March 17, 2025 • 21 mins
Your adrenal glands may be small, but they're running more of your life than you realize. Feeling exhausted despite sleeping enough? Crashing after your morning coffee? Waking up hours before your alarm? These tiny walnut-sized organs sitting atop your kidneys might be sending you important messages about your stress levels.
Learn more about your Adrenal Glands with this free resource:
Dr. Charlyce takes us on a fascinating journey through the endocrine system, explaining how these mighty glands produce hormones that regulate everything from your morning energy to your stress response. We learn how the brain's command centers—the hypothalamus and pituitary gland—constantly monitor your environment and psychological state, sending signals to your adrenals that trigger the release of cortisol and adrenaline. While these hormones are essential for survival and motivation, our modern always-on lifestyle keeps them pumping without the recovery periods our bodies desperately need.
Through personal examples and practical science, Dr. Charlyce shares how functional medicine approaches adrenal health differently than conventional medicine. She reveals how home testing helped identify her own imbalanced cortisol patterns and melatonin deficiency, leading to personalized solutions that didn't involve medication. You'll discover specific strategies for supporting your adrenals—from nutrient-dense eating schedules and appropriate sodium intake to balancing exercise with recovery and incorporating grounding practices that activate your parasympathetic nervous system.
Whether you're dealing with unexplained fatigue, sleep disruptions, or simply want to optimize your energy and stress resilience, this episode offers actionable insights into working with—rather than against—your body's natural hormonal rhythms. Take a moment to rate this episode and connect with Dr. Charlyce on social media to continue the conversation about your adrenal health journey.
Welcome to the Art of Healing Podcast community. This podcast is devoted to helping you find what works on your journey to health and wellness. This podcast is devoted to providing information on many healing modalities. Learn more about:
- Reiki
- Functional Medicine
- Meditation
- Energy Healing
and more!
Learn more about Dr. Charlyce here.
Never miss an episode of Art of Healing Podcast...the podcast devoted to helping you heal your mind, body and spirit.
Sign up for my weekly newsletter, and never miss an episode along with other great content:
Art of Healing Podcast
Stay in touch socially here:
Healing Arts Links
Learn more about me and my offerings here:
Healing Arts Health and Wellness
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right.
Well, thank you so much forjoining me for today's Art of
Healing podcast.
I'm Dr Charlize and if this ismy first time to meet you, very
nice to meet you, and of course,we've met before.
Welcome back.
I love to do these kind of liveepisodes because it gives us a
chance to connect and to chatand talk.
We're going to start offtoday's episode with a deep dive
(00:23):
on the adrenal glands and thenwe'll move into grounding our
energy, which we'll do a littlebit later, and then, hopefully,
our guest, dr Noorji Han, willbe able to jump on and share
with us some of her wisdom onraising kids mindfully in
turbulent times.
If you are listening to thisepisode after we've taped it on
(00:44):
the podcast app you're listeningto, I would love it if you
could leave me a rating and, ofcourse, feel free to send me a
message on your podcast app.
It should have that option.
If you Google at Dr Charlize,you should be able to find me on
social media as well as mywebsite.
So we'll get started and let'stalk about our adrenal glands.
(01:04):
So our adrenal glands are veryimportant to understanding our
stress response, understandinghow our body operates from
moment to moment, and ouradrenal glands can not only well
, of course, govern the way ourbody works, but can really teach
us about how we might be movingthrough the world.
(01:26):
So with this talk I wanted todiscuss what they are, where
they are, and then a few simplesteps we can do to protect our
adrenal glands and as we goalong.
If you all have any questionsoh, thank you, kimberly feel
free to chime in in the chat andthen, once we close, we'll have
a few minutes to talk.
If you do have questions you'dlike to ask me directly.
(01:51):
The adrenal glands are part ofwhat's called our endocrine
system, so this is our system ofhormones, and hormones are
chemical messengers within thebody.
So a hormone's role is to becreated by one part of the body
to influence something else.
The adrenal glands are smallglands that sit on the top of
(02:14):
your kidneys, so, of course, thekidneys are located towards the
mid back, all the way to yourback.
Sometimes we might feel ourkidneys if they're really badly
infected or if you have a kidneystone.
Although that graphic there isdepicting the glands to be very
large, in real life they'reactually very small.
We get a set of two, butthey're actually very small in
(02:36):
real life and within these teeny, tiny little glands it's
actually multiple complex layersthat are incredibly powerful,
especially to be the relativesize that they are.
