READERS SUMMARY: WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE ELECTRIC COMPANY BUILT INTO YOUR COLLAGEN? This blog is intimately linked to the January through June 2014 webinars. April's webinar call "The Electric Company" is based upon the ideas in this blog. So todays blog starts via a discussion on the forum about raw [...]
You’ve been treating your "adrenal fatigue" for years, but if you stop your adaptogens, DHEA or other adrenal supplements, you fall apart. You’ve been addressing your leaky gut for a year, but if you stop your probiotics, glutamine, aloe vera, etc., your stomach begins to hurt and you get diarrhea. You gave up gluten, but your thyroid antibodies remain elevated. You can’t seem to warm up despite taking thyroid medication. Your cortisol and DHEA won’t balance, despite correcting your sleep hygiene/circadian cycle. You exercise several days per week, but the more you exercise, the fatter you get. What do all of these things have in common? Internal stressors!
If diet and lifestyle changes, supplementation or BHRT (bioidentical hormone replacement therapy) haven’t taken you to optimal, listen to the replay of this community-wide introduction to Healing Your Hormones with Dr. Tim Jackson!
Who is Gretchen? She is a women I met at Mark's Daily Apple monster thread two years ago. When we first met she wanted no part of the idea that maybe she was missing more pieces to the puzzle then she knew. I told her back then, if she began to test herself she would learn more about herself than she could ever imagine and it would happen fast. If you read the thread here, you will see where she began her journey. This blog is where her journey has brought her in her battle to reclaim optimal. She is also featured in my latest book on amazon, The Epi-Paleo Prescription and you can read her initial six months into this journey there with 3 other of my members. Gretchen has a blog too. She is a pretty amazing person with an amazing family and story. Here is how her journey began as written and told by award winning author Colleen Coble in my book: Gretchen stared at the piece of paper in her hand. The word medically discharged wavered in her vision, and she wheezed through the airways constricted by asthma. Her head was pounding, and her heart rate fluttered even faster than the pulse of pain in her head. It was the end of her military career. Even though she’d known it was coming, seeing it in black and white made her want to sink to the floor and bury her head in her head in her hands.
What is Adrenal Fatigue at its core? Many websites will tell you it is an adrenal gland function problem that is best assayed by a salivary adrenal stress panel. I wont and I do not. The cause of adrenal fatigue is a brain injury at the hypothalamus all caused by bad signaling. My Adrenal Fatigue Rx is best called Metabolic Neurosurgery: It is all about energy and energy utilization that allows for perfect signaling of environmental signals. When your energy is bad your signaling falls off a cliff. The ASI is just like a gauge on a car. It tells you some info but it does not tell you why it is happening. How we understand adrenal dysfunction in 2012 has radically changed because of a relatively new science called neurohumoral-immunology. What does this mean? It means adrenal fatigue at its core is a brain illness and not an adrenal gland problem. What is the PVN? How do we know if our PVN is shut off? What are some of the symptoms? We can’t sleep, our guts do not work, our body composition goes way off, we sweat at the wrong times, we develop cognitive haze, blurred vision, migraines, and reactive hypoglycemia. Many times fatigue is only relieved by eating foods we should not. It also means we have lost allosteric control of leptin!
Today, we are going to dive into the gut flora story a bit deeper than we did in our first gut flora post to help you understand how a a change in gut flora might lead to changes in your health by altering your hormone panel. Obesity is an inflammatory brain condition. Where does the infection come from? The gut flora actually is what causes humans to become fat. It has to due with shear numbers and the species of bacteria in our gut. There is a particular flora that produces adiposity and obesity in humans. These bacteria make something called FIAF (Fasting induced adipose factor) that control this process. This factor blocks lipoprotein lipase (LPL) in fat cells. LPL allows us to convert dietary Free Fatty Acids carried in lipoproteins into neutral fats that are stored in adipocytes. Non Geeks: Our gut bacteria makes humans fat. Geek Alert: The FIAF is made by our liver, muscles, and our small bowel wall when food sources are in short supply. This is the signal to stop storing fat in our fat cells when food is scarce. What is not well appreciated by many is that the FIAF in our intestinal wall is controlled 100{a7b724a0454d92c70890dedf5ec22a026af4df067c7b55aa6009b4d34d5da3c6} by our gut flora. When we have a simplified gut flora it favors fat cell creation. When our gut flora is complex and healthy, it has 100 trillion cells with 250 species. We tend not to make fat in this instance either! Moreover, when the bacteria are active metabolically due to the presence of simple sugars, production of FIAF ceases, and fat creation is signaled. This implies that our gut flora is directly tied to fat creation in humans. The gut flora’s action is directly signaled to the brain via the afferent nerve fibers in the vagus nerve. In those newly created fat cells, a protein called leptin is also produced, and acts as a score keeper for the brain of how much fat is stored in the body. This messenger is sent to the brain around midnight when we are sleeping allowing the brain to assess total energy balance in the body.
You must become aware of the high cost of low living by cheap thinking. In biology, we often get what we deserve when we forget this. Today’s CPC will illustrate that point for you. Wasting your time doing things that do not get you to Optimal is losing opportunity to improve yourself. Today.......and every day from here become very aware of time. Be wise in the use of time. The question for living an Optimal life is never how much time do I really have...it is in how you use the time you have. And when you realize that…….you can begin to reverse the errors you made in that time. There is a great lesson here for those willing to think. I hope the sharpness of this message strikes you in the correct fashion. When you think average you get average. Reject mediocre...demand optimal from me, your loved ones, and most importantly yourself. When you get this lesson.........you will understand why there is much harm in wasting your most valuable asset. TIME The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of your life, the clearer we should see through it. If you continue to think the way you do your life's hour glass will remain opaque. Think, adapt, learn, become what you can only envision now through the actions those thoughts bring to you.
Do you have dark circles under eyes? Are your eyes sunken to some degree? Do you sleep poorly? Have you lost your energy? Sex drive gone? Do you bloat and start getting unusual bowel movements? Do you live in a plateau phase constantly? Has your weight remained the same too long? Tired for no reason? Need to drink a ton of coffee and salty carb snacks to get by? Do you still crave sweets? Do you feel generally rundown? Do you exercise a lot but still have belly fat that is resistant to loss? Are you forgetful often? Hair loss or brittle? Diagnosed with GERD (dysbiosis) and feel nervous often? Often depressed? If this sounds like you welcome to the diagnosis of adrenal fatigue. Many conventional docs don't buy this diagnosis but that is because they can't see what they are not looking for. This syndrome is most often seen in middle age women and can present with multiple endocrine changes that are often confused with thyroid issues or perimenopausal changes. Men do get this syndrome and most often it is seen with dietary issues and fatigue from working out or from chronic stress.