands recover from stress. Amazing ancient use. In China and other cultures around the world, they knew that these substances help recover from stress, including adrenal function, right. So we can use these adaptogens to dial it in. You know, let's say 10%, or let's say if you've heard of ashwagandha, holy basil, sometimes other herbs as well that are known to be adaptogens, they can help us dial it in when we're not that far off. But what about the case where maybe your cortisol is really too high at certain times a day, or another person whose cortisol is way too low, it's gonna probably take more than a little bit of mushrooms or a little bit of holy basil to really get it. Like this is where the. You're way off from the radio station, right? Like, you're gonna have to dial it in quite a bit to get it right onto that radio station, to be precise with your optimal functioning. And so we're going to need to have. Be more precise and strategic and have really clear the tools that are going to really get us in the right direction. We can't just have something that sort of. We need to be right on the money. So this is where I've been researching all these years to find what are the tools that have the most research and, and the most effectiveness clinically to really help patients get tuned in to their optimal functioning. And it's different for each person. And this is why I developed the concept of the stress types. The stress types is really your set point when you've been exposed to stress, where your body falls when you've been under stress and your cortisol and adrenaline function got thrown off from your adrenal glands, right. So, for example, the stress magnet tends to have cortisol and adrenaline that got stuck too high functioning, it never came back down to optimal, it got stuck too high, and the body just is functioning at high cortisol adrenaline all the time. So they're going to need treatments that help reset the Signaling and, and say to the adrenal glands, okay, we don't need you to make that much cortisol and adrenaline anymore. Things are safe, the environment safe. We don't need that anymore. We need a downshift into optimal levels. Right. That's where the stress magnet is. Now. Similar to that would be the sluggish and stressed. Sluggish and stressed has a high cortisol, but they actually have low adrenaline. So their cortisol stuck too high, but their adrenaline has now become depleted and they need a different treatment. They need to help calm down the cortisol first and then they need help to raise the adrenaline. And it's a completely different nutrients and herbs that do that. Right. So we have to go down first then. Okay, that's a sluggish and stress type. But again, there's others. There's the one, the opposite of that. Tired and wired. Tired and wired. It now has low cortisol with high adrenaline. So in that case, we need to help bring the adrenaline down, help reset the signaling to the adrenal glands so that they're not over producing adrenaline anymore. Help that the metabolism of adrenaline. Often that person may have genetic variations that prevent the metabolism of adrenaline. So we need to help them using nutrients to help metabolize the adrenaline and get rid of inflammation and toxins. So now their adrenaline can flow and their adrenaline levels come down. Then we can help their adrenal glands make more cortisol to get back to optimal. And what happens? Amazingly, the person gets back to optimal and they're like, wow, I have better energy. I don't feel anxious. I can get through my day and get my tasks done. I can go to sleep at night and feel good. This is what happens when a person's levels get back to optimal. There's also the scenario where the cortisol and adrenaline are both too low. I call that the blot and blue type. In that case, the adrenal glands are really depleted. They're like, we're gone. You know, they may not be an Addison's disease depleted, but they're depleted enough that you're likely feeling like, oh my gosh. I. It's hard for me. It's hard. I had to hit the snooze button on the alarm. It's hard to get out of bed. It's hard to get through the day. I'm exhausted part way through. I'm ready for bed by 6pm this is this blot and blue. And we then we need to help the adrenal glands recover. And they can be giving the right nutrients and herbs. The adrenal glands can start making cortisol and adrenaline again. But the important thing I learned along the way is you can't just jump in and start stimulating the adrenal glands to make cortisol and adrenaline. People get tempted and they're like, okay, I'm going to take ginseng and I'm going to take rhodiola or I'm going to drink caffeine. But that's not going to help the adrenal glands recover. These poor adrenal glands as poor bodyguards are like flattened. They're like, we can't, we can't do that anymore. Don't even try to distract, pour on the more stimulation. What we have to do is again start to go very gently, very slowly because these adrenal glands are so over exposed to stress that even the slightest nail stress will send them right back flattened again. This is this classic like crashing with burnout or what sometimes is called adrenal fatigue. But I really don't think that's the best term for it because adrenal fatigue is, is not really.

