Episode 54: The Truth About Adrenal Fatigue, with Dr. Joel Rosen

Hey beautiful, it's Dr. Tabatha. I want to share something with you that I believe God is doing right now in women's health. We're in the middle of a massive movement and most people don't even know it. Every single day, 6,000 women in the U.S. enter menopause. That's over 2 million women a year, and by 2030, that's more than 1.2 billion women worldwide. So here's the thing, most of these women feel exhausted, bloated, anxious, disconnected from themselves, and the medical system is Doctors are handing out prescriptions and quick fixes, and no one is helping women heal from the root cause of their issues. That's where Fast to Faith coaches come in. As a certified coach, you'll be equipped to help midlife women balance their hormones, heal their gut, regain their energy, and reconnect their faith, the foundation that so many of us have been missing. And from a business standpoint, woo, this is one of the most lucrative untapped opportunities in the entire health coaching world. The global health coaching industry is expected to reach over $33 billion by 2023, and midlife women are the fastest-growing, highest-spending demographic in that space. Most importantly, these women stay with their coaches. They invest deeply because they are desperate for lasting transformation— body, mind, and spirit. So if you've been feeling that pull and that whisper that you're meant to do more, This is it. Now is the time to rise, to serve, and build a purpose-driven business that not only changes other women's lives but transforms your own in the process. Because when you help one woman heal, you help her family, her marriage, her faith, and her future. That's the ripple effect that we're creating with Fast to Faith. So join me, click the link to come watch this webinar. It might be the one thing that really moves the needle for you in this Next season. I can't wait to see you in there. Hi, I'm Dr. Tabatha, the Functional Gynecologist. I'm a board-certified OB-GYN and functional medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey, and I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. So if you're struggling with hormone imbalance, weight gain, period issues, anxiety, and Insomnia, you name it, then you've come to the right place. I want to be your functional gynecologist. So welcome. Hi, ladies. So this week we are talking about adrenal fatigue. We're talking about all things related to your adrenal glands. So I just want to give you some background information, but essentially, if you are dealing with Belly fat around your waist, which is a struggle for a lot of women. If you are feeling tired, you can't handle the things you used to handle, you know, everything you're doing isn't working anymore, you're just tired and putting on more weight, then you need to listen to this episode or watch it, okay? So the adrenal glands are little teeny glands that sit up on top of your kidneys on either side, and they communicate with the brain. There's something called the HPA axis. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. And your brain has conversations with the adrenal glands all day long in order to mitigate little stressors, physical, mental, emotional, to help with your blood pressure, with your fluid control. You know, do you need to put more fluid in your bloodstream? Do you need to pump your blood up more?

Yeah.

sets your salt and potassium and all of these things. It also handles major stressors like adrenaline rush, all that kind of stuff. So your adrenal glands have a really big job, and they not only respond to your brain, but they also respond to what your thyroid is doing, what your ovaries are doing, and your sex hormones. They respond to what your immune system is doing. And in turn, those systems respond to what your adrenal glands do. And so we are a system of systems. It's all interconnected. There's conversations going on throughout your body at any given moment, and everything does affect everything else. So I don't want you to think that your arm isn't connected to your heart and your brain isn't connected to your gut or any of that. Like, it's all connected and it all plays a role on each other. And what we understand about the adrenal glands now is so much more than we did even like 30 years ago. So unfortunately, what I learned in medical school about how the adrenal glands function was very basic and antiquated. So, so much research has been done since even I came out of medical school. And I'm not that old. So I will tell you that there is so much more to understand and to learn. And what I want you to know and understand is that there's a reason that you're feeling exhausted, that you can't handle the stress the way you used to, that you're feeling anxious, that you are, you know, gaining weight around your belly. There are reasons for it. You're not crazy. It's not all in your head. It's not just your thyroid or your estrogen. You know, those can be affected and play a role and vice versa, but it's a lot of times your adrenal glands. So today I'm going to talk to Dr. Joel Rosen. He is the founder of thetruthaboutadrenalfatigue.com. He's an expert in repairing the broken stress response system and resetting the circadian rhythms in the body. So he's a chiropractic physician, a certified functional medicine practitioner, and he utilizes his undergraduate degrees of Exercise physiology and psychology with his clients. So his practice is in Boca Raton, Florida. I told him I'm super jealous because I'm in Michigan and it's snowing. He coaches clients all over the world, so if you need him, he's there for you. He actually hosts his own podcast called Your Adrenal Fix. You can check me out on that. Joel is passionate about impacting the practice of healthcare versus Sick Care, and has made it his personal mission to educate doctors and patients alike on the truth about adrenal fatigue and how the impact of stressors impact more than the adrenals, right up to the cellular level. Joel suffered his own adrenal fatigue health concerns, and now he educates tens of thousands of people around the world. So I'm really excited that he's on the podcast today because this is a really important conversation, and I think it affects A lot of you, and you might not even know it. So you might hear something today that's really eye-opening, like, oh my gosh, that's totally me, or why didn't I know that, or now I know what's going on. Let's figure this out. Let's fix it. So I hope that you either have a little spark, an inkling, or you know somebody who needs to hear this and you share it with them. I hope it brings value to your life in some way, because honestly, that's why I do this podcast. I do it for you. I do it for you. Do it because I know you guys need to hear this information that it's not being talked about at the regular doctor's office, or if you bring it up, you're feeling like maybe you're crazy and it's poo-pooed. But I promise you, there are physicians and practitioners out there who believe you and know that there's deeper-rooted issues, and we are going to help you get to the bottom of them. So Today we're going to talk about what the heck is adrenal fatigue, what are the symptoms that would make you think you have it, how does it happen, and how do you go about fixing it. So this is a really good, um, podcast, so stay tuned. Here we go. Well, welcome, Dr. Joel, to the Functional Gynecologist Podcast.