But there's an inner part, theinner cortex, and then there's
an outer cortex, and theimportance of that is that each
(02:58):
layer of the adrenal glandsactually does something
different.
So the way that our adrenalglands work is they are resting
there on the top of your kidneys.
They're taking signals frommultiple sources, but primarily
(03:19):
they're going to take a signalfrom glands within the brain.
So there are two glands in thebrain that sample the
bloodstream, respond to otherchemical messengers and then
will send a governing signal tothe rest of the glands in your
body.
In this case it's going to bewhat's called the hypothalamus,
(03:40):
which is a very small gland deepwithin the brain.
In real life, if we getsomething like an MRI, it is
possible to image thehypothalamus, but the imaging of
it.
It's just very small.
The pituitary gland which isbeneath it also sits very deep
within the brain.
It's actually located waybehind the eyes, which can be
(04:02):
imaged on something like an MRIor CT.
These two glands will integratesignals from the brain that are
a combination of sensorysignals from the ears, from the
eyes, and then sort of anintegration of a large volume of
(04:23):
data from the cortex of thebrain.
And this is kind of where thatwhole stress response comes in,
because as this signals kind ofweaned down to the hypothalamus
and pituitary gland, it's kindof has to be shortened and
refined to tell those glands howto communicate to other glands
in the body.
But once that signal is madesense of electrically and gets
(04:45):
to those glands, and thoseglands will release hormones
that will then go to the adrenalglands where the adrenal glands
will interpret and then we'llstart to calibrate how they
produce hormones that governyour blood pressure, hormones
that govern how much salt yourbody is going to hang on to, or,
(05:06):
if your body is going torelease salt through your urine,
is going to govern how much ofthe hormones cortisol and
cortisone you're going to make.
Although those are going to goin somewhat of a cycle.
If the stress signal comingfrom the brain then to the
hypothalamus and the pituitaryglands is indicating that your
(05:28):
body's in stress and illness andinjury and accident or
something like that, that signalto the adrenal glands will be
heavily altered so that, if needbe, the stress hormones will be
produced in larger quantitiesto help the body survive.
Produced in larger quantitiesto help the body survive.
Then there's also a part of theadrenal glands that we use
(05:50):
sometimes.
We do like to use it if we'reabout to exercise or if we have
something exciting.
But that fight or flight andthat's the part of our adrenal
glands that we don't want to usetoo much.
That makes the adrenaline.
So it makes epinephrine,noradrenaline or norepinephrine,
and those are very potent, verypowerful hormones that change
(06:15):
the body's physiology veryrapidly.
So when they're released so ifwe're startled, for instance,
like something shocks us orscares us, they will make our
pupils dilate, they will makeour sweat glands come on.
These hormones are responsiblefor redirecting blood flow away
from our digestive tract intoour limbs to prepare us to move
(06:36):
quickly or to fight.
The fight or flight responsesometimes is good.
We do want that, particularlyif we are exercising.
It's actually a good thing, butwe don't want the fight or
flight all the time because thatputs way too much stress on us.
So this graph here is showingwhat a normal what we think a
(06:58):
normal cortisol pattern lookslike.
So in those adrenal glandswe're actually making a lot of
hormones and I'm going to pullup a little graph of some of my
own here in a second.
But cortisol is the one thatpeople will frequently ask about
when you see your doctor.
It's actually one that can bechecked with a blood draw, and
(07:18):
now we have some even moreconvenient ways that can be
checked, even with home testing,where you can actually do a
home test and check your owncortisol.
Cortisol is the hormone thatour body uses to help wake us up
in the morning.
It helps get our bodies movingin the morning and then
throughout the day it helps us.
(07:39):
Cortisol is really great forraising the blood sugar, because
there's times that we actuallyneed more sugar or glucose in
our blood, and then alsocortisol helps us to basically
function better when we need tobe more awake.
Normally this graph doesn'tquite capture it because our
(08:00):
cortisol over a 24-hour periodwhile you're sleeping, your
adrenal glands actually startthe process of raising your
cortisol levels earlier than youwake up.
So around three or four in themorning your adrenal glands get
a signal from your brain tostart to wake you up and will
gently start to raise thecortisol levels until they
(08:21):
should peak, hopefully about thetime you're going to wake up
and the purpose of that is, withthose cortisol levels being
higher, that makes more sugaravailable in your bloodstream.
