Adrenals

Ashwaganda for adrenal support: a calming tonic that reduces anxiety and improves sleep

September 16, 2017 By Trudy Scott 17 Comments

Overactive adrenals can leave you feeling like you’re constantly in “fight or flight” mode. First, your body releases high levels of stress chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol. To ensure you’re ready to defend yourself or run, these chemicals spike your blood sugar, as well as increasing heart rate, blood pressure, and insulin levels – making you feel anxious, stressed and wide awake at night.

Nature offers plenty of wonderful herbal remedies to support the adrenals. Herbal adaptogens such as ashwaganda and rhodiola are two of my favorite herbs for the adrenals. They gently calm your overactive system helping your body damp down your fight or flight response and reduce stress and anxiety.

Ashwaganda is often called “Indian Ginseng” and is widely used in Ayurvedic medicine to lower stress and stabilize thyroid hormones. It is a calming tonic that reduces anxiety, improves sleep, and combats inflammation.
Rhodiola is a another potent herbal adaptogen that helps your body reduce anxiety and irritability. At the same time, it boosts immune function, hormonal balance, and concentration.

You can learn how to use herbs like this in your everyday routine in this no-cost online workshop “How To Use Everyday Herbs and Spices To Rebalance Your Hormones”

In this online workshop, you will learn about 20 healing herbs and spices to help support and heal your thyroid, adrenals, menopause, weight, hair loss, cellulite, PCOS, hot flashes (and more).

Skullcap – used to treat conditions like panic attacks, anxiety and also helps to promote better quality sleep.
Chamomile is well known for its calming properties. After people drink chamomile tea their levels of glycine increase. Glycine is a nerve relaxant with mild sedative properties – all things that can help you to de-stress. Chamomile also has anti-spasmodic properties that help to relieve menstrual cramps in women. It also contains a potent flavonoid called apigenin, a mild tranquilizer that can help benefit sleep onset and sleep quality.
Lavender made into a tea is an effective tonic for jittery nerves because it encourages a calmer state of mind. Research comparing the use of lavender to (synthetic) benzodiazepine medication for anxiety has found it provides equal benefit, minus all the side effects.

You will also learn 5 simple and delicious herbal recipes to restore and rebalance your hormones

Watch this video snippet to get a taste of some of what Magdalena will be covering in the online herbal workshop. One thing she’ll be making is the wonderful and nourishing Ashwaganda Latte for adrenal support.

And here is the recipe for the Ashwaganda Latte

Author: Magdalena Wszelaki

Ingredients

1 cup of milk (almond or hazelnut works well, if using coconut milk, I would suggest ½ cup coconut milk and ½ cup water)
1 teaspoon ashwagandha powder
½ teaspoon cinnamon powder
½ teaspoon maple syrup or honey

How To Make

Warm the milk, then add the powdered spices and maple syrup or honey
Stir well, using the whisk to blend, adjusting for sweetness if necessary
Pour into a nice cup and drink an hour before bed

Equipment: Medium saucepan, whisk, strainer

You’ll also learn how to avoid common chemicals found in everyday skincare, personal care and house cleaning products that disrupt your hormones, and discover which herbs are best for your individual needs.

Hope to see you there! You can register for this online herbal workshop here

You may remember Magdalena from the Anxiety Summit and her wonderful interviews on eating for hormone balance! She is now taking hormone balance to the next level by teaching us how to use herbs. This wonderful workshop is a taste of what’s to come in her upcoming longer program so stay tuned for more on that!

The Adrenal Reset Summit – Is Adrenal Fatigue Real?

