Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hello. Welcome to another episode of The Wild and well podcast, the collective podcast, we today are going to be talking about stress and the HPA axis, the hypothalam hypothalamus to the pituitary to the adrenals, and that access and how it really can impact the rest of our body and how maybe the symptoms that you're having you're kind of looking down the wrong path. You know, if you're feeling like your sex hormones are all over the place, if your thyroid is not functioning optimally, brain fog, fatigue, sometimes we look down the wrong hallway. And if you think of all of this interconnectedness as an upside down triangle, we want to look at the top. We want to start in the head. We want to start in the brain and have this conversation around kind of where does some of this dysfunction, this dis ease, start? Because oftentimes it's some areas that we have more control over than we think. So let's kind of start to talk about this in a way around stress and a little bit of an explanation around the HPA axis. It really does start in the brain. Our brain is in a dark, enclosed skull. Okay, so the brain just really functions on messengers. There's no There's no visual from, you know, our brain does get visual. Obviously, we see with our eyes, but the signals that our brain receives is the same. Whether there's an actual emergency or you're just really stressed out about a relationship or traffic or job, business, whatever the signal is the same, and it's a protective mechanism to have this sympathetic drive, this fight or flight drive, and so I want to start this conversation out with stress, because I think that's one of the top things that can lead to downstream dysfunction. And I know, Cherie, you've had some experience with burnout, with just a lot of high stress, and I want you to share, like, share with us a little bit about what that felt like. What did constantly, kind of living in that firefight mode. What symptoms did you experience around that? Yeah, I love this question, because I'm not gonna lie, I've experienced it about five times, and it's then affected me moving forward. Even last year, I didn't burn out, but there was this constant fear of burning out, so I was actually taking a lot off my plate. And I think as high performers, as high achievers, as people that are really driven in life, we are always striving for the best. We are always wanting to improve, to grow, and it can come from that space that we end up burning ourselves out. I like the term burnout. You may have heard, you know, the HPA Axis dysregulation, or dysfunction, described as adrenal fatigue, and we'll touch on that in a little bit, in the sense that that's really being reshaped in the functional medicine space. But when I think about the instances of burnout, it was a real struggle. And it was like struggle to get out of bed in the morning, a struggle to even think straight. You know, I think about what got me into. It was like this constant reliance on caffeine. I couldn't start my day without a cup of coffee in the morning, or, my goodness, an energy drink. Like I cringe when I say that I was just overwhelmed all the time, and my perception of everything was that I was either being attacked or I was reactive to anything and everything that came into my world. So it was like, this is happening. Okay? I've got to sort it out. I've got to do it instantly. I was talking so fast. I Everything I did was I was like, I'm being so productive. I've scheduled it all out. It was like, No, there was this innate need to have everything controlled and everything perfect, and bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, a show up, and I I wouldn't even really be present in anything. And so I would actually the other thing is that I'd have a tremendous gut issues, right? My periods weren't great. I was storing so much weight that did not need to be there, like, I was carrying around almost another, like, at least 10 to 15 pounds than where I am now. Or for you know, those of you in New Zealand and that, like, it was at least another seven kilos, right? And one thing that really, really shifted for me that I hadn't realized was when I got out of a really toxic relationship, I didn't change the food, I didn't change the movement, I didn't change anything else, and my body dropped five pounds, literally within a week when I the first time I went through burnout was from being overdone like over pushing myself at university, whilst trying to start a business, whilst working at a part time job to sustain that. It's just it was so much for my body, and that's when I was having all the caffeinated beverages again.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