That helps wake up your brain,because your brain needs that
fuel to wake up.
Then also that cortisol isgoing to help raise your pulse.
So your heart should beat alittle faster, should raise your
(08:44):
blood pressure a little bit,and that's to help you go from
laying down and sleeping allnight to being upright.
So when you first sit up in themorning and then, of course,
when you get up and start yourday, so we want to have a surge
of it a little bit, but then wekind of want that to go down.
So as we go throughout our daythe cortisol starts to go down,
(09:06):
which we need because we getlater in the day.
We need another set of hormonesto start to kick in to help our
bodies digest food, help usrelax and then prepare us to go
to sleep, because we're diurnalcreatures.
So stress and the adrenal glandsand I mentioned before that
(09:28):
some of our stress is good, weactually want to have that
stress.
So what we call stress, whichis essentially our body senses
something's not right,something's not good, we don't
like it.
We have a response, which isfrom the HPA axis which we
talked about, which is thatgland in the brain, the
(09:50):
hypothalamus, the pituitarygland, which is also in the
brain, that will trigger arelease of cortisol and
adrenaline from those adrenalglands and then correspondingly,
those glands will affect prettymuch every part of the body.
So it affects the heart rate,the pulse, the blood pressure.
Blood sugars go up, becauseglucose is a good way to get the
(10:14):
body moving, activated.
The brain needs it, the musclescan use glucose quickly to move
and to have action and thenhopefully we should have a time
after that that we recover.
So if it's a good stress, soyou decide I'm going to the gym,
I'll pump an iron, we're goingto work out, so that stress will
trigger your HPA axis, you'llget all those same hormones.
(10:36):
But if you were going to workout and this was intentional,
then after your workout you'llhydrate, you'll do some
stretches, you'll get some waterand then hopefully you'll have
some time where you can actuallyhave a little bit of a rest and
that's where the adrenal glandswill recover and also in that
rest period, especially ifyou're exercising, the muscles
(10:57):
will do the recovery, get moreblood flow will allow the liver
and the kidneys to get toxinsout of you from exercising.
But if we get into stress and weare getting all that same cycle
but then we don't really get arest and recovery.
So maybe we know, maybe we'retaking care of a sick relative
(11:17):
or we ourselves are sick, orwe're under financial stress,
it's time to do taxes and it'slike, oh, all that stress.
If we're in that and we're notreally getting a breakup from it
because, as we all know,psychological stress can be
devastating because our brainswill just keep driving it and
keeping it going we can stillget that same hormonal cascade
(11:40):
but we're not getting a break.
You actually keep doing it andkeep doing it until you finally
run into a time when the adrenalglands don't respond
appropriately.
They're not doing what theyneed to do.
Respond appropriately, they'renot doing what they need to do.
(12:04):
So I mentioned earlier that oneof the great things about modern
medicine, especially infunctional medicine, is we can
conduct some of our own hormonaltesting at home, and there's
actually even a couple companieswhere you can do this without a
doctor's order.
So this test I'm showing youhere is one that I did on myself
about three or four years agoand I'm probably going to do
(12:24):
another test here pretty soon.
So this is one of thosehormonal spans that you can
check and this is withcollecting your own saliva and
your own urine spans that youcan check, and this is with
collecting your own saliva andyour own urine so handy.
And from this chart what we cansee is what's happening with my
HPA axis.
So that's my representation myhypothalamus, my pituitary gland
(12:46):
, the pineal gland, which Ididn't mention, but also a small
gland that sits in the brain.
And what I liked about thisgraph I included it was because
it shows that relationshipbetween those glands in the
brain and then getting down tothe adrenal glands.
From this chart you can seethat at the time that I did this
, the amount of melatonin that Iwas making was actually low.
(13:10):
What was going on with me, whichI was aware of, was that I was
waking up extremely early.
I was waking up three to fourhours earlier than I desired,
and once I got this test, Irecognized immediately that the
amount of melatonin that wouldprobably be more optimal for me
sleeping better was awfully low.
What that meant for me wasmaking a change in some of my
(13:33):
habits, coming off of digitalscreens much earlier, making
sure to unplug from the TV orunplug from anything that I
perceived to be activating muchearlier in my day, because at
this time I would fall asleepgreat.
But then I was waking up andthen also including foods
throughout my day that containedmelatonin.
