Burnout and Adrenal Health

Are your adrenals tired? If you’re feeling burned out, then your adrenals are too.

Our adrenal glands are tiny hormone-secreting glands that sit on top of our kidneys like little hats.  They have a lot of jobs including regulating our blood sugar, keeping our sex hormone levels up, and regulating blood pressure through maintaining mineral balance in our bodies.  They are also our body’s biggest producer of the stress hormones cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline.  Our body makes these hormones in response to our perception of stress: the stress response starts in our brain and quickly causes a series of chain reactions throughout our body.  The purpose of all of these reactions is to get our body ready for fight or flight (it’s important to remember that the stress response evolved in us as a response to a threat in our environment, usually one that threatened our survival.  The stress response is our body’s way of mobilizing energy so we can fight, or run).  

Adrenaline and noradrenaline (also called epinephrine and norepinephrine) are secreted to wake up our brain to get hyperfocused on the perceived threat, and to shunt blood flow away from nonessential organs like our digestive system and to our muscles (so we can fight, or run).  

While adrenaline is a fast-acting hormone, cortisol is longer-acting and its effects last for hours.   Cortisol is responsible for shutting down the immune system and raising blood sugar to provide our muscles with the energy they need to fight or run.  

This is a beautiful evolutionary adaptation to acute threats to our survival.  However, in today’s world we are much less likely to be exposed to an actual physical threat; instead, we are bombarded with mental and emotional stressors like time crunches, unreasonable internal and external expectations, traffic, deadlines, financial burdens, etc.  We cannot run or fight these things, but our body still prepares us for fight or flight because that is our evolutionary adaptation to stress.  We were built for survival, but we’re living in a world of relative physical safety but unreasonable mental and emotional expectations.  We want to do it all, have it all, be it all.  But if we’re not careful, this process will put us in a state of chronic stress and demand that our adrenals constantly pump out stress hormones.  The long-term effect of chronically elevated levels of stress hormones is physical, mental and emotional burnout.  

Add to that the expectation that we will put others’ needs before our own (which, as women, we are still conditioned to do), and it’s really no wonder that so many of us begin to experience chronic burnout and all of the unpleasant physical symptoms that come with that:

• persistent weight gain

• brain fog, trouble concentrating and remembering

• early aging

• no energy, or being “wired but tired”: exhausted all day but unable to sleep when your head hits the pillow

• chronic pains

• digestive issues like gas, bloating, changes in bowel movements and changes in appetite

• changes in urinary habits

And then some.  The huge problem here is that this process happens slowly as the stresses pile up, and we often live in a state of “I’ve got this,” constantly trying to balance everything that comes our way and thinking that we can handle this thing too, it’s just one more little task.  We don’t realize the burden we carry because it builds up over time.  But our bodies do.  They get tired of carrying all of these burdens around, and slowly they begin weighing on our minds and our hearts too.  And then we find ourselves at that inevitable day where we look in the mirror and don’t recognize the face looking back, we search for ourselves, for the light and happiness in our eyes but cannot find it.  We realize that we’ve been existing without for a long time…how long?  How long has it been since you’ve felt happiness, joy, contentment?  How long has it been since you’ve felt at peace?

It took time for you to get here, and it takes time to get yourself back.  But by addressing the layers that go along with burnout like digestive issues, liver health and detoxification, hormones and metabolism, you can walk the path that leads back to you. 

If any of this resonates with you, I encourage you to hop on a 20 minute discovery call with me (you can schedule here).  It’s completely free and it’s a great way for you to learn how I can help you get your life back with an individualized medicine and treatment plan created just for you.