Avoid Adrenal Fatigue by Taking Time For Self Care

So what does adrenal faigue have to do with self care?  Everything.  When you take care of yourself, your stress levels go down.  And when your stress levels decrease, that’s a good thing for you!

Do you have any idea what happens on a physiologic level when you gt stressed out, worry about the future or fret about he past?  Your body releases a cascade of chemicals designed to help you escape from tigers.  Your heart rate speeds up, your blood pressure elevated, your sex drive goes away and your digestion shuts down. Does that sound like the rpescription for a healthy, energetic and happy life?  Certainly not

The stress hormone cortisol gets secreted into your blood stream, and makes trouble throughout your body.  Sure,  it helps you to fight tigers, but that’s not going to help you much when you’re getting all stressed out about the state of the economy.  And it certainly doesn’t help you to think of creative ways you can deflect economic trends and prosper in spite of the world around you.  In fact, it does just the opposite.

One of the effects of cortisol is cortical inhibition. That means, it temporarily shuts off the higher-level thinking center of your brain.   This is important when you’re fleeing the real tiger, because solving economic problems would be counter productive when those big teeth are about to turn you into lunch.   Cortisol activates the primitive parts of yoru brain, the survival centers. It also causes damage to a part of your brain called the hippocampus, which is responsible for short term memory.  “Brain fog”, forgetfullness and lack of focus are sigs of adrenal fatugue.

Cortisol also inhibits your immune system and its ability to fight off invaders, to maintain balance, kill cancer cells, and keep you healthy.  Cortisol also makes you fat, especially around the middle.  Why does stress make you fat? Well, stress leads to increased production of cortisol, which  triggers a mechanism in the body to release more sugar into the blood, because you’re going to need it to escape the tiger.

The release of sugar into the blood causes the release of insulin because insulin is what is needed to remove the sugar from your blood and get  it into your cells, where it’s needed. That’s great when you have a real tiger chasing you.  And it doesn’t present a problem when the stress response is infrequent and short lived.  The problem is, in our modern lifestyle we get stressed often and we stay stressed for long periods of time.

And as if it’s not enough to be more prone to illness and cancer, stress kills your sex drive!  And it stresses your mitochondria so they can’t produce enough energy, so you get tired.

If being a stressed out sick and overweight individual with no sex drive and no memory does not sound like fun to you, then you need to learn how to take care of your needs and transform the stressful responses to recharging ones.

In my Transforming Stress teleseminars I describe some of my favorite techniques for turning the stressful times into positive physiologic responses, using the power of appreciation.

I recorded a video on how to make the time for self care, in spite of your busy schedule.  Consistently taking time for self care allows your adrenals to restore, and can even reverse adrenal fatigue.

What do you do to take care of yoruself everyday?

Write it down below for me.

Thanks,

Love, Health and Joy,

Dr. Ritamarie