When I finished my degree, and I finished my post grad that summer, because I had that next summer off, the weight just shifted, the periods ease. And I just, I share this, because we can think it's the metabolism that's not working white. We can think it's the thyroid. We can think it is the fact that we're not training enough, or we're eating too much. And we can, we're like, oh my gosh, it's all of these things, or I'm not sleeping enough. And yes, all those things do play a role. But it's actually looking deeper at like, Okay, what is this stress? What's the elephant in the room, really? And that's sometimes the hardest conversation you have to have with yourself. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about physiologically, what's actually happening. Because sometimes when you know a little bit more information scientifically, then you're like, oh, okay, that makes sense. So our hormones are all very interconnected, and when your body is sensing stress, that fight or flight turns on. So we have a sympathetic nervous system, and then we have the parasympathetic nervous system. And the parasympathetic is where you rest, and you sleep well, and you digest your food well, and you don't have indigestion, and you don't have constipation, and you can reproduce because the body feel and you have a higher libido because the body feels safe, all of those things. It says, Oh, great. There is no lying around the corner. We can have time to have sex. We have time to eat our food. We have time to sleep comfortably, but when we are stressed out again, the brain doesn't know the difference. You're sending signals that were unsafe, and so that then keeps the brain on fight or flight mode. When our brain pushes those signals out, it tells our adrenal glands, that sit on top of our kidneys, to push out adrenaline over time, then it pushes out more cortisol. So adrenaline, cortisol, those both are very or fight or flight hormones. They're protective hormones. We have to have them. Cortisol is amazing. I mean, we have to have it to regulate our blood sugar and our blood pressure. But the problem is, when we've got too much, too chronically, all of the time, we start to not sleep well, for one thing, and that can lead to a whole other slew of problems, because sleep is so important, but cortisol becomes a priority. Production on a cellular level of cortisol becomes more of a priority than progesterone in a woman, let's say, and progesterone then is important for balancing estrogen. So that leads to that the period problem that you're talking about cortisol also the that adrenaline slows down digestion. It says, Hey, priority is not to digest this food. So then we start to have constipation, and then the constipation leads to an overgrowth of bad bacteria. So we can have what's called SIBO, or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, because there's so much kind of sitting in the large intestine, it goes back up into the bacteria kind of flourished up into the small intestine. That leads to bloating, because we shouldn't have bacteria. To that degree intestine, right? So that's just scraping the surface of some of the downstream effects where you're getting these symptoms, and we're tracing it back to stress and that stress hormone, right? So from that point of view, where did you start to ease this, like, how did you start to heal this pattern that you had? Yeah, because and again, like I said, I had it five times. So it's like I became more and more aware and more and more in tune with my body, and started pulling the layers back. And I want people to understand that this is a process, right? It didn't take, like, a month for you to get into the state you've put yourself under the stress, and there's no judgment here. We're not criticizing ourselves, but there's been stress. And like I said, my clients all the time, we can't get rid of a lot of the stresses. We can't get rid of our partner. Sometimes you can, but like, you know, if you're in a happy marriage, like, sometimes the partner can be causing you stress, but there's still that the kids cause stress, right? And it's not necessarily a bad thing. There's work stress, and sometimes we can't. We're never going to be able to get rid of it, all right? We're not just able to go and sit and meditate in a field for the rest of our lives. That'd be great, but we can't. And so it's like we're not able to get rid of some of the stresses. And they're not necessarily bad stresses, but they're stresses, right? What we can do is increase our stress resilience or our stress tolerance and also change our relationship to stress. So we're not telling ourselves, oh, it's my kids that are causing me stress. Oh, it's work. I hate work. Like one, if there's something you can do about it, like in my case, leave a toxic relationship, great. But if there's, if you're not wanting to actually change a job, it's just a high stress job, how can you change your relationship with it? So for me, the first thing was, how can I actually build a business where, because that's what was burning me out so constantly and continuously, it was like I'd go through a high, I dropped through a low, I go through a high, I dropped through a low, and that would be then mimicked financially, that would then be mimicked with my moods, that would then be mimicked with my energy levels, and so I had to look at, okay, what is the biggest like? What like I said before? What is the elephant in the room? My stress, my my stress is coming from my work. How do I now change my relationship with my work? What needs to move for me to feel safe when I show up at work? Listen.
