3 Steps to More Energy and Addressing Adrenal Fatigue
Do you feel you need more energy? Have you been excessively stressed recently? Do you want to learn more about how to support your adrenal glands? Dr. Hayden and Dr. Horsley share three steps to increasing energy and keys to help support the adrenal glands.
Stay tuned over the next few days as we continue to send out short videos to help inform and inspire you to take control of your health during this time of uncertainty.
Transcript from Video:
Dr. Hayden: We’re from the Hayden Institute and one of the biggest questions we get as nutritional practitioners is what someone could do to increase their level of energy so they can do more throughout the day. We wanted to share this quick video with you regarding something called adrenal fatigue or adrenal insufficiency. The adrenal glands, which are little hormone glands in your back above the kidneys, have a lot to do with stress management, energy production, blood sugar regulation, and sleep pathways. Basically, when we get stressed out, this hormone called cortisol is released from the adrenal glands. When there is an overabundance of stress they can start to get tired and lead to a variety of symptoms.
Dr. Horsley: Stress is probably something a lot of us are feeling right now. During this period of more stress and anxiety, it will affect the adrenal glands. This may lead to mood instability, dark circles under the eyes, even dizziness, dry skin, frequent urination, and extreme tiredness. Dr. Hayden mentioned it a little bit, but the big thing that the adrenals are known for is cortisol release. Cortisol is for stress regulation. So with quarantine, a lot of people are currently dealing with a lot of stressors. Many individuals are being placed in a situation in which there is so much unknown. You listen to one news station they say one thing, and you listen to the next, they say something else. Many individuals are unsure of their job security, changes with the kids being home, and general changes from the normal routine. So, as you can see, there are a lot of stressors that are going at this time, so that’s going to lead to a lot of these different symptoms that I listed out before.
Dr. Hayden: So when it comes to cortisol we often think about these emotional stressors, such as what are we doing with work, what’s going on with the viruses, whatever it might be, but cortisol is just the hormone that lets your body know that something is a little bit out of sync and it can definitely happen through emotional stress. The same thing can happen through physical stress, like if you were in a car accident. An increase in cortisol can also occur with chronic pain patterns and poor dietary habits. If all I do is sit in the closet and eat junk food all day, my cortisol is going to be a little bit higher, but eventually as cortisol becomes unbalanced these symptoms like Dr. Horsley talked about start manifesting in our lives.
Dr. Hayden: One of the most common symptoms that someone may experience if they have cortisol problems is that they will sleep for about eight hours and wake up and feel like they need to go right back to sleep for another eight hours- often stating that they don’t feel recovered. This is a very common problem when someone has excessive cortisol amounts in their life and you know, of course we get the dark circles when we are tired all the time. But the lack of recovery is because your cortisol is displacing the body’s ability to recover.
Dr. Horsley: This is a big deal and can lead to a lack of healing over time too; because your adrenals are very much in control of things like collagen and cartilage production in the body. So over time, you may notice more popping and crackling in your joints, or an inability to heal as well as you once did from muscle injuries. That can also be a sign that your adrenals might be just a little bit over burdened.
Dr. Hayden: Well I’m getting a cortisol response now thinking about all these symptoms that might be affecting my life. How might someone improve their cortisol state or lower their cortisol in this time of potential uncertainty, poor sleep, aches and body pains?
Dr. Horsley: Something you can do is to make sure that you’re getting enough good quality fats in your diet. This can look like increasing avocados, nuts, seeds, wild-caught fish, and olive oils. You also want to make sure that you’re eating smaller meals throughout the day. Often I encourage individuals to do more of an intermittent fasting style of approach (where you eat in a much smaller window of time during the day). However, when your adrenals are really stressed over time, giving that little bit of fuel throughout the day and overburdening them at any one time, can often be something to help to stabilize adrenal function and help lower the blood sugar spikes.
Dr. Hayden: That’s because blood sugar and cortisol are gonna be tied together. Modifying the diet, having more fats, and managing your carbs a little bit more efficiently, is gonna be better for cortisol maintenance. This is important, rather than just going after the junk food over and over again, which is going to lead to a roller coaster effect of spiking and falling of blood sugar- which affects cortisol even more.
Dr. Hayden: So in addition to dietary stuff, what else might someone do to better help regulate their adrenal glands.
Dr. Horsley: As Dr. Hayden mentioned, one of the first things people notice is that they don’t feel as well-rested. So doing things to help optimize sleep can start to help with restoring adrenal function, because sleep is something that can help give balance more towards that side of your endocrine system. A good step to start this process is to make sure you have a good wind down routine- doing a lot of things to help calm the body and mind. Often mindfullness activities, such as journaling during the day or before bed, focusing more on gratitude, and making sure your are doing things daily to stimulate laughter are great ways to help to benefit overall mood and sleep. This is important to practice, even if it feels a little forced as we are in this stressful period. However, finding that time to bring joy and scheduling activities that will bring excitement to your life is something that can help overall health.
Dr. Hayden: It would also be beneficial for someone to turn off their devices prior to going to bed. This will help to get your body ready for sleep, as opposed to watching Netflix or TV form your bed, and turning it off and immediately trying to go to sleep or scrolling on your phone until the early hours of the morning. Both of these activities can affect cortisol output and in turn affect circadian rhythms.
Dr. Hayden: In looking at ways in which we can try and stimulate and support the adrenal glands during this time we want to de-stress our life to whatever capacity we can, be mindful of what we’re doing- journalling being a good activity, remove the devices right before bed, and look at blood sugar stability. Is there one final tip that you think might be a good idea for someone who might have elevated cortisol levels at this time? Is there a supplement that someone might be able to take that supports their adrenal glands?
Dr. Horsley: So in our office I would recommend something like Drenamin, a supplement by Standard Process, which is going to help take stress off the adrenals themselves, while giving all these different good whole food nutrients to support the healing of the adrenals. Another good option would be herbs called “adaptogens”. These nutrients help to support the adrenals either when they’re too revved up or when they’re suffering a bit and function has dropped. A couple of options for adaptogens would be things like ashwagandha, holy basil (tulsi), and rhodiola rosea. Often people may be hesitant to take things that support adrenals before bed, because it may rev them up too much to sleep. However, that’s the beautiful thing with those herbs – they can help with both energy and sleep. In Chinese medicine, ashwagandha was said to give the energy of one thousand horses, while allowing you to sleep like a baby at night. So that’s the function of a lot of these herbs – to truly help during both sides of adrenal function.
Dr. Hayden: So if I was in a stressful situation and my cortisol was up, three steps to take away from this quick video would be: look for ways to de-stress, de-connect before going to bed, and augment my diet through supplementation with adaptogenic herbs (holy basil, tulsi, ashwagandha, rhodiola, ginseng) and things like Drenamin (which has some adrenal tissue inside of it, as well as some vitamin C).
Dr. Hayden: If your stress levels are up because of this pandemic, look for ways in which we can try and get cortisol to go down and as you do so, you should see improvements in energy, which is the number one complaint we see in our office, as well as sleep. We want to thank y’all for joining us in this video and we’ll see you next time. Thank you!