Acknowledging the all the different possible possibilities of adrenal distress. Right. That's why I call them the stress types is it's not just adrenal fatigue, it's adrenal distress in the form that is for you. So when we have this blah and blue depleted adrenal function, we need to pace ourselves. And not only that, but we need to make sure that there's enough calming neurotransmitters around first. Because likely this person also has low serotonin, low GABA and low cortisol and adrenaline. So no wonder they're like, every time they try to do something, they're really keeping hitting the wall, so to speak. We need to first rebuild their serotonin and gamble so that they have a brake system and really help them learn to protect themselves because their bodyguards recovering. So they have to be like, how can I protect my time and space and energy until my bodyguard can get back up and running again? Okay, so it's like you almost have to like put way more intention into how do I protect myself from stress so that my adrenal glands can recover and start protecting me again. And I've seen people recover from this. I myself recovered from blah and blue stress type. And so I know it's possible. So I'm hoping this really helps you to understand, like this is why I do what I do and why I talk about this possibility of Adrenal recovery and why I wrote the book Master of Stress, Reset your Health, which is also available by Audible, by the way. So if some of you prefer to listen to a book, you can listen to this book and I have it also a video series that walk you through the book and how to implement the stress recovery protocol. That's called the Stress Warrior program. Stress Warrior to me is someone who now understands their stress set point, right? They you understand your stress type, you understand that this is what it looks like when your cortisol and adrenaline get off of optimal and you know what steps to take to get it back to optimal, which means you can then go through your life and even if you're being met with different challenges, which of course we will, our pet is going to get sick. We're going to, you know, we're going to travel, a family member is going to need us, there's going to be projects, there's things we love to do, we're going to have stress. It's a matter of helping your body be prepared for the stress you're going to be exposed to. And that's why I call it being a stress warrior, so that you can be this resilient warrior who now has a shield and now has tools to use to help protect you and your bodyguards, your adrenal bodyguards working for you to help you through whatever comes along. Then you know that you're this stress warrior. You're this warrior to whatever goes on in life. And that's what I hope for all of you. That's what I why I'm so passionate about sharing this with you and to let you know that it's. I develop tools to help you because I know it's so hard to find this information out there. I do a lot of training also for practitioners and I'm happy to do more training for practitioners. So if you are a practitioner listening and you'd like to know more about how to implement this, please let me know so I can help train you. And if you have a practitioner who you'd like to learn more, maybe mention it to them, share this with them. And if you know someone who may be struggling and they're like, oh my gosh, I wish I could feel better, I wish I understand what to do, please share this with them. I, I really hope that everyone receives this information and understands that, yes, there are amazing tools out there for helping your adrenal glands recover and you, it can start with the simplest steps of balancing your blood sugar levels and getting eating healthy, making sure you're getting enough sleep using what I call recovery activities, like spending time in nature and whatever that is for you. Journaling, talking to a friend, breath work, meditation. There's so many tools that have research behind them, including psychedelic medicines that help us recover from stress, let alone exercise that can help us recover from stress. I call this care C for clean eating, A for adequate sleep, R for recovery activities, E for exercise. Because these are foundational things that we can do on a daily basis to help us recover. And there's a ton of research to show that they're effective. My point is that we need to modify and choose them based on your stress type. That even the way you eat, the way you sleep, the way you exercise, and the way you recover from stress should be based on your cortisol and adrenaline levels. It's going to be different if you need to bring your cortisol down versus if you need to bring your cortisol up. And I have other sessions where I've talked through exactly the treatments and I can do another session where I talk you through. Okay, let's say you're a stress type, a stress magnet. What are the appropriate treatments for you? But where you could start is, if you haven't already, you can do my stress type quiz. There's a stress type quiz in the book. And you can also do the stress type quiz on my website. There's an online version of the quiz and it'll tell you likely what your stress type is. Of the five stress types, if you were like, no, I really want to measure my cortisol and adrenaline and neurotransmitter levels, I'll put the link down below. You can run that test through my office and you can do a consultation with me, or you can do that stress where your program to understand how to address your version of imbalanced cortisol and adrenaline. And then I can't wait to hear how that goes for you and what you start to notice. I mean, the people I talk to or just can't say enough about how they're so happy that they finally found this information with a precise and strategic and accessible way to address it. This doesn't have to be a mystery. This doesn't have to take forever. It just needs to be individualized to you. And once you get your cortisol and adrenaline back to functioning, once you get your bodyguards back up and running again, you're going to start feeling so much better and every cell in your body is going to start to notice, everything starts working better. Your digestion starts working better, your immune system, your hormones, your nervous system, everything starts working better because it's getting healthier signals from your adrenal glands. So please don't forget to address your adrenal glands. In fact, I would say start there. Start by addressing your adrenal glands and make sure when you address your adrenal glands that you are doing it not just in general, but by knowing your stress type pattern and the appropriate natural substances you can use to for your stress type. The nutrients and herbs are different, so that's why I want you to do the quiz so I can guide you every step of the way to get your levels to optimum. Okay, well, thanks so much for joining me at How Humans Heal. Please, if you if this was helpful for you, please let me know. Please subscribe. You can also subscribe to my newsletter and receive weekly updates from me, other episodes and articles and interviews. So please join me in the weekly Wellness Wisdom newsletter and subscribe to How Humans Heal so you can get the next episode. Thanks so much and I look forward to talking to you soon.

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