Cortisol: What Goes Up, Must Come Down
High cortisol and “adrenal fatigue” are quite the buzzwords these days and everyone and their mother is being told they have high cortisol or adrenal fatigue.
Cortisol gets quite the bad rep but you would die without it. Cortisol in balance helps to regulate your stress response, blood sugar, blood pressure, inflammation, controls sleep-wake cycle, and how your body uses protein, carbs and fats.
Your adrenal problems are not actually adrenal problems.
It’s modern day life problems that lead us to a high estrogen state, depleted minerals, dysregulated blood sugar, and poor thyroid function.
Regardless of high or low, your stressful lifestyle got you to this place. The only way out is to evaluate the way you are living your life, everything else is symptom management.
Living in fear and anxiety will be a whole hell of a lot more harmful than going with the flow. Remember, it’s how you perceive the stressors that matters the most.
You can not supplement, glandular, cocktail or herbal your way out of adrenal dysfunction. It takes a lot of nourishing and life changes to get your adrenals to a place of balance again. It can take years to arrive at a calm and peaceful state. Children born to mothers already experiencing “adrenal fatigue” will too have it from birth. Physicians, police officers, and night shift workers have a shorter life span due to the tax on their adrenals.
Nourishment and eating enough food is always going to support your adrenals. Restriction and deprivation will only leave your adrenals feeling deprived.
If there is one thing you can do to get out of adrenal dysfunction it is always eating breakfast, eating enough and often enough, and eating enough carbs.
Lifestyle factors causing adrenal dysfunction:
Poor food choices, energy robing people, work and lifestyle, lack of sleep, night shifts and staying up late, lack of enjoyable activities, feeling powerless, constantly putting pressure on yourself, perfectionist tendencies, drug or alcohol abuse, unhappy marriage, loneliness, all work-no play.
What goes up, must come down. Most of us have lived a life running on stress hormones for so long we have now reached severe burn out.