Stress And Adrenal Fatigue in Minnetonka MN

Stress and Health in Minnetonka MN

Stress has been blamed for everything from headaches to cancer, but the truth is, your stress response is beautifully designed to help you survive. It's the abuse of that system with chronically stressful lifestyles that is the real source of health problems. If you are chasing your next meal with a spear, your blood sugar, heart rate, blood pressure and level of alertness should be high to fuel the chase. But if they are high because you are lying in bed chasing desperate thoughts about how to pay your bills, they are only fueling havoc in your body.

Because stress hormones are designed to alter almost every cell and system in your body, when stress is frequent, prolonged or chronic, it can negatively affect your health in Minnetonka MN over time. The most common health issues arising from chronic stress result from elevated cortisol and its effects on blood sugar, insulin/insulin resistance, blood pressure, immune function, sleep, mood, memory, cell growth and repair, digestion and thyroid function. On the other hand, if your stress response system does not adequately meet the level of demand, health issues can develop related to adrenal fatigue and lower than optimal cortisol levels.

Stress and Adrenal Fatigue

The constant demand of chronic stress on your stress response system, especially your adrenal glands, to produce hormones can also eventually result in adrenal fatigue. In 1998 Dr. James L. Wilson coined the term adrenal fatigue to describe a condition in which the stress response system is functioning and the adrenal glands are producing hormones but they are not meeting the level of demand - like a car stuck in a low gear trying to drive on the highway. Adrenal fatigue is very common, ranging from the tiredness you feel for a few days after recovering from an illness to debilitating fatigue that interferes with life and doesn't go away with just rest.

Your adrenals produce over 50 hormones, including cortisol, adrenaline, aldosterone, DHEA, testosterone, progesterone and estrogen. Making them is a nutrient and energy intensive process. Too little of even one of the required nutrients hinders hormone production. Getting adequate amounts of all the right nutrients is more of a challenge with a stressful lifestyle for several reasons. Since stress slows down digestion, nutrient absorption decreases as well. Plus it's very common for stressed people to eat on the fly, resort to junk food, and drive themselves with caffeine and sugary or salty snacks. Not only are these foods nutrient poor, but digesting and metabolizing them uses up nutrients they don't replenish. Caffeine stimulates your adrenals to temporarily work harder but in the process further depletes them.

During adrenal fatigue, adrenal hormones like cortisol are below optimal levels. Cortisol plays a key role in many physiological processes; including helping maintain healthy blood sugar, blood pressure, thyroid function, immune function, digestion, mental focus, memory, and sex hormone levels. It is also the body's most important anti-inflammatory agent. So when cortisol is low, it can adversely affect everything from your libido to allergic reactions to the quality of hydrochloric acid in your stomach. It also makes you feel tired, especially on rising, midmorning and midafternoon.

With chronic stress, this cortisol-related decrease in immune function can leave you more susceptible to colds, flu and other infections, and potentially make you more vulnerable to serious illness and degenerative disease down the road, as well as to the development of allergies and autoimmune disorders. If stress continues over an extended period of time, your adrenals eventually may not be able to keep up with the continued demand (adrenal fatigue) and start producing too little cortisol to stimulate optimal immune function. Also, because cortisol is the primary anti-inflammatory agent in the body, inflammation can worsen and inflammatory conditions can flare if your adrenals do not produce enough.