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Reactive. What systems can I put in place so that it takes some time away from me having to be there? Who can I outsource to? Who can I hire? Who Can I shift some of the responsibility to? How can I change my business model so it supports where I want to go, rather than being in the weeds of it all? So the first thing is identifying the elephant in the room, what is the main thing that is driving your stress, and what can you do about it? And the other thing is the perception of the stress. Now we've done a whole episode on like talking about the perception and how you can change some of your thoughts, feelings and beliefs around that, but to live in our parasympathetic state, that was what I was getting towards. How can I and I call it your rest, your digest, your repair and reproduction system? Because, like you said before, our six hormones cannot really be produced if we're in a state of fight or flight. Your body's goal is to survive. And so I started to incorporate more yoga, more deep breathing, the remind I'd set reminders on my phone, because it impacts your digestion so much. And I was like, it's a gut issue, it's a gut issue. It's a gut issue. It was a nervous system issue, just as much as I'd been created the SIBO, right? So both had come into play to set reminders on my phone to breathe diaphragmatically for five deep five to six deep breaths before I ate a meal, something as simple as that was reminding my body that it was safe. It could send blood to my digestive organs. It could start to secrete stomach acid. It could start to secrete digestive enzymes. It can get the bowel production going because we were safe enough to digest the food there and then, right, if you think about it, your body's priority when you're running away from a tiger, aka, for me, opening up your email inbox is not worried about the food that's just come in. It's like, how do we get her away from this tiger? So let's just keep that bolus of food sitting in her stomach. Let's keep her constipated. Let's let that bacteria grow. Let's let that fermentation happen, right? So it was changing my relationship with stress, the perception of stress, and then starting to do things that I knew would continually communicate to my system that I was safe. Absolutely, those are really great, and I like that you brought in the modalities of what you did breath work, you know to be more specific, when we breathe in and then we breathe out for a longer count than we inhale tells the brain that we're safe. That's more of a that will more ignite some of that, that vagus nerve to relax, to send the parasympathetic signals. So that's one way. Specifically I love box breathing, where you breathe in for four, you hold for four, you breathe out for a long count of four, and you hold that for a count of four before you repeat that. That's a really great one before you eat, while you're driving, when you're laying down to sleep, it's again, telling the brain we're safe, and we'll dive into supplements here towards the end, but I wanted to acknowledge a couple of other sources of stress. It's not just in the brain. As far as perceived environment sometimes environmental toxins. So I, you know, we can't have this conversation of stress on the body without also, you know, like acknowledging other sources of stress on the body, which sometimes comes in the form of alcohol. Alcohol will create if anybody has worn or a ring or any kind of sleep device, you'll see that your sleep absolutely sucks when you sleep the night after alcohol, because it triggers the sympathetic nervous system. Oftentimes you're dehydrated from alcohol, that's going to be a stressor on the body, or even if you're not drinking alcohol and you're not drinking enough water, that's also a stress to the body, to the brain. So when you're chronically dehydrated and not prioritizing some of these healthy lifestyle factors you can, you know, innately, be creating a stressful environment for your body, not knowing it, but processed foods can be stressful to the system, because with more processed foods, with more packaged items or non organic fruits and vegetables, you're creating An environment in your digestive system that a foreign material, or of you know, glyphosates, let's say in fruits and vegetables that are not organic and that can create inflammation in the body. That's a stressor, right? Chronic Illness, Lyme disease, mold exposure. I mean, these are some things that we need to look at a little bit further if you're noticing, you know, things like the brain fog, hormone disruption, my thyroid is markers are off. We want to explore, really, what's going on there. And I think that, you know, we've got to look at all of those aspects. And a lot of these are very common. I mean, stress in your environment, for like, perceived stress, is high for a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. Processed food high for a lot of people, alcohol, high for a lot of people, and unfortunately, chronic illnesses, maybe long covid, maybe you know Lyme exposure that you didn't know about. Maybe there's mold in your home or in your workplace that you're unaware of. So it's just important to kind of recognize there could be other reasons. And I say this to not.
Unknown Speaker 15:00
Lose hope to understand, like there is a solution, we just need to figure out what's actually driving this HPA dysfunction. Do you think that, especially in terms of, you know, once you've kind of removed the known stressors, like, done some of the things that you just mentioned, Cherie, like, you know, getting rid of a relationship that's not serving you, if that's possible, shifting jobs or just doing the breath work, incorporating some of those things. I think supplements have their place as well, for sure. I think we remove and then we add some of the things to support our body. I'll share mine, and then I want you to share kind of what you love. But you know, for me, l theanine is like the magical element, and it's naturally derived from green tea, but it's and you'll see a lot of it in, oh, I didn't even talk about caffeine, but caffeine can be
Unknown Speaker 15:46