Well, thank you.

I'm super excited about our conversation today because it's so important. I think there's so many women struggling with energy levels in general, and there's this, you know, talk about adrenal fatigue and does it exist and what the heck is that and do I have it. And so I want to unwrap all those questions today, and you are my guy. You're the expert. You've been doing this for quite a while, right?

Yeah, and nothing like learning from your own fatigue. So that kind of gave me my own, as you know, hero's journey of being exhausted and burnt out and frustrated and not believed and doubted and, and just not being able to keep up with the demands of my life. So out of necessity, I've had to help myself get better so that now I can help other people as well.

Yeah, that's so awesome. So what is the most common presentation of so-called adrenal fatigue?

Yeah, it's a great question, and it's really good— it's a great question in terms of that's probably the best way to quote unquote diagnose it, is, is historically. If you're just not keeping up with your demands of life, if stressors have a A non-equal response in your body. So, for example, something happens like maybe you have to brake very suddenly in traffic, but then you have an inappropriate stress response. So maybe you get a little short-winded, or your heart rate goes too much, or your temperature fluctuates, or you stand up and you feel faintish. Those are the autonomic things that happen in your body that you don't have control over. When your stress response is working effectively, you won't have those things. or it will be equal to the stress that brought it out. But then other things like libido, motivation, drive, ability to respond to exercise, exercise tolerance, circadian rhythm control, so you wake up in the morning bounding out of bed, making sure that you're ready to take on the day, not crashing in the middle of the afternoon like so many people do. Or some people have it flip-flop Tabatha, where their energy is higher in the nighttime and lower in the daytime. Those are really good clues, historically speaking, that you are dealing with a stress-based impact on your body. Many people will call it adrenal fatigue, but the truth about adrenal fatigue is it just goes so much deeper than that.

Yeah.

Well, I will tell you, I experienced one of those symptoms myself, and that was really eye-opening for me. So, I had been struggling. I had no energy. You know, I had quit my life as an obstetrician, so I was finally getting sleep, but I was so burnt out that I remember getting out of bed one morning and I blacked out, was shaking violently. I thought I maybe had had a seizure, but it was just that my blood pressure was so low that I was not having that autonomic response you speak of to facilitate an increase in blood pressure to get to my brain quick enough. And I passed out. And And I didn't realize it right away when it had happened. You know, I went to my conventional primary doctor and he was like, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. It's a little scary. And then I finally sat back and I thought, I know what's going on. I'm a functional medicine doctor. This is adrenal fatigue at its prime. You know, like I have worn out my adrenal glands. They are not responding to my brain anymore. And I can't work my blood pressure, I can't handle my stressors, I can't make any energy. Like, it was scary.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, they'll— and they'll call it POTS, POTS syndrome. And, um, I, I think when your body has lost its ability to, to regulate just the basics like temperature, pulse, blood pressure heart rate, respiratory function, then I would imagine, Tabatha, you would, you would burn the candle at both ends for quite some time for that to actually happen.

Yeah, a good decade, you know. Well, actually it was 15 years because you got to jam in residency in there, and I just burnt myself out. So I'm so glad that you're sharing this message with people because it's way more prevalent than we realize, right?