November 6, 2016 By Trudy Scott 16 Comments

Chris Kresser addresses the question of “Is Adrenal Fatigue Real” in his fascinating interview with Dr. Christianson on the The Adrenal Reset Summit which runs from November 7-12. He shares that it’s virtually impossible to recover from any chronic illness without addressing the HPA axis and that he prefers the term HPA axis dysregulation to the term adrenal fatigue because it’s more accurate:

The endocrine society has a factsheet and downloadable PDF about adrenal fatigue and in that factsheet they say adrenal fatigue is not a real medical condition and they go on to say there are no scientific facts to support the theory that long-term mental, emotional, or physical stress drains the adrenal glands. Patients are out there searching for this information. They’re checking this stuff out and you’ve got a pretty well-known organization that is focused on hormone health saying that adrenal fatigue is not a real condition. Then you go and you search for hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis in PubMed and just as you said, Alan, you get 18,320 results…

Here are some other snippets from his interview, where Chris covers root causes of low cortisol:

even when we do see true low cortisol where both total and free cortisol are low then the question becomes, in that situation, is it really an autoimmune issue like Addison’s where the adrenal glands are compromised and can’t produce cortisol or is it some other kind of regulatory mechanism in the body and it’s leading to this low cortisol output.

And then, more importantly, is that a maladaptive response, meaning something, perhaps, that happened a while ago – and that can even go all the way back to fetal development, when the patient was in the womb because we know that the HPA axis is programmed in the womb and, also, early life stressors can play a big role in programming the HPA axis – or is it something that’s another pathology like SIBO or a gut infection, or a chronic infection of some kind like Lyme disease or exposure to mold or heavy metals, or biotoxins that is affecting the body in such a way that it’s downregulating cortisol production as a result. In that case, the treatment is not to give cortisol or to give things that boost cortisol, it’s to address those things that are causing the body to downregulate cortisol production in the first place.

I really love Dr. Christianson’s advice for his patients, encouraging them to take better care of themselves, to sleep more, to do less and to stress-less:

imagine a scenario in which, heaven forbid, a loved one needs your care. They need your help in the hospital. They need you there for a few hours per day. So, let’s think about all the things you do that you would just drop from your schedule to be there for them because, of course, you’d be there for them. So, they’ll write some things out and I’ll say, okay, cool! So, now, that loved one is ‘you’.

I think it’s a message we could all apply in our busy lives!

Anxiety, feelings of constant overwhelm and fatigue, plus insomnia, sugar cravings, the inability to control blood sugar, lack of mental clarity… these symptoms can be due to adrenal issues and this condition is brutally disruptive. And yes, you can suffer from all of the above at once!

Here are a few of the many other excellent speakers and their topics:

Steph Gadreau, CHNP – Perfectionism and Adrenals
Aviva Romm, MD – Adrenal Adaptogens
Ben Lynch, ND – Adrenals and Methylation
Wendy Myers, FDN, CHHC – Heavy Metal Toxicity
Dan Kalish, DC – Adrenal Neurotransmitter Connection
JJ Virgin, CNS, CHFS – Preventing Adrenal Burnout
Julia Ross, MA – Neurotransmitters and the Food Mood Connection

You can register here.

Anxiety and the adrenals: low zinc and high copper

October 31, 2016 By Trudy Scott 23 Comments

two-girls

In just a few weeks, from November 7-12, my colleague and good friend, NY Times bestselling author Dr. Alan Christianson will be hosting The Adrenal Reset Summit. It’s co-hosted by nutritionist Evan Brand.

I cover the Adrenals and Anxiety in my interview with Dr. Christianson and a few of the aspects we cover are low zinc and high copper.

Here is a snippet from me about zinc:

zinc is very underrated as being a nutrient that is commonly deficient and certainly when it comes to anxiety, it’s a huge factor. We have the zinc-copper imbalance and when we’ve got very high copper levels and low zinc levels, we may feel more anxious. But zinc is really, really important for so many things. I just mentioned serotonin, it’s really important as a cofactor for making serotonin and the other neurotransmitters like GABA which is a calming neurotransmitter.

It’s really, really important for adrenal function as well. There was actually a really nice paper that was published in December 2015 [Effects of Physical Activity on Trace Elements and Depression Related Biomarkers in Children and Adolescents], looking at children and adolescents and found that children and adolescents with lower levels of zinc also had low serotonin, they had high copper levels, and they also had lower cortisol levels, and sometimes, they had high cortisol levels. So, it varies but they definitely have issues with their cortisol levels and that’s obviously going to be a big factor when it comes to how they’re able to handle stress, what their mood levels are going to be like, what their cognitive function is going to be like, and everything else. So, zinc is a really important thing. It’s not talked about a lot and it’s something that is definitely a big factor.