(13:53):
Oddly enough, what ended upworking for me was not that
contained melatonin.
Oddly enough, what ended upworking for me was not actually
taking melatonin.
It was making those changesbecause I would take melatonin
and I'd actually feel very tired, but I wouldn't actually sleep
better Then from my adrenalglands.
What I found out at this pointin my life was that it actually
looks like my cortisol levelswere kind of wonky when I did
(14:15):
this home test and doing thishome test if you're interested,
you can reach out to me and Ican walk you through, like what
it looks like.
But I did kind of mess up on myown hormone test so I missed
the testing.
But what I did discover with mypattern was that my cortisol
levels were kind of low, whichled to this combination of
(14:36):
falling asleep easily because Iwas exhausted, because I was
developing a little bit ofadrenal fatigue, but then waking
up super early.
So that's because my melatoninwasn't quite enough to influence
a healthy sleep response.
End result was, you know,unhealthy sleep patterns.
And so you know, adapting tothat for me meant at that point
(14:58):
in my life things that I did notperceive were stressful were
actually stressful.
So I was not perceiving itcognitively the way my body was
telling me.
So really cool test, reallyeasy to do on your own or do
with some guidance.
One of my favorites.
So as far as keeping youradrenal glands healthy, one of
(15:18):
my favorite topics, because whenyou see your doctor you
probably will not talk aboutyour adrenal glands, but they're
important, even though they'resmall and they're the size of
like walnuts and they're notgetting your attention most of
the time.
We want to protect them.
So things that we can do is,when possible, we want to have
eating schedule that supports us.
(15:39):
So we don't necessarily want toskip meals, in particular if
you're noticing feeling tired,feel run down, not waking up
very easily in the mornings.
So just making sure that youknow if we need to adapt our
schedule such as you know if youfeel better when you eat
breakfast, maybe making sure totake it with you to work if your
(15:59):
day starts early.
Making sure that we consumefoods that are dense in
nutrients and vitamins.
So of course, in our fast paced, busy world this can be hard to
do.
But when you're shopping,essentially if it has a label,
you want to check the label andmake sure you see some vitamins
and you see some minerals listed.
(16:20):
If you check the label of thatfood and you're not seeing any,
then that's probably a processedfood that's getting more into
the ultra processed realm thatwe want to avoid.
Whole foods are best wheneverwe can include them.
Our fruits and vegetables, whenthey look the closest, as they
came from, when they were pickedor when they were harvested,
(16:40):
those are the best.
Sodium is tricky because thecatch-all phrase that we've
heard for many years is relatedmore to people that have
cardiovascular disease, such ashigh blood pressure.
But it turns out some of us dobetter if we have some sodium in
our diet that we don't want torestrict too much because we'll
(17:01):
feel tired, might even have ourblood pressures run too low.
So, of course, knowing whereyour blood pressure is, knowing
where your pulse is, forindividuals who are living with
long COVID long COVID that's ledto POTS disease you may have
heard of that long COVID that'sled to POTS disease.
You may have heard of that.
(17:21):
Those individuals actually canreally improve their quality of
life if they start includingsodium in their diets.
The general advice is to put iton your food rather than just
consuming a high sodium foodthat's ultra processed.
And then stimulants.
So stimulants can be great likecaffeine, actually can protect
the brain some.
But you should probably starttaking some note of how you
(17:45):
respond.
So if you notice that you havea stimulant like caffeine and
then within a couple of hoursyou're very, very tired, it
might be that your adrenalglands or something like mine
were back a few years ago, thatthey're depleted, and when
you're hammering them withstimulants, they've just got
nothing else to give you.
So things like adaptogenicherbs, adaptogenic coffees, like
(18:08):
the mushroom coffees which arebecoming a lot more available in
many stores, or you might evenwant to make a switch to herbal
teas, especially if you'renoticing that you're more prone
to the anxiety way of being.
And then exercise.
So I mentioned earlier thatexercise helps our genital
glands.
So the key with exercise ismoderation, like with everything
(18:33):
.
So 150 minutes a week is agreat goal.
That's what I stick to, becausesome days I won't get to
exercise as much.
So it might be 10 minutes here,then an hour there, but
hopefully you can spread it outevenly, having some strength
training.
So strength training is greatbecause you can do shorter
sessions less frequently andthat gives your muscles a
(18:56):
challenge and the adrenal glandsjust the right amount of bump,
without too much.