or also over caffeinated. You know, the caffeine to solve the fatigue is not necessarily the answer, because the put some stress on your adrenals, because it forces your adrenals to push out some adrenaline. But you'll find what made me think of this was those higher caffeine energy drinks. Oftentimes they will combine l theanine with it, and that's because they know you're about to jump out of your skin if you drink this whole 200 milligram caffeine. So you need 200 milligrams of L theanine to balance it out. But I honestly take L theanine a lot because it doesn't change any of your like mental capabilities or anything like that. It just calms the system. It helps you tap more into that parasympathetic nervous system, and so you just feel more in control, more steady. So I would say, for me, l theanine is like my go to for most mornings when I know I've got a busy day, or I know there's a long day of like speaking to people, and it just, you know that naturally, kind of adds a little bit of stress to the brain, right? So I'd like to hear kind of what you've used in your experience to help you balance this. Yeah, I love that you brought up caffeine, because I'm like, I always say to my clients, a cup of coffee is a cup of cortisol, right? And so that was biggest things that I removed, and now, having healed, I can have a cup of coffee a day without actually having to take VLB in, because I'm not jittery, I'm not shaky, I'm not anxious. And so I think there's this idea that you know when you are removing things, when you're going through the healing journey, it's temporary. Just remember that like you don't always have to be removing all these things for life. It's finding that balance, but to come to supplements. Alfie, and I mean you and I prepared to remember when we were at that conference together, accidentally ordered a quad shot of my Starbucks, which I didn't understand, so just started drinking coffee again. I'm sitting there aching, being like to Krista. You have your whole Fianna here, because it was like, gonna jump out of my chest. And so I do know that's amazing for calming you down, like I actually take it with me when I'm traveling and that sort of thing as well. But my favorite, my absolute top three go tos would be magnesium, because the more stressed you are, the more magnesium you use, and magnesium, bisglycinate, in particular, helps calm your nervous system down. So that is a number one go to I'm like, if there's anything that anyone needs to be on, or everyone should be on it, in my opinion, it is magnesium. It'll help calm down, cut your body. It helps regulate your nervous system. It'll help with sleep. It'll it does so many beautiful things. The sugar cravings is also a massive one. It helps with which is very, very common with people who have burnout as well, and the HPA dysregulation, then the B vitamins. So B vitamins, we know, are so important for stress, energy production, your immune system. So again, when you're in burnout, you are more prone and more susceptible to catching things because cortisol suppresses your immune system. So adding in things like your B vitamins and then the third one, being your Vitamin C, Vitamin C helps halve your cortisol levels. It helps bring things down and help support your immune system to flourish. So if you're kind of looking at where you can start, we know that vitamin C also really supports your adrenal glands. We also know your B vitamins help support your reproductive function and hormone production, and especially for woman ovulation. So there are, like, those would be the top three, and then if I was to add my fourth, which can be a little bit controversial and hard to access, which is another reason why it's not my top three, but CBD, like when I was going through chronic burnout, it was something that I got introduced to, and it just, it was those nights that you're lying there wired, and you're like, nothing is gonna turn my brain off right now, that was the thing that helped. It didn't have the THC in it. It didn't have any of the, you know, things that people are afraid of, but it's so calming. And it just like, even when I was first reintroducing coffee back into my system, I would have a CBD drop in my cup of coffee if I wasn't having me on the because that also allowed the calming. It also helps with focus. Helps for like, you know, brain productivity and that sort of thing. But I think it's another thing you can weave in, if it's something you're open to, that is an alternative, to say, taking melatonin or a sleeping pill or something like that. I find it really, really helpful. Yeah. And I think to top that off, would be adaptogens, probably the main one being ashwagandha. Ashwagandha is ancient. You know, it's been around forever, and.
Unknown Speaker 20:00
A tried and true adaptogen. And what's cool about adaptogens is it can nourish the adrenal gland that can kind of give your adrenals what they need, so it's not over or under do it, and that's something that you could just take consistently. So I 100% agree with the supplements that you recommended as well. These are just kind of safe for everyone. Most of these are, you know, they're all water soluble. They're going to overdo it, but there they do wonders to kind of help augment you being a partner in that, in removing what's getting in the way, really doing some of that deep breath work, recognizing, for one thing, hey, these symptoms might be because of the lifestyle that I'm living, whether it's what I'm eating, drinking, surrounding myself with relationships and so taking time for yourself and really acknowledging that and doing what you can. And you know Sheree and I are always here as well. You can always reach out to us as practitioners. We'll have our link in the show notes, but these are some things that you can just get started jumpstart on your own, because we need you. We need you to be productive. We need you to do what you're born to do, and being alignment with your purpose, and it can feel really overwhelming sometimes. And there's definitely ways to support yourself being the badass that you are, but also taking care of yourself along the way. Because you know, being in a high achieving position can be really taxing on your body sometimes. So I hope you all have found this helpful, and thank you for your vulnerability and your share. Cherie on just your experience with burnout and just the support and hopefully the encouragement that it doesn't last forever, these are things that you can once you just commit to them, you really can make a difference in your day to day experience 100%
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