I didn’t share this specific information during the interview but here are some of the results from the above study:

Older children, especially girls, had higher levels of depression. Participants with moderate and severe depression had significantly lower physical activity, serotonin, and zinc levels, zinc/copper ratios, and significantly higher copper and cortisol levels.

Physically active boys showed significantly lower depressive scores and improvement in cortisol, serotonin, copper, and zinc concentrations compared to girls of sedentary life style.

A little later in the interview Dr. Christianson shares what happened to him when he was inadvertently exposed to high levels of copper:

This is a brief insight I won’t go too far into but there was a period of time I was studying with a Vedic practitioner and there were these various rituals that I had to do. One of them was involving putting liquids in these containers and drinking and doing [some of these] meditations. The historical vessels [that] were used were copper-based and I got pretty toxic at one point. I had these horrible leg cramps. I really lost my capacity for exercise. It was very dramatic. I had a hard time climbing stairs and odd mood changes and odd twitches and what not. I finally realized that was the culprit and yeah, I did mega doses of zinc which I normally would not have tolerated well but I did fine with during that time and recovered from that. So, those are a real thing! (laughs)

I hope you can join us for the summit! The line-up is excellent. Here are a few of the many excellent speakers and their topics:

Chris Kresser, M.S., L.Ac – Is Adrenal Fatigue Real?
Steph Gadreau, CHNP – Perfectionism and Adrenals
Aviva Romm, MD – Adrenal Adaptogens
Ben Lynch, ND – Adrenals and Methylation
Wendy Myers, FDN, CHHC – Heavy Metal Toxicity
Dan Kalish, DC – Adrenal Neurotransmitter Connection
JJ Virgin, CNS, CHFS – Preventing Adrenal Burnout
Julia Ross, MA – Neurotransmitters and the Food Mood Connection

You can register here https://uo178.isrefer.com/go/arsScott/trudyscottcn/

The Anxiety Summit – Anxiety: The Stressed and Toxic Gut

June 5, 2016 By Trudy Scott 43 Comments

Dr. Josh Axe, DNM, DC, CNS, author of Eat Dirt, is interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Anxiety: The Stressed and Toxic Gut

An overview of leaky gut, the causes and the 5 gut types
Symptoms of the stressed gut and how it impacts the adrenals
Leaky gut and glutamine as a fuel source
Healing licorice root, rhodiola and ashwaganda
How frankincense fights inflammation and protects the tight junctions of the gut
Signs of a toxic gut, soil-based organisms and what we can learn from the Yanomami tribe

Here are some gems from our interview:

So imagine your intestines as a net or your gut lining is a net and it’s sort of the barrier in between your intestines and blood stream. If that little net, if those little holes get tears in them then things that are too large start passing into your bloodstream such as undigested food particles such as gluten, toxins, bad bacteria. When those get into the bloodstream that sets off an immune response in the body and really causes system wide inflammation. And just to let you know, I want to go over some of the biggest warning signs that someone has leaky gut, which you’ll see these were often times anxiety and toxicity and other issues, but bloating and gas are big warning signs that you have leaky gut. Any type of food sensitivity, if you don’t tolerate certain foods like gluten that probably means you have leaky gut. Thyroid conditions such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, adrenal fatigue, joint pain, headaches, skin issues like rosacea, acne, eczema, psoriasis, digestive problems of any sort. And then even especially depression and anxiety, any of these issues, bipolar, those are all warning signs that somebody has leaky gut.

We discuss glutamine for healing a leaky gut and Dr. Axe mentioned his blog on the topic: L-Glutamine Benefits Leaky Gut & Metabolism

L-glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in the bloodstream and it makes up 30-35 percent of the amino acid nitrogen in your blood. It’s actually known as a conditionally essential amino acid because your body uses it in large amounts.

The most common uses of glutamine powder were to meet the following goals: to lose weight fast, burn fat and build muscle. And while that remains the case, science is now showing that L-glutamine benefits are abundant – and that this amino acid is especially helpful in treating leaky gut and improving your overall health.