Yeah, absolutely, especially after the year that we've had with all the stressors coming down the pike. I think what happens is, that's the thing about stress, is your body doesn't care if it's actually real and you have a physical stress or an exposure to a chemical or a toxin. We very commonly think of stress as relationships or finances or jobs or children. But the main fact is, is that what we perceive to be stressful is going to have that same domino effect physiologically in your body. And given the perfect storm, if you will, of the stressors that we've experienced this year alone, we were already— it was already of an epidemic proportion before this year, just time conscious. The analogy I often use is having so many windows open up on your browser. That's kind of like our life. We have so many multitasking things that we do on a daily basis that we just don't have the bandwidth physiologically to deal with it.

Yeah, I think that's a great way to look at it. It's like the more windows you have open, the slower your computer is going to be, right? Because it's doing all that background work. And when we are dealing with Stress from the job, homeschooling, you know, shutdown, all this other stuff. We're worried about getting sick. Like, all of that work going on in our bodies and our brains just is overloading us. So that is what happens is we stop making the cortisol we need to handle the stress, right? But why, why isn't it just adrenal fatigue? Tell me kind of the definition of all that and what it really means.

Sure. So the initial paradigm from Hans Selye, you have an alarm, then you have a resistance, and then you have an exhaustion phase. That's a very simple model. And it was good for maybe 30, 40 years ago. And then we got into, well, there's an HPA axis dysfunction, where the H is the hypothalamus and it processes information from the environment and inside and outside of the body because the environment is, you know, inside the body and outside of the body. And then it sends a signal to the pituitary, which then sends a signal to the adrenals, and the adrenals make the stress hormones to deal with it. The main 3 things the adrenals do are help us regulate our fluid levels. They call them mineralocorticoids and our electrolytes. It also helps us give us energy in terms of glucocorticoids. And then it also helps to reduce inflammation. And those are all things that we need in stressful times for sure. But it's even more naive, in my opinion, Tabatha, to think that all the stressors that our brain processes is only processed by the hypothalamus. It's not. It's processed by the limbic system, the front part of your brain, your reptilian part of your brain, your neocortex, all different parts of your brain that we now know that doesn't just send signals to the pituitary. And the pituitary isn't the only gland, if you will, that will send messages to release cortisol. Cortisol could be released in fat tissue or skin tissue. So the more we realize that what we know as our studies and our research continues to evolve, It's naive to think it's just the HPA axis. It's, you know, even Hans Selye, when he studied this, he saw that your, your GI lining decreases in blood flow so you can get ulcers. He also saw that your pituitary— sorry, your thymus gland would get smaller. So there's some kind of immune response, or the adrenals would shrink. So what we're seeing is, is that, and you know this very well, is that there's a lot of crosstalk between your, your neuro, your immune system, your endocrine system, your GI system, your liver, your detox pathways. There are cells that communicate, and when they have to communicate continually— and like I told you earlier, supply and demand problem— when the demand is so high and the supply is so low, communication breaks down, and then you have cellular chaos, and you don't— aren't able to meet the stressors of your daily life. And then when it gets so deep that it impacts your autonomic nervous system, you're looking at a crisis at this point. A small problem is like a cavity, but then the crisis is the root canal or the having to get that tooth removed. If you don't take care of it in the beginning, it's going to become a crisis. And you see this all the time with your demographic, as it— depending on where those weak links in the chain break will depend on how it manifests. Maybe someone has difficulty with having a child or keeping the pregnancy. Or having fibroids or having PCOS or having what— whatever it is. Not to say that's all adrenal-based, but it is all based in terms of the immune system, the brain, the endocrine system, your body's ability to make ATP at the cellular level. And you have a demand and supply problem. And ultimately, that's the truth about adrenal fatigue as I teach it.

Yeah, it's so true.

I mean, we have to realize that it affects our immune system, it affects our gut. I mean, it's simple as thinking of— people know that when they've overdone it and are run down, they're more apt to get a cold, right? I mean, we know this as human beings, yet we don't want to acknowledge it because that means we have to change our behaviors a lot of times. You know, for me, I Definitely had to respect my sleep more and honor my body and start moving more regularly and, you know, doing meditation and handling my mental stressors, you know. And I think that's the hard part is a lot of this fix, adrenal fix, is lifestyle related, right?

For sure, for sure. It's the, it's the non-shiny glittery object syndrome, you know. It's the basics. And even things like gratitude and being— celebrating your life and things could always be worse. And also looking at just reacclimating to the earth, like the sun, the sun and all its powers. And even if it's a little woo-woo, the sun and then when it's dark, we're not supposed to be up all night or getting exposed to blue lights. Or I call it like plugging in your refrigerator and keeping food available. I mean, we have to respect how our ancestral lineage and our— and the millennia has programmed our body to be in concert with the earth. And the more we deviate from that, the more we continue to fatigue ourselves. So it would stand to reason that the recovery in all of that is, like you said, is getting in contact with that again.