And then we want to balance itout with something where we can
calm those.
So with mind-body practices,which we'll practice here in a
few minutes, and that's likeyoga, tai chi and grounding that
we'll practice together, andwith exercise we want to have
some kind of recovery period,because if we do too much, oddly
(19:18):
enough, we can put strain onthose adrenal glands and make
them not feel so good.
So grounding, simple exerciseswhere we want to match our
energy to Earth's energy, andit's a number of ways we can do
that and we'll actually betalking about that here in a few
minutes.
We can do that and we'llactually be talking about that
(19:38):
here in a few minutes.
But grounding is a great way toconnect with your body and
start to get a sense of youradrenal glands and their health.
Right before we started Iactually took myself outside and
did a little bit of groundingwith a tree in my yard.
I just stood there and decidedI was going to make some natural
vitamin D in the sun, becausewe actually had sun.
We'd had bad weather here andin my area, so soaked up a
(20:01):
little sun, soaked up a littlegrounding energy just to keep my
adrenal glands from goinghaywire before we got started.
So this brings us to theconclusion of our adrenal glands
.
All right.
Well, thank you so much forjoining me for today's Art of
Healing podcast.
I'm Dr Charlize and if this ismy first time to meet you, very
nice to meet you, and of course,we've met before.
Welcome back.
I love to do these kind of liveepisodes because it gives us a
chance to connect and to chatand talk.
We're going to start offtoday's episode with a deep dive
(00:23):
on the adrenal glands and thenwe'll move into grounding our
energy, which we'll do a littlebit later, and then, hopefully,
our guest, dr Noorji Han, willbe able to jump on and share
with us some of her wisdom onraising kids mindfully in
turbulent times.
If you are listening to thisepisode after we've taped it on
(00:44):
the podcast app you're listeningto, I would love it if you
could leave me a rating and, ofcourse, feel free to send me a
message on your podcast app.
It should have that option.
If you Google at Dr Charlize,you should be able to find me on
social media as well as mywebsite.
So we'll get started and let'stalk about our adrenal glands.
(01:04):
So our adrenal glands are veryimportant to understanding our
stress response, understandinghow our body operates from
moment to moment, and ouradrenal glands can not only well
, of course, govern the way ourbody works, but can really teach
us about how we might be movingthrough the world.
(01:26):
So with this talk I wanted todiscuss what they are, where
they are, and then a few simplesteps we can do to protect our
adrenal glands and as we goalong.
If you all have any questionsoh, thank you, kimberly feel
free to chime in in the chat andthen, once we close, we'll have
a few minutes to talk.
If you do have questions you'dlike to ask me directly.
(01:51):
The adrenal glands are part ofwhat's called our endocrine
system, so this is our system ofhormones, and hormones are
chemical messengers within thebody.
So a hormone's role is to becreated by one part of the body
to influence something else.
The adrenal glands are smallglands that sit on the top of
(02:14):
your kidneys, so, of course, thekidneys are located towards the
mid back, all the way to yourback.
Sometimes we might feel ourkidneys if they're really badly
infected or if you have a kidneystone.
Although that graphic there isdepicting the glands to be very
large, in real life they'reactually very small.
We get a set of two, butthey're actually very small in
(02:36):
real life and within these teeny, tiny little glands it's
actually multiple complex layersthat are incredibly powerful,
especially to be the relativesize that they are.
But there's an inner part, theinner cortex, and then there's
an outer cortex, and theimportance of that is that each
(02:58):
layer of the adrenal glandsactually does something
different.
So the way that our adrenalglands work is they are resting
there on the top of your kidneys.
They're taking signals frommultiple sources, but primarily
(03:19):
they're going to take a signalfrom glands within the brain.
So there are two glands in thebrain that sample the
bloodstream, respond to otherchemical messengers and then
will send a governing signal tothe rest of the glands in your
body.
In this case it's going to bewhat's called the hypothalamus,
(03:40):
which is a very small gland deepwithin the brain.
In real life, if we getsomething like an MRI, it is
possible to image thehypothalamus, but the imaging of
it.
It's just very small.
The pituitary gland which isbeneath it also sits very deep
within the brain.
It's actually located waybehind the eyes, which can be
(04:02):
imaged on something like an MRIor CT.
These two glands will integratesignals from the brain that are
a combination of sensorysignals from the ears, from the
eyes, and then sort of anintegration of a large volume of
(04:23):
data from the cortex of thebrain.
