So, I’ve had a bit on lately. It’s one of those situations where lots of opportunities come your way, and so you say “yes” to everything, and it’s all super fun and exciting and challenging….and exhausting! I am not complaining at all, but I am conscious enough to recognise that I need to put a few steps in place to make sure my brain doesn’t explode out of my skull which I was a bit worried about earlier today…
So, I thought I would write a quick post on adrenal fatigue – but I won’t go into great detail as I know we’ve all got smoothies to make, ha!
Our adrenals are lovely, small, walnut sized glands that hang out above our kidneys. They produce steroid hormones and help control our reaction to stress. The basic deal is that if we are stressed, a hormone called cortisol increases to help us to deal with it, and then returns to a baseline level. When cortisol rises, another hormone called aldosterone drops in order to lower our blood pressure slightly during this stressful time to keep us under control. Great! Our bodies can’t tell the difference between a lion attack, or the fact that you lost your car keys, and will respond physiologically the same way to different stressors. The problem is, this means that instead of short term lion attacks, we are responding this way long term to chronic modern day stressors like work, money, and figs only being in season for a short time… When we are chronically stressed, our adrenals are continually pumping out cortisol to cope – but there is only so far they can go. If our adrenals start to get tired, adrenalin comes to the party to pick up the slack and keep us going, but …