Yeah, I mean, I think of just like 2 generations ago, our lives were so much slower and less stressful. We didn't have the— all this constant connection and communication and social media and EMFs roaming around the world. We didn't have all the toxic burden. Like, my grandmother definitely did not deal with all the crap I deal with, and To think that we have only been like this for, you know, 50-plus years, and we've existed for how many, you know, thousands in the other way. No wonder we can't handle it, you know. And I think that people feel shameful, like they aren't, aren't strong enough. They're weak because they can't handle the daily pressures of this life. And I just really want women to understand that. We're not supposed to go, go, go from the minute we get up to the minute we go to bed, you know. We're not supposed to be up till 2 AM. We're supposed to take time to process and breathe and relax. And I just don't think that's respected in our culture, you know. Like, where do you even begin with your clients in that area?

Well, no, it's, it's good points. And I, and as I think about just the female cycle. And you think about the metaphor of the first half of building up and preparing, and then the second half is gestating, or if not, breaking down. And our body does work that way. And I think it's important, whether I work with women that want to get pregnant or, or not, or, or men that are exhausted and burnt out, is understanding those concepts first and foremost. in terms of there needs to be a time of building and there needs to be a time of cleansing and breaking down. And when you have a tug of war, you can't pull on both sides at the same time and expect to have any really good movement per se. So I think that the things that I start with is historically, like you said, what is it? What is it first? And validating it. I think that's key because I know when I suffered with exhaustion and fatigue, And I hadn't heard of this before, and I had gone to chiropractic college. I had a degree in psychology. I had a degree in exercise physiology, and I was exhausted and burnt out. And I didn't even hear of this term adrenal fatigue. What is this? So that's where I had to learn, like I said earlier, for myself. But then I was ridiculed, and then I and then I was made to feel wrong. And and you don't want that when you're suffering, especially from a healthcare provider. You're looking for answers. So I think that's really key is is understanding that someone doesn't want to feel this way on purpose for attention, and then also a good history is really key. Proper workup for sure because there are so many variables that impact the stress response: infections, mold, chemicals, toxins, metals, blood sugar imbalances, breakdown of gut function. There's a lot of things that you really need to hone. In on to be able to see where the Achilles heel per se is for that person and then come up with a customized recovery program around that with a lot of it being like you see and I see, not the tens of thousands, well, let's say 20s of supplements that someone has. It's not like I can give you another supplement to add on to your 20 that you're already taking that you've been missing out on. It's more, okay, let's simplify those. And hopefully I always tell people I like to have a net deficit of supplements I recommend. The ones you're taking minus 6 or 7 of them, maybe keep these ones, but you're missing something over here. So customizing a recovery program around that. And then really the irony is the simple things that really make the difference for those people. If they're in toxic relationships or they have a really stressful job or they have non-supporting community or they've had a trauma psychologically, Those are really big elephants in the room that I know you can't get rid of yesterday. You can't just say, okay, I'm gonna get divorced, or I'm gonna leave my job. But it's our impression of those. It's our— how we perceive those. And you don't pretend, but you have to raise the awareness of, okay, that's really contributing to me being exhausted and burnt out in some way, shape, or form. I do have to address that.

Yeah.

You know, I can't sweep that under the rug any longer. So that's kind of the approach I would take. I mean, we also do a lot of genetic testing, and that does come a lot more with a lot more sophistication, where people may have detox challenges or immune signaling challenges or neurotransmitter production or clearance challenges or antioxidant inflammatory challenges, where these are the worst of the worst. And they've been to 15, 20 different doctors and they're missing something, then that's— I think that's— I won't say unfortunately because it's, it's what comes towards me now, because I'm never at a lack for feeling like I know it all when I have clients that are coming with very difficult challenges. But that's kind of like in a nutshell, to answer your question, how I would approach it.

That's awesome. I mean, just hearing that, you realize that a conventional doctor can't even begin to handle that because that's at least an hour-long initial appointment, right? I mean, you have to dive into this person's entire life and figure out where are the weak links, what happened, what, you know, caused the person to get to where they are today. And That is, I think, why it's so hard for conventional doctors to even wrap their brain around this idea, is how could they even begin to help? You know, I was in the conventional world. I had 15 minutes to talk to my patient, and that's nothing. I mean, it's literally nothing. So I just want women to realize, like, there is help out there. There are people who have the time. They've figured out a different way of Practicing medicine and they can help you get better. It just— you have to find the right person. So don't give up just because one person says you're crazy or it's all in your head or it's just your thyroid or, you know, whatever. And I just— women can't give up. That's all I can say, you know. So you mentioned the gut a little bit. Do you have one particular diet that you prescribe for everybody? Is it individualized?