And this is kind of where thatwhole stress response comes in,
because as this signals kind ofweaned down to the hypothalamus
and pituitary gland, it's kindof has to be shortened and
refined to tell those glands howto communicate to other glands
in the body.
But once that signal is madesense of electrically and gets
(04:45):
to those glands, and thoseglands will release hormones
that will then go to the adrenalglands where the adrenal glands
will interpret and then we'llstart to calibrate how they
produce hormones that governyour blood pressure, hormones
that govern how much salt yourbody is going to hang on to, or,
(05:06):
if your body is going torelease salt through your urine,
is going to govern how much ofthe hormones cortisol and
cortisone you're going to make.
Although those are going to goin somewhat of a cycle.
If the stress signal comingfrom the brain then to the
hypothalamus and the pituitaryglands is indicating that your
(05:28):
body's in stress and illness andinjury and accident or
something like that, that signalto the adrenal glands will be
heavily altered so that, if needbe, the stress hormones will be
produced in larger quantitiesto help the body survive.
Produced in larger quantitiesto help the body survive.
Then there's also a part of theadrenal glands that we use
(05:50):
sometimes.
We do like to use it if we'reabout to exercise or if we have
something exciting.
But that fight or flight andthat's the part of our adrenal
glands that we don't want to usetoo much.
That makes the adrenaline.
So it makes epinephrine,noradrenaline or norepinephrine,
and those are very potent, verypowerful hormones that change
(06:15):
the body's physiology veryrapidly.
So when they're released so ifwe're startled, for instance,
like something shocks us orscares us, they will make our
pupils dilate, they will makeour sweat glands come on.
These hormones are responsiblefor redirecting blood flow away
from our digestive tract intoour limbs to prepare us to move
(06:36):
quickly or to fight.
The fight or flight responsesometimes is good.
We do want that, particularlyif we are exercising.
It's actually a good thing, butwe don't want the fight or
flight all the time because thatputs way too much stress on us.
So this graph here is showingwhat a normal what we think a
(06:58):
normal cortisol pattern lookslike.
So in those adrenal glandswe're actually making a lot of
hormones and I'm going to pullup a little graph of some of my
own here in a second.
But cortisol is the one thatpeople will frequently ask about
when you see your doctor.
It's actually one that can bechecked with a blood draw, and
(07:18):
now we have some even moreconvenient ways that can be
checked, even with home testing,where you can actually do a
home test and check your owncortisol.
Cortisol is the hormone thatour body uses to help wake us up
in the morning.
It helps get our bodies movingin the morning and then
throughout the day it helps us.
(07:39):
Cortisol is really great forraising the blood sugar, because
there's times that we actuallyneed more sugar or glucose in
our blood, and then alsocortisol helps us to basically
function better when we need tobe more awake.
Normally this graph doesn'tquite capture it because our
(08:00):
cortisol over a 24-hour periodwhile you're sleeping, your
adrenal glands actually startthe process of raising your
cortisol levels earlier than youwake up.
So around three or four in themorning your adrenal glands get
a signal from your brain tostart to wake you up and will
gently start to raise thecortisol levels until they
(08:21):
should peak, hopefully about thetime you're going to wake up
and the purpose of that is, withthose cortisol levels being
higher, that makes more sugaravailable in your bloodstream.
That helps wake up your brain,because your brain needs that
fuel to wake up.
Then also that cortisol isgoing to help raise your pulse.
So your heart should beat alittle faster, should raise your
(08:44):
blood pressure a little bit,and that's to help you go from
laying down and sleeping allnight to being upright.
So when you first sit up in themorning and then, of course,
when you get up and start yourday, so we want to have a surge
of it a little bit, but then wekind of want that to go down.
So as we go throughout our daythe cortisol starts to go down,
(09:06):
which we need because we getlater in the day.
We need another set of hormonesto start to kick in to help our
bodies digest food, help usrelax and then prepare us to go
to sleep, because we're diurnalcreatures.
So stress and the adrenal glandsand I mentioned before that
(09:28):
some of our stress is good, weactually want to have that
stress.
So what we call stress, whichis essentially our body senses
something's not right,something's not good, we don't
like it.
We have a response, which isfrom the HPA axis which we
talked about, which is thatgland in the brain, the
(09:50):
hypothalamus, the pituitarygland, which is also in the
brain, that will trigger arelease of cortisol and
adrenaline from those adrenalglands and then correspondingly,
those glands will affect prettymuch every part of the body.
