My Quest for Healthy Living-Part 2

During this time of year, believe it or not, stress is extremely high. Stress can come in many forms such as emotional, physical, mental and even financial. Most of the stress we experience in our lives is self-inflicted though-taking on too much, over indulging, reacting to others crisis, etc. We have choices we can make in most situations, however some we do not have control over.Several years ago I went through an extremely stressful season in my life hitting me from all sides with emotional, mental and financial turmoil. Although the stress had subsided, my physical body was responding to that time period in a delayed domino effect. My stress had manifested itself through my physical body causing health issues. I was constantly tired and fatigued needing a daily nap just to get through the day and getting out of bed every morning was a struggle. I gained weight despite the intense exercising. I had trouble concentrating with a feeling of a foggy brain. What had happened was I had depleted my adrenal glands with all the stress it had to handle during that tense period. I had adrenal fatigue syndrome."Your adrenal glands make hormones. One of these is cortisol, which helps your body deal with stress. According to the adrenal fatigue theory, if your life is too stressful, your adrenal glands may not pump out enough hormones, leading to a wide variety of symptoms." (WebMD) My understanding of the function of the adrenal glands and its relationship to cortisol started to make sense to me. We know that the adrenal glands respond to stress with a "fight and flight" reaction producing cortisol to give us a burst of energy to get us through our crisis. However, prolonged periods of stress cause continual high levels of cortisol in the bloodstream which can contribute to negative effects on your health such as; suppressed thyroid function, low immune system, higher blood pressure, decreased bone density, increased abdominal fat, and more. Since my adrenals were depleted and my cortisol levels were already high, by adding high intensity boot camp exercise to my regiment wasn't benefiting me. Although I was committed to a 3 day a week high intensity 5am boot camp for almost 2 months I didn't lose any weight. My cortisol levels were high causing my body to hang onto the fat. Also, I was diminishing my sleep time by getting up early.Sleep is essential when dealing with stress. Our bodies need that time to recover and repair. Being that my adrenals were depleted, I was needing about 8 hours of sleep which I wasn't getting while doing my Boot Camp. My body also needed more gentle to moderate exercise instead of the additional physical stress of high intensity workouts. Once I realized what my body needed, I gave up high intensity workouts for awhile and focused on Pilates and reflective walks outside.Discovering that my adrenals needed supported and repaired, I tried many methods. I am not a doctor, so I can not prescribe any one method except that it is an individual journey with an awareness to what you personally need-body awareness. I tried herbal remedies, vitamins, homeopathy, acupuncture, massage and diet. Diet is important since sugars, caffeine, white flour and food allergies can put undue stress on your adrenals as well. Adrenal support is important since it will also effect one's thyroid functions. I already had a "slow thyroid" so when my adrenals got depleted, my thyroid got worse which is why I couldn't lose weight as the thyroid controls metabolism(more on this in part 3).As mentioned above, some of our stress is self-induced. Other ways to reduce and manage your stress is to learn boundaries, how to say "NO", create space for yourself and learn how to not "react" to other people and their drama and learning to breathe deeply. I had to learn to implement many of these approaches in order to restore my adrenal glands. I especially encourage the breathing practice as this helps to slow our heart rate, bring fresh oxygen to the body/brain, refocus and even release stress. This practice is essential to Pilates and yoga as well which I emphasis in the classes I teach @Movestudio. Everyone knows how to breathe, so when you find yourself in a stressful situation start by pausing for a moment or two and just breathe.