Yeah, I mean, certainly it's— there are some common concepts that can be applied to the entire spectrum, but, but as you know, no 2 snowflakes are the same, so to speak, in terms of, um, the, the customization of a recovery program. I think the best way I would get into the dietary and give you solid information is That is sort of like tipping over a sacred cow in the sense that there has been told that you need to have small meals more frequently. Because if you have an adrenal-based problem, a lot of people get shaky, lightheaded, and jittery if they haven't had a meal, and they need that. They feel like their quote-unquote blood sugar is falling and they're hypoglycemic. I don't fall for that very often. I want it to be proved.

For—

I want them to either take their glucose in, in real time, and a lot of people don't want to do that, and they don't want to take their glucose to see, like a glucometer, like a diabetic would, to actually see. And this is what I do with my, my coaching clients is, hey, when you get shaky, lightheaded, and/or jittery, or you, you just got anxious, or you're feeling really hungry, let's prove it to ourselves that physiologically that is happening and take your glucose in real time. So, so I would tip over that sacred cow, Tabatha, in terms of not just saying, okay, if you have an adrenal-based problem and you feel you're hypoglycemic, that you need to have small meals more frequently. That's not to say, okay, I want you to go straight into an intermittent fast and go for a 12-hour last meal, first meal type thing. But ultimately, that metabolic flexibility means that we want to be able to teach your cells how to process different macronutrient fuels a lot more effectively. And that's going to require us to stabilize your glucose. And glucose is going to be released when cortisol is released because that's by nature what it does. So it's a complicated thing, let's put it that way. But what I, what I do like is to simplify it: protein, carb, and fat, so that you're not getting too much of a carb in a meal. Um, you know, you're not getting too much of a protein in a meal. You're getting some fat because the only 2 of those macronutrients that are are the proteins and the fats. So I think it's really important that we have a meal that's nourishing, that has really good micronutrients, good minerals in them. There are things like you alluded to earlier, your grandma would recognize, right? She would understand that's a food that they had in her day. It looks like nature has produced that. So I think it's common sense stuff like that. I do like the concept of potentially getting in time-restricted eating window. So like your last meal would be at, say, 6, then you don't have your first meal before 6. I think that's doable. And then I think that a good, healthy protein, carb, and fat with each meal, depending on your specific nuances, your gut health, your genetic susceptibilities, your accessibility to foods— there's a lot of things that you could look into that. I think that's a little longer an answer than I think you were expecting.

No, that's good. I think we need to realize that everybody's an individual. And, you know, my patients are always surprised that cortisol causes glucose to be produced from the liver and put into the bloodstream. And I say, you can go down the path of diabetes and belly fat just by stress alone. Like, you don't have to have a terrible diet and That's kind of shocking to them. Like, whoa, wait a second, what? I'm like, yep, every time you pump up the cortisol, the blood glucose follows, then the insulin. That's a fat storage hormone, and you're just creating this belly fat vicious cycle. And I think that's probably the one thing that gets women to go, okay, maybe I need to handle my stress a little bit. But that is way before the fatigue, situation, right? Like you're saying, traditionally you have this arousal state, too much cortisol all the time. You stress, stress, stress, you're pumping out cortisol 24/7, and then you get to the point where you don't make it anymore. And that's, that's the really dangerous part because that's harder to come back from, you know, once your adrenals are offline. So I would love for women to just nip it in the bud when they're still in the heightened phase and they're starting to see the belly fat, they're starting to see their blood sugar rise, that type of thing, like get it into check now, right?

Yeah, I mean, that's a huge thing. And one thing I always will say, and the really good points on your part, is for, for women in those situations who are stressed out and are accumulating some of the, the belly fat and their hormones are imbalanced and they feel that they are hypoglycemic to learn the difference between physiological hunger and psychological craving. I think that's huge. And that's where the glucose meter can be really a great tool because you're testing it in real time. Like, a lot of people like you, you see, will say, well, or, or when you ask them when you first work them up, do you have a glucose problem? No, like, my blood tests are always normal. And albeit those are really Broad ranges. You're also doing it from a 12-hour fast, right? I mean, you're not doing it in real time. So I think it could be really helpful for for women to start to see that their glucose levels, by golly, are not as low as they think they are. And if they're eating more dense fire logs, as I call them, that take longer to combust and hold a flame a lot better versus kindling in terms of. that instant energy that they get from sugars or refined carbs to give them that quick little energy boost, they'll be able to have that radar on for them to realize they're making better improvements with their blood sugar and ultimately the downstream impact that's going to have on weight, on hormone, on energy, on stress response. But you said it correctly. Yeah. Is not only get the physiological cravings difference— or sorry, physiological hunger sifted out through versus the psychological craving— but realize when you are stressed, that is going to increase the blood sugar levels. And that's where if you're hungry at that time, it's been going on for a long enough time that's created some resistance. some insulin resistance. So get your insulin tested. And that's probably frustrating too, because I see that the ranges show like 3 to 24.