So it affects the heart rate,the pulse, the blood pressure.
Blood sugars go up, becauseglucose is a good way to get the
(10:14):
body moving, activated.
The brain needs it, the musclescan use glucose quickly to move
and to have action and thenhopefully we should have a time
after that that we recover.
So if it's a good stress, soyou decide I'm going to the gym,
I'll pump an iron, we're goingto work out, so that stress will
trigger your HPA axis, you'llget all those same hormones.
(10:36):
But if you were going to workout and this was intentional,
then after your workout you'llhydrate, you'll do some
stretches, you'll get some waterand then hopefully you'll have
some time where you can actuallyhave a little bit of a rest and
that's where the adrenal glandswill recover and also in that
rest period, especially ifyou're exercising, the muscles
(10:57):
will do the recovery, get moreblood flow will allow the liver
and the kidneys to get toxinsout of you from exercising.
But if we get into stress and weare getting all that same cycle
but then we don't really get arest and recovery.
So maybe we know, maybe we'retaking care of a sick relative
(11:17):
or we ourselves are sick, orwe're under financial stress,
it's time to do taxes and it'slike, oh, all that stress.
If we're in that and we're notreally getting a breakup from it
because, as we all know,psychological stress can be
devastating because our brainswill just keep driving it and
keeping it going we can stillget that same hormonal cascade
(11:40):
but we're not getting a break.
You actually keep doing it andkeep doing it until you finally
run into a time when the adrenalglands don't respond
appropriately.
They're not doing what theyneed to do.
Respond appropriately, they'renot doing what they need to do.
(12:04):
So I mentioned earlier that oneof the great things about modern
medicine, especially infunctional medicine, is we can
conduct some of our own hormonaltesting at home, and there's
actually even a couple companieswhere you can do this without a
doctor's order.
So this test I'm showing youhere is one that I did on myself
about three or four years agoand I'm probably going to do
(12:24):
another test here pretty soon.
So this is one of thosehormonal spans that you can
check and this is withcollecting your own saliva and
your own urine spans that youcan check, and this is with
collecting your own saliva andyour own urine so handy.
And from this chart what we cansee is what's happening with my
HPA axis.
So that's my representation myhypothalamus, my pituitary gland
(12:46):
, the pineal gland, which Ididn't mention, but also a small
gland that sits in the brain.
And what I liked about thisgraph I included it was because
it shows that relationshipbetween those glands in the
brain and then getting down tothe adrenal glands.
From this chart you can seethat at the time that I did this
, the amount of melatonin that Iwas making was actually low.
(13:10):
What was going on with me, whichI was aware of, was that I was
waking up extremely early.
I was waking up three to fourhours earlier than I desired,
and once I got this test, Irecognized immediately that the
amount of melatonin that wouldprobably be more optimal for me
sleeping better was awfully low.
What that meant for me wasmaking a change in some of my
(13:33):
habits, coming off of digitalscreens much earlier, making
sure to unplug from the TV orunplug from anything that I
perceived to be activating muchearlier in my day, because at
this time I would fall asleepgreat.
But then I was waking up andthen also including foods
throughout my day that containedmelatonin.
(13:53):
Oddly enough, what ended upworking for me was not that
contained melatonin.
Oddly enough, what ended upworking for me was not actually
taking melatonin.
It was making those changesbecause I would take melatonin
and I'd actually feel very tired, but I wouldn't actually sleep
better Then from my adrenalglands.
What I found out at this pointin my life was that it actually
looks like my cortisol levelswere kind of wonky when I did
(14:15):
this home test and doing thishome test if you're interested,
you can reach out to me and Ican walk you through, like what
it looks like.
But I did kind of mess up on myown hormone test so I missed
the testing.
But what I did discover with mypattern was that my cortisol
levels were kind of low, whichled to this combination of
(14:36):
falling asleep easily because Iwas exhausted, because I was
developing a little bit ofadrenal fatigue, but then waking
up super early.
So that's because my melatoninwasn't quite enough to influence
a healthy sleep response.
End result was, you know,unhealthy sleep patterns.
And so you know, adapting tothat for me meant at that point
(14:58):
in my life things that I did notperceive were stressful were
actually stressful.
So I was not perceiving itcognitively the way my body was
telling me.
