Adrenal Fatigue: How To Recover Naturally
How to recover from adrenal fatigue in 3 steps
Step #1 – The most natural thing to do is to get adjusted.
Get adjusted by a Chiropractor! If you are in a state of stress your muscles get tight and tense which is your body’s way of telling you that you’re locked into fight or flight. Getting adjusted helps to change how your nervous system works. It normalizes movement in the body from the muscles that have been overly tight, and the increased motion in the body normalizes the brain. Creating movement is essential because it strengthens communication throughout the brain and the body. When patients come into my office, I have them think about their stress, so their body has a response. With an adjustment, I get their body to relax and stay strong while thinking about the stressful situation. Getting adjusted can trick the brain into keeping the body relaxed the next time they encounter that stressful situation, and they can handle it a lot better.
When your body goes into fight or flight mode, your brain shuts off blood flow to the frontal lobe and increases blood flow to the back so that you can act instinctively. However, it is tough to think creatively or rationally when the frontal lobe is shut off. So, when you are stressed, you are incapable of being creative, and you act on instinct and habit. This causes problems when you’re trying to be productive at work or have a constructive conversation with a spouse. Adjustments are necessary because they allow the body to stay relaxed while thinking about the stressful situation, and they free up the frontal lobe so that you can think clearly in times of stress.
Step #2 – Change your environmental stressors.
Change what you can control
Identify your most significant stressors first, whether that be a relationship at work or at home, or even the commute to work. Focus on talking to the people around you and creating specific changes in your life to reduce your stress level. Changes can be as small as going to bed and waking up earlier so you can eat breakfast before you go to work instead of rushing out the door. You’d be surprised how easy and helpful it is to make little changes, because little stressors add up over time.
Change your reaction to the things you can’t control
If you can’t change your environment and the people and situations around you, you have to change yourself. This is when you have to ask yourself, “How can I react differently to my environmental stressors?” There are so many options and research done on the benefits of stress reduction techniques. Here are a few that I recommend…
Meditation increases blood flow to the front part of the brain.
Exercise that you enjoy helps to reconnect the body and brain.
Talking with someone who can help you work through problems, not someone who fires you up around the topic
Step #3 – Change your diet
Blood sugar is the number-one cause of physiological stress on your body.
The vast majority of society eats a high carb and high sugar diet that causes blood sugar to go up and down. When you eat a carb-filled lunch, you get a spike in your blood sugar, and this glucose gives you energy. But you have a limited amount of sugar you can carry in your blood. Immediately after you eat sugar, your body makes insulin to get the sugar out of your blood and into the cells and tissues. If your blood sugar gets too high for long periods of time, it can cause a lot of damage, which is what happens with diabetes. Low blood sugar is dangerous to your brain and ability to think clearly; it also causes that “hangry” feeling you get. Your body releases stress hormones like cortisol to compensate and increase your blood sugar.
It is important to be eating REAL foods because what passes for food, primarily by American standards, is not real food. These foods are chock full of chemicals, preservatives, and flavor enhancers which all create inflammation in your body. Inflammation starts in the gut where 80% of the immune system is and causes inflammation in other parts of the body. When inflammation gets up to the brain it sets off the same signals that it does when you’re in pain, stressed, or irritated. This means that if the food you eat causes inflammation, this inflammation sets off your fight or flight response. You could be sitting down enjoying a baseball game, and your body could be in a chronic state of stress.
So what are your next steps?
There are a ton of activities to help get you into relaxation mode and help you recover from adrenal fatigue. I’m telling you right now you don’t have to do everything. Sometimes it just takes a couple of changes to pull you out of that constant fight-or-flight mode. If you’ve tried some activities on your own, and you’re still battling symptoms of adrenal fatigue, it is time to get help. You do not have to live with adrenal fatigue. IT IS CURABLE!
If you would like more information or to set up a free 30-minute consultation with me, contact my office. I am located in Madison, WI.
Office number: 608- 276-7635