Right.

So I think you have to be like higher than 24 to be, you know, deemed high on insulin. But anything higher than 3 from a functional medicine standpoint is like, okay, what's going on here? Do we have a stress response? Do we have an immune activation? Do we, you know, what's, what's going on? What do we have, a dietary thing? But it should be on your radar that insulin is now starting, especially age 12, 14, 16, stuff like that.

Yeah, I love that you look at all that. And I have an online group, my Renew You Sisterhood, and we actually use a glucose and ketone meter to follow our numbers. And it's so eye-opening for women. They love it. They can finally correlate how they're feeling with what their numbers show. And like you're saying, like, so often And it's mismatched, and they have some learning to do about what their body's telling them. And, you know, they— I've heard so many women surprised, you know, blood glucose like 113 and that in the mornings, and it's too high. And why is this happening? And we have to talk a lot about stress. And if you wake up stressed, raring to go, and life is chaotic, You're gonna shoot up that blood sugar, right? So I love that you're doing the same thing as me.

That's so cool.

Right. So you said you can't supplement your way out of adrenal fatigue. You know, it definitely helps get the adrenals functioning better if you're using adaptogens and things like that. Do you have any go-to supplements? I know it's not the answer. You have to do the little You have to do the diet regimen, right?

Right. For sure. For sure. Well, no, it's a good point. People want things that are going to be effective now. Right. And adaptogens can certainly be that thing. And there's a lot of different things that are considered adaptogenic. Ashwagandha is one, but some people have a nightshade sense. I have a nightshade sensitivity. So ashwagandha is a nightshade and that would create some kind of stress response when the irony was I was taking it to help me with my stress response. Um, but there are some really— holy basil is, is a really good one, or rhodiola. There's a lot of blends that you can get. When you start getting into the glandulars, then you want to make sure that you're actually low adrenal function, because it's not really considered an adaptogenic at that point. Meaning adaptogenic means if you're low, it's going to bring it a little bit higher. If it's higher, it's going to bring it a little bit lower.

Yeah.

But if you're taking a glandular like an adrenal cortex glandular, that's going to help you pump out more cortisol, and you are already sky high potentially if you do proper testing. So you have to be aware of that. Licorice root is similar in that it slows down the conversion or it increases the half-life of cortisol, so it helps it stay around longer. But if it's already too much around, yeah, you don't want it to stay around longer. So you can get yourself into trouble if you just just kind of go with what Mary goes with because she did really well with it and you will too. That's not always the case. Another good clinical pearl, Tabatha, is, is that if someone does poorly on an adaptogenic challenge, which would be an adaptogenic challenge, is because their stress response has gone upstream. It's deeper than just the adrenals. It's impacting you at a cellular level. So that's where we can say, well, more mitochondrial-based nutrients Can be really, really good. CoQ10, I find, is an awesome nutrient when it's taken in its levels that it should be taken, say 400 to 800 milligrams if you're under a doctor or supervision. But the usual recommendation is 100 milligrams.

Right, right.

That's four to eight times less than you should be taking. There's a lot of other really good L-carnitine, CoQ10, PQQ. ALA. There's a lot of really good mitochondrial-based nutrients as well. But I'm going to come out of left field, and one of the ones that I really like is a natural fermented B complex that's fully methylated. Because when we're stressed out, we use a lot of our B vitamins that help power our ATP production.

Yeah.

And so I find that that can be really, really helpful as well. So, and again, stress response Don't go looking for those shiny objects, getting good quality light exposure during the day, and then making sure that when it's starting to get dark out, that's a cue for you to put away your cell phone, start to dim your lights a little bit, because that's what your body has been engineered to do.