So really cool test, reallyeasy to do on your own or do
with some guidance.
One of my favorites.
So as far as keeping youradrenal glands healthy, one of
(15:18):
my favorite topics, because whenyou see your doctor you
probably will not talk aboutyour adrenal glands, but they're
important, even though they'resmall and they're the size of
like walnuts and they're notgetting your attention most of
the time.
We want to protect them.
So things that we can do is,when possible, we want to have
eating schedule that supports us.
(15:39):
So we don't necessarily want toskip meals, in particular if
you're noticing feeling tired,feel run down, not waking up
very easily in the mornings.
So just making sure that youknow if we need to adapt our
schedule such as you know if youfeel better when you eat
breakfast, maybe making sure totake it with you to work if your
(15:59):
day starts early.
Making sure that we consumefoods that are dense in
nutrients and vitamins.
So of course, in our fast paced, busy world this can be hard to
do.
But when you're shopping,essentially if it has a label,
you want to check the label andmake sure you see some vitamins
and you see some minerals listed.
(16:20):
If you check the label of thatfood and you're not seeing any,
then that's probably a processedfood that's getting more into
the ultra processed realm thatwe want to avoid.
Whole foods are best wheneverwe can include them.
Our fruits and vegetables, whenthey look the closest, as they
came from, when they were pickedor when they were harvested,
(16:40):
those are the best.
Sodium is tricky because thecatch-all phrase that we've
heard for many years is relatedmore to people that have
cardiovascular disease, such ashigh blood pressure.
But it turns out some of us dobetter if we have some sodium in
our diet that we don't want torestrict too much because we'll
(17:01):
feel tired, might even have ourblood pressures run too low.
So, of course, knowing whereyour blood pressure is, knowing
where your pulse is, forindividuals who are living with
long COVID long COVID that's ledto POTS disease you may have
heard of that long COVID that'sled to POTS disease.
You may have heard of that.
(17:21):
Those individuals actually canreally improve their quality of
life if they start includingsodium in their diets.
The general advice is to put iton your food rather than just
consuming a high sodium foodthat's ultra processed.
And then stimulants.
So stimulants can be great likecaffeine, actually can protect
the brain some.
But you should probably starttaking some note of how you
(17:45):
respond.
So if you notice that you havea stimulant like caffeine and
then within a couple of hoursyou're very, very tired, it
might be that your adrenalglands or something like mine
were back a few years ago, thatthey're depleted, and when
you're hammering them withstimulants, they've just got
nothing else to give you.
So things like adaptogenicherbs, adaptogenic coffees, like
(18:08):
the mushroom coffees which arebecoming a lot more available in
many stores, or you might evenwant to make a switch to herbal
teas, especially if you'renoticing that you're more prone
to the anxiety way of being.
And then exercise.
So I mentioned earlier thatexercise helps our genital
glands.
So the key with exercise ismoderation, like with everything
(18:33):
.
So 150 minutes a week is agreat goal.
That's what I stick to, becausesome days I won't get to
exercise as much.
So it might be 10 minutes here,then an hour there, but
hopefully you can spread it outevenly, having some strength
training.
So strength training is greatbecause you can do shorter
sessions less frequently andthat gives your muscles a
(18:56):
challenge and the adrenal glandsjust the right amount of bump,
without too much.
And then we want to balance itout with something where we can
calm those.
So with mind-body practices,which we'll practice here in a
few minutes, and that's likeyoga, tai chi and grounding that
we'll practice together, andwith exercise we want to have
some kind of recovery period,because if we do too much, oddly
(19:18):
enough, we can put strain onthose adrenal glands and make
them not feel so good.
So grounding, simple exerciseswhere we want to match our
energy to Earth's energy, andit's a number of ways we can do
that and we'll actually betalking about that here in a few
minutes.
We can do that and we'llactually be talking about that
(19:38):
here in a few minutes.
But grounding is a great way toconnect with your body and
start to get a sense of youradrenal glands and their health.
Right before we started Iactually took myself outside and
did a little bit of groundingwith a tree in my yard.
I just stood there and decidedI was going to make some natural
vitamin D in the sun, becausewe actually had sun.
We'd had bad weather here andin my area, so soaked up a
(20:01):
little sun, soaked up a littlegrounding energy just to keep my
adrenal glands from goinghaywire before we got started.
So this brings us to theconclusion of our adrenal glands
.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.