We talk about the benefits of licorice root for both the gut and the adrenals:

Licorice root is another one of those herbs that’s used in Chinese medicine and it’s very effective for many things, with studies showing it helps the stomach, ulcers specifically. Other studies show that it actually helps with soothing the intestinal tract. But for the most part it’s also used as an adaptogenic herb. Many of us have heard of adaptogens such as ashwaganda, rhodiola, ginseng, certain mushrooms such as cordyceps have been labeled adaptogenic, well licorice root works in the same way. It really helps your body better adapt and deal with stress. We know stress can be very, very hard on the intestines as well as the stomach. It can be very hard on your digestive system. So licorice root is pretty amazing. It’s an herb that really helps in sort of soothing inflammation, but it also works as an adaptogen to lower stress levels, which is harming the gut. So really as a two pronged approach and why it’s so effective at both helping the digestive system as well as supporting the adrenal glands, thyroid and overall hormones.

Here are some links to some research:

Breaking down the barriers: the gut microbiome, intestinal permeability and stress-related psychiatric disorders.

The emerging links between our gut microbiome and the central nervous system (CNS) are regarded as a paradigm shift in neuroscience with possible implications for not only understanding the pathophysiology of stress-related psychiatric disorders, but also their treatment.

Dr. Josh Axe is author of a new book called Eat Dirt: Why Leaky Gut May Be the Root Cause of Your Health Problems and 5 Surprising Steps to Cure It

Here is the link to a gift from Josh Axe The King’s Medicine Cabinet eBook: A complete guide on essential oils and their history, uses, cures, and recipes that will transform your health forever!

~~And his Eat Dirt online gut quiz~~ [disabling this until I hear back from them]

If you are not already registered for the Anxiety Summit you can get live access to the speakers of the day here: www.theAnxietySummit.com

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts and listen when it suits you.

You can find your purchasing options here.: Anxiety Summit Season 1, Anxiety Summit Season 2, Anxiety Summit Season 3, and Anxiety Summit Season 4.

The Anxiety Summit – Adrenals – Master glands of anxiety / tranquility

November 8, 2014 By Trudy Scott 16 Comments

Dr. Alan Christianson, ND. author of Complete Idiot’s Guide to Thyroid Disease and a forthcoming book on adrenal health, was interviewed by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Adrenals – Master glands of anxiety / tranquility

Why the adrenals regulate the anxiety response
Why some are more prone to anxiety than others
How to know if your adrenals are healthy
Testing your adrenal function
The difference between adrenal dysfunction and disease
How your diet and daily habits stress your adrenals
The best ways to heal your adrenal glands

Here is short video of Dr. Christianson sharing his story as an unhealthy kid and why he does what he does

Here are some snippets from our interview:

So even if we’re not being chased by the classic tiger if our blood sugar’s crashing, that, by itself, can trigger high amounts of stress hormones to make us feel more anxious, or if our sleep schedules have been thrown off, or if we’re missing some key nutrients that are needed by the adrenal glands, or if we’ve got a high amount of some external toxin in our body. All these separate things – and it can also be thought of that it’s not just a factor, but it’s the collective weight of all of those adrenal stressors. It’s how much we’ve got pushing those glands off at any given point in time that makes us more or less apt to have anxiety symptoms.

So caffeine is a stimulant, and what it does specifically is it causes our body to take all of our stored energy. We make something called glycogen. We take good carbs, and we pack them deep into our muscles. We pack them really tight, and we make glycogen out of that. It’s also in our liver. So caffeine causes us to just dump a whole of glycogen out, and it makes this big burst, this big rise in your blood sugar. The same thing would happen if you just drank a full sugar coke. It’s the same phenomenon, the same rise in blood sugar.

Here is a link to the online Adrenal Quiz we talked about. Let us know your score in the comments below.

In this Huffington Post blog called the Top 3 Myths of Adrenal Fatigue he writes how strategically using sunlight is one of the best-documented ways to help restore daily rhythms and heal the adrenals. We discussed some of this in the interview and here is a nice summary:

Within an hour of waking, expose yourself to sunlight or a light box emitting at least 10,000 lux (measure of light intensity). Do not wear sunglasses, do not look directly at the source of light, and get at least a half hour of exposure.
Get low wattage (under 40 watts) red-colored light bulbs for your bedroom. For the last 50 minutes of your day, feel free to read a book our journal, but use no other sources of light or electronics.
In your bedroom, make sure your windows block all outdoor lights and cover any lights on thermostats, or alarm units. Make sure that any lights used to find your way around are colored red.