Yeah, you're so right on. I mean, we need to respect our circadian rhythms. We need to wake with the sun, go to sleep With the dark, right? And we just don't do that anymore. And it's really hard for, you know, a lot of my patients. We live in Michigan. And so now it's dark when you wake up, it's dark when you come home at dinnertime. And so it is confusing to your brain. And I think that, you know, causes some seasonal affective disorder, that and our lack of vitamin D. So, I love that you are focusing on like really make sure you're seeing the sunshine in the morning, you're getting that light in your eyes, you're stimulating your adrenal response, but then you got to turn it off in the evening. And that's what we don't do very well. I think that we stay up, we watch TV, we stay on our phones, on our iPads, and we need to kind of parent ourselves and turn off our stuff, right? Yeah, absolutely. Especially if we're watching news that is stressful. No, I don't. Now that's like I don't let my patients watch the news. That's an order. A doctor's order. No news. Yes. You have to write a script for that, right? Yeah. Exactly. It's toxic. On the fridge. Yeah, it's so toxic. Oh my gosh! Well, I want you to tell my listeners about your podcast, your adrenal. Fix.

What do you guys talk about? That adrenal everything?

Yeah, well, you know, and I'm gonna have you on there, so they'll make sure that they hear you on there. But what we do talk about is we use the play on words on fix and ultimately go deeper than just the adrenal, uh, the adrenal story. We go into understanding almost everything we're talking about here autoimmunities as well, thyroid issues, libido, having miscarriages. That will be a good topic. But ultimately, how the stress response impacts you. And, and that's what's so amazing about how when I got into my own exhaustion and fatigue, how I realized like, oh my goodness, I can't believe this is more than just adrenal This is your life. This is—I mean—we're engineered to process stress and thrive in stress. That's what evolution is—is that we we have external cues from the from the environment, and and the the the more favorable for life that that happens in your body will get passed on, and the things that are less. favorable won't get passed on. So we are engineered for that. But what's happening now is with the environment, and you alluded to earlier, it's just, it's expanding at such a crazy astronomical rate that it, it is ahead of our body's ability to adapt to these things. And then what used to become favorable in the, you know, a 50, 100, 150 years ago aren't favorable now. They really aren't, like, in terms of keeping iron levels more elevated or, or clotting factors or other things that would have made us survive now is kind of like an Achilles heel now. So that's where the, the genetics come in. So we'll talk about genetics, and I'm sure your listeners and you are aware of MTHFR. Um, I, I go into a lot more than just MTHFR. A lot of people will throw the baby out with the bathwater and say, okay, I'm not MTHFR, so I don't have to worry. And that's like, okay, well, you have like an assembly line of 23,000 factory workers and just one of them is missing. So you're not worried about your widget at the end of the production line? It's like, you should still be worried. I mean, not worried, but you should still use that information to be able to help you because many times it's not even the genetic snip itself. It's the environmental overlapping roadblock that causes those genes and enzymes to work slower, as if it were a gene challenge. So we get into a lot of that too, just as a sidetrack, getting into some of the perfect storm people that we work with that are exhausted and burnt out and have seen so many different doctors, but then they have this blueprint that is, is even more set up as a challenge to deal with these stressors, that you can really give people extra support when you know exactly where to support along that biochemistry roadmap, so to speak.

Yeah, yeah, such important information. That's so awesome that you hit on all of that. So cool. Yeah, everybody should check out your Adrenal Fix. I'll have the links in my show notes, but I'm also going to have the links for your website, The Truth About Adrenal Fatigue, because they can go there and get all kinds of good free information and a self-assessment and all that stuff, right?

Exactly. Yep. Thank you so much. There's a, there's a training on there that we have. It's a free training, and they can go on there and, and go through the 5 main things that I feel a lot of doctors don't look at when they have a person that has an adrenal fatigue-based problem that they can look at. We talked a lot about them today, but yes, absolutely. Thank you so much. Yeah, awesome.

And are you on social media?

Yeah, you gotta be in this day, right? So I'm Dr. Joel Rosen, I believe is my YouTube channel, Dr. Joel Rosen. And then, um, Dr. Joel Rosen is Instagram. I think it's dr.joelrosen. And then Facebook, I have a couple groups. groups. One's the Adrenal Fatigue Recovery Group, that's a page, and then Dr. Joel's, uh, Truth About Adrenal Fatigue. So Dr. Joel Rosen, and you'll— whatever adrenal thing you see with that should, should help you find some of my social stuff.

Awesome. I will make sure I have all those links in my show notes. So that's awesome. Thank you so much for all this wisdom. I think it's gonna, you know, be a little bit eye- opening for some women, and hopefully they can start getting some answers because now they know where to look, right?

Yeah, well, no, thank you so much for having me and, and, and being a light at the, you know, at the beginning of the tunnel, so to speak, for all the people that you help as well. And, and it's not easy to buck the trend and, and open yourself up to scrutiny when a lot of the colleagues are looking at you like, I can't believe you're telling me that the world is round. You know, how dare you? You know? But that's, that's how it's been historically, is those early adopters are the ones that are thought of as crazy in the beginning. But then ultimately, the wisdom catches up with them. And, and then they start to see that, oh, they weren't so wrong in the first place. And thank you for, for heading the charge in that as well.

