Foundations Of Health 7

Do you feel like you live in a haze until about 10am? Are you relying on your adrenals to shoot out adrenaline to get you moving in the morning?

Does your local barista have your gallon of extra strong coffee awaiting you as you roll by on the way into the office? If you are nodding up and down, this article is for you!

What if I told you there was no such thing as a ‘night owl’ or an ‘early riser’. These labels are often reflective of when someone’s adrenaline decides to give them an added boost. In fact, our bodies are designed to be diurnal, waking us up as the sun rises in the sky. Our brain should release melatonin as the sun goes down, coxing us into a deep and repair-rich slumber.

Are You Hormonal?

Who is the culprit that makes it hard to go to sleep? The one who makes it feel like being pulled out of cement to wake up, and ensures our local coffee shop continues to survive – HORMONES.

Hormones aren’t simply the thing you felt raging as a teenager. While those ones do count, they only represent a few of the numerous hormones in our body that regulate important processes including: sleep, metabolism, temperature, mood, libido, stress response and so much more.

So how does coffee help? Well coffee doesn’t really help, in fact it actually does us some harm. Coffee pushes our bodies into a state of adrenaline. The result is we are now experiencing our day as though we were running from a fire, or being chased by a tiger.

It pushes our body into this maximum state to help us get to safety. However, we don’t really ever slow down, do we? Instead of resting, we just push more on the gas and hope for the best.

Are You Running From a Bear?

Running in this hyper state shuts off some of the other functions in the body – the ones that don’t help us run from the bear. Functions like metabolism. Ever notice on the days you are super stressed, that it feels like your lunch is just sitting there? Or maybe you’ve forgotten to eat all together?

Somewhere mid-afternoon, we run out of adrenaline and suddenly our body crashes. This state of tired can be overwhelming. It may feel like you want to crawl under your desk, or hide in the coat closet, just for a few minutes of rest.

The science behind this is pretty simple. Our bodies handle stress and day-to-day activity through a hormone called cortisol. As long as we have an adequate cortisol rise in the morning, it can that slowly release through out the day. This keeps us having enough gas to keep our body producing all the relevant hormones to get us through our day. This allows us to feel like we can manage stressful situations, as well as make good choices and decisions all day long.

When our cortisol is low (this can be for a number of reasons) our body taps into adrenaline. Adrenaline pulls us up high enough to push through our day. But adrenaline doesn’t really have any other gear then high, so we get stuck in high. Most of us experience a highly productive period of time followed by a disastrous crash when the adrenaline shuts off.

If you see yourself in any of the descriptions above, know that your hormones are probably not operating at optimal. It means that you could be having problems losing weight, staying focused, getting pregnant, staying healthy and so much more.

How Are Your Adrenals?

Wonder if you may be taping your adrenals dry? We’ll send the “Am I headed for burnout checklist” right to your inbox.

So, give me a call when you are ready to jump off the adrenaline train and get back to health.

The Author, Christina Carew, is a naturopathic doctor who practices functional and strategic medicine.

As a medical investigator, she is in the business of changing people’s lives. Dr. Christina focuses on finding the biomedical reasons for symptoms that are often unique to each patient and helps her patients remove the obstacles that stand in the way of living a healthy vibrant life.

Want to know if her approach is right for you – sign up for a free 15-minute consult at https://healingme.ca/book-appointment-naturopathic-doctor/

Note: This blog pro­vides gen­eral infor­ma­tion and dis­cus­sion about med­i­cine, health and related sub­jects.  The words and other con­tent pro­vided in this blog, and in any linked mate­ri­als, are not intended and should not be con­strued as med­ical advice. If the reader or any other per­son has a med­ical con­cern, he or she should con­sult with an appropriately-licensed health care worker.