Here is a link to Dr. Alan Christianson’s book on thyroid disease:

Complete Idiot’s Guide to Thyroid Disease

As we mentioned at the start of the interview, Dr. Christianson has a new book on adrenal health coming out next month! When you register for the free gift he has kindly offered, you’ll also be updated on information about the new book.

Here is Dr. Christianson’s new book on adrenal health – The Adrenal Reset Diet: Strategically Cycle Carbs and Proteins to Lose Weight, Balance Hormones, and Move from Stressed to Thriving

The free gift is 49 Fresh Recipes for a Stronger Body and More Vibrant You

UPDATE: Season 2 of The Anxiety Summit concluded in November 2014. If you’d like to be on the notification list for the next summit just sign up here www.theAnxietySummit.com

Missed this interview and want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts + interview highlights and listen when it suits you

The Anxiety Summit: Eliminating Anxiety – Amino Acid Therapy and Adrenal Balancing

June 20, 2014 By Trudy Scott 39 Comments

This is day 5 of the Anxiety Summit season 1. Julia Ross, MFT, pioneer in the field of Amino Acid Therapy and the author of best sellers The Mood Cure and The Diet Cure, is interviewed by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.

Eliminating Anxiety: Amino Acid Therapy and Adrenal Balancing

the role of low serotonin and low GABA in anxiety
when to use tryptophan versus 5-HTP
the effectiveness of oral GABA supplements
how to assess for neurotransmitter deficiencies and the ineffectiveness of urinary neurotransmitter testing
the adrenals and excess cortisol: how to correct this cause of anxiety
the issues with using benzodiazapines and SSRIs for anxiety

Here are some great gems from my interview with Julia:

On a scale of zero to ten, zero is not an unrealistic goal when it comes to anxiety. It’s really the human potential and GABA and tryptophan give us access to it

Amino acids are really our only hope for quickly reversing the epidemics not only of anxiety, but of depression, compulsive eating, and obesity

We see these low serotonin symptoms disappear in front of us when we administer capsules of one of the two forms of serotonin fuel, either the amino acid tryptophan or the amino acid 5-hydroxy tryptophan

with GABA there’s a whole body relaxing element, as well as an anxiety-relieving, stress-relieving element

if you or someone that you’re working with is dependent on these kind of drugs [benzodiazapines] to get any kind of decent sleep at night, then you can be pretty sure that cortisol levels are too high

Julia talked about how when it comes to funding drug research to treat depression, schizophrenia, anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders, the global pharmaceutical industry prefers to invest its research dollars in cancer, metabolism, autoimmunity, and other disease areas. Here is a link to the article she referred to : Psychiatric Drug Development

We discussed how to assess for neurotransmitter deficiencies and the ineffectiveness of urinary neurotransmitter testing. This is the 2012 study Julia mentioned: Correlation of serotonin levels in CSF, platelets, plasma, and urine

This method of measuring serotonin levels in platelets results in a very strong correlation with levels in CSF (cerebrospinal fluid)

I highly recommend Julia’s wonderful books The Mood Cure: The 4-Step Program to Take Charge of Your Emotions and The Diet Cure: The 8-Step Program to Rebalance Your Body Chemistry and End Food Cravings, Weight Gain, and Mood Swings – Naturally

Be sure to listen to Meme Grant’s success story on Sunday June 22. She shares how she used amino acids to end her anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia and emotional eating. Tryptophan and GABA made a world of difference for her.

Here is Julia’s Townsend article on Urinary Neurotransmitter Testing

~~If you are not already registered for the Anxiety Summit you can get live access to the speakers of the day here www.theAnxietySummit.com~~

UPDATE: season 1 summit concluded on Tues 6/24/14 – If you’d like to be on the notification list for future summits just sign up here www.theAnxietySummit.com

Missed this interview or can’t listen live? Or want this and the other great interviews for your learning library? Purchase the MP3s or MP3s + transcripts here and listen when it suits you