Yeah, my pleasure. I mean, I've always gone against the grain. I've never followed the— I've never stayed in line, so it's all good, you know, just trying to do what's best for the patients. And I love that you're doing that as well. So thank you so much for being on, and hopefully we'll have you back again. Okay.

Yep. Thank you so much, Tabatha.

Take care. All right. Wasn't that a great episode? I hope you got something out of that. Maybe you figured out like, hey, that's what's going on with me. I need to find a practitioner to get tested. And there's amazing testing that can be done to check your cortisol production. It checks it over a 24-hour time period. And my favorite is saliva testing. I find that to be the most accurate and representative of the cortisol production and utilization going on in your body. And so we have you do swabs 4 to 6 times in a 24-hour period, and then it gets plotted on a graph and we see, are you in a normal good pattern where you wake up, you make a little bit of cortisol— that's called the cortisol awakening response— and you want to have that go up by a certain amount. It's like your body's natural caffeine. It gets you going for the day, gives you your energy that you need, and then it progressively comes down until bedtime. And you want it to be in a nice certain pattern and range. And oftentimes I'll get patients whose cortisol testing comes back where they're sky high and they're making cortisol 24 hours nonstop, even into the nighttime. And that can be very telling Of where we need to go to handle their insomnia and their other issues. Or maybe their pattern is flipped. They're, you know, not rising in the morning and then they're rising in the evening. Or the worst-case scenario that we talked about with Dr. Joel is the exhaustion phase where your cortisol is kind of flatlined and you just— your adrenal glands just are not producing cortisol. Anytime you feel— have stressors, and that makes it impossible to handle any stress. You're exhausted by it all. You're overwhelmed. And so the only way to really know is to be tested because, like he had mentioned, you don't want to mess with, you know, the supplements in case you're guessing wrong and you're Yeah. And if you're on the opposite end of the spectrum, you could have the wrong response. And so I love testing for cortisol patterns, um, because it gives you a good answer of where to start and where to intervene and how to get you back into balance. So definitely don't hesitate to contact me at PrivaMD Center for Functional Medicine. I am on Facebook. Facebook and Instagram at Dr. Tabatha, T-A-B-A-T-H-A, 3 A's, no I's. Thanks, Mom. And I'm on YouTube, The Functional Gynecologist or Dr. Tabatha. So please hit me up, send me your questions, your comments. I'd love to hear from you. I'm here for you. I do this for you. So if you are getting value out of this, I would love for you hit the subscribe button. 5 stars would be amazing. And more importantly, share this. Tell your friends, your family, your sisters, the chicks in your life, your daughters, like everybody. We need to band together. We need to lift each other up and help each other with our own struggles. And I promise you that women you know in your life are struggling silently. They're not sharing. And so this can be a way to be like, hey, have you heard this podcast? And you guys can start talking about things that need to be discussed. We need to be there for each other. We need to lift each other up. This is a sisterhood, not a competition. So thank you so much for your time. I feel super honored and blessed to be able to do this for you guys, and I want to know what else you want to hear, so send me your stuff. I love getting shouted out on Instagram and Facebook. So good. So awesome. I want you to go have a kick-ass week. Think about joining my Renew You Sisterhood come January 3rd. It's life-changing. You're going to finally get rid of that belly fat that you haven't been able to get rid of because I am going to teach you how to become a fat burner instead of a sugar Sugar burner. I know the secrets of why you are gaining that belly fat, why you're feeling so tired, and I know how to tap into it and restart your system. So I hope you'll join me for that program. I'm excited because it's coming at the perfect time—New Year's, right? We all have our New Year's resolutions. There's no better time to invest in yourself, in your health. health, in your life. You only get one body. You might as well love it and feel good in it, and you might as well make it do something for you, right? Do all the stuff you want it to do. So think of joining the program as an investment in yourself, and you will be so glad you did. It's so worth it. The sisterhood that you become a part of and the women that you meet And the friends that you make, it's so incredible. Like, I just love our sisterhood. So please consider joining us come January 3rd, okay? Go to my website, www.drtabatha.com, Renew You Sisterhood. I'll have all the links in my show notes. All right, I expect you to be there. Do something for yourself. I'm serious, do something for yourself this year. 2020 sucked and you deserve better. So let's make 2021 amazing. All right, go have a kick-ass week, ladies. Bye.

Bye.