Stress and Inflammation

Stress has recently been linked to inflammation in this article on Science News about stress and inflammation. http://www.sciencenewsdigital.org/sciencenews/20120225?pg=11#pg11

When looked at biochemically it is obvious that stress is the number one health issue today because it leads to so many ailments. I’ll go into that in a minute. Don’t worry,it’s pretty simple.

Recent science has shown that inflammation leads to many modern ailments. Heart disease, diabetes, dementia including Alzheimer’s and cancer to name a few.

Biochemically speaking, diseases like these progress in a logical way. So, let’s look at stress as reported in the above article.

Most people know that junk food is bad for them, but many don’t know why. Since knowledge is power, I’m going to lay it out for you here. The simple answer is that it puts stress on the body. There are other stress factors of course, factors that most people know.

The body reacts the same way to toxic chemicals as it does to junk food. Strong emotions, mostly negative ones, create the same biochemical nightmare that being exposed to toxins in your food or environment do.

Other stress factors include: injury, lack of sleep, over exercising, not exercising, temperature and long term hunger (an hour or two is actually good for you, but that’s a different subject).

How stress leads to disease

When there is stress the adrenal glands produce powerful hormones. The purpose of these hormones is to get the body ready to fight or run away fast, the fight or flight instinct.

It’s the powerful hormones that cause inflammation. The swelling is there so if you bleed it will be minimal. Inflammation also fights off infection. Whatever the case the inflammation is there long term because most stress is long term.

In the case of emotional stress, if the emotions aren’t released then they become stuck in the body, and we all know how to stuff emotions. Dietary stress is very long term for the majority of people who have access to processed foods because it’s in our genes to crave fattening foods. That’s how ancient people survived winter, if you didn’t crave fattening foods you didn’t survive, and we’re descended from the survivors.

The human body is designed to eat fattening foods once a year for a few months at most. Type 2 diabetes sets in during that time so there is excess blood sugar that is converted in the liver to fat. Do that year round and you become permanently diabetic, overweight and develop heart disease. Cancer results too, but that pathway is more complex, a subject for another time.

If you want to avoid stress and inflammation, then you need to change your life. While that may not very practical for most people, there are things that you can probably change to eliminate a big chunk of your stress. And, you can mitigate the effects of some stress in a number of ways.

Eliminating dietary stress is number one. That includes all processed foods and sugars. (By the way, processed foods are any ground up grains and all sugars. Stevia is the only completely safe sweetener.) Grains are not the best thing to eat at all, so at least minimizing them is pretty important.

Another thing you can do is to exercise regularly. Walking is the best exercise because our bodies are designed to walk — ancient humans were nomads. An hour or so a day five days a week is a good goal to work up to. That’s the main part though there’s a lot more about exercise, but again, another subject.

Eliminating emotional stress is the hard one for most people. Meditation and yoga have been shown to reduce those stress hormones, and exercise helps to burn them off.

For the remaining stress you can take adrenal herbs and supplements. This is discussed in my book, Adrenal Fatigue, Get Your Life Back. It’s still only $7 for the download at the link, and is now available on Amazon in a physical form for 12.99. It’s on Kindle too if you like reading that way.

Whatever your circumstances, you can probably do something to eliminate even a little stress and inflammation. Your body will thank you by sticking around for a few more years.

How to Cure Insomnia Naturally Image by Callee MacAulay

Let’s look at how to cure insomnia naturally. This is going to step on a few toes, so be forewarned, I’m going to debunk a few pretty solid ideas that people and even most doctors think believe about how the human body works.

First of all, humans are naturally meant to sleep a lot more than they do. Believe it or not, nine and a half hours is ideal, at least in the winter months. After all, what did humans do for almost 200,000 years before artificial light? When it got dark they went to sleep and got up when it got light! It’s pretty obvious, but there are studies to back that up.

So, why do you have trouble sleeping? What does this modern world throw at us that our ancient ancestors didn’t have? Stress is the answer. We have a LOT more stress than they had thousands of years ago.

Excess stress is the primary cause of adrenal fatigue. And, the cause of most sleep problems is adrenal fatigue, something that most doctors don’t even recognize as a condition at all.

The adrenal glands produce a hormone called cortisol, as well as other hormones, in response to stress. This article focuses on cortisol levels and how they affect sleep.

When there is a lot of stress the adrenals can become exhausted from making all that extra hormone. With adrenal fatigue comes an irregularity in how much cortisol is released as well as when it is released. This is the key to why adrenal fatigue causes sleep disorders.

Why aren’t people hungry when they first wake up in the morning? At least most people. It’s been hours since dinner, much longer than most people go through the day without eating. The reason is that cortisol is released at night to keep blood sugar up so hunger doesn’t wake you. One of cortisol’s actions is bringing blood sugar up, and hunger comes from low blood sugar.

So, if the adrenals are fatigued, then blood sugar will go down during the night which will wake you up. This is one form of insomnia; waking in the night and not being able to go back to sleep.

During the day cortisol is released when there is an emergency, which should be relieved within a few minutes. Once the stressful situation is passed the body can go back to balance which means cortisol levels go back to normal.

When there is a lot of stress like the modern world has to offer, the body gets over amped and doesn’t get a chance to go back to its normal balance. Consequently, cortisol levels are high at bed time which makes it hard or even impossible to go to sleep.

How to cure insomnia naturally is to treat the adrenal glands. There are a lot of ways to do this, but the protocols I give in my book, Adrenal Fatigue — Get Your Life Back, are the most effective I’ve ever seen. I got them from a natural healer who tested them with hundreds of clients using saliva tests to see the real changes in cortisol levels. Of course, there’s more to it than just treating with herbs and supplements, so the book goes into other factors that need to be addressed as well.

You’re always welcome to ask about something you may have going on that seems different in your case. You can email me using the contact tab above, or better, write a comment, your question may help someone else. No worries about privacy, your information is never shared.

Get your copy of Adrenal Fatigue — Get Your Life Back and learn how to cure insomnia naturally today.

Adrenal Glands

One of the reasons I write so much about adrenal fatigue is because it almost killed me. Yep, I almost died from the reactions my body had to this all too common condition. Let me tell you what happened.

That’s the adrenal glands in the photo above. They are walnut sized glands that sit on the kidneys. Very active little glands, they produce a quart of hormone every day — unless you have adrenal fatigue.

There are several ways adrenal fatigue can lead to poor health. One is the lower back issue that I often write about here, another issue I’m all too familiar with from personal experience. You can find more about that subject in my free book Back Pain Secrets.

The issue that nearly killed me was a blockage in the bowel. This was from a progression of irritable bowel syndrome or IBS. According to the doctors I had inflammatory bowel disease or IBD. There are two varieties of IBD, Chron’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. I had Chron’s. Of course, the medical community says this isn’t curable, but they are wrong, I’m living proof.

The blockage I had caused a lot of pain as well as damage to the intestines which I had surgery to repair. I was very lucky though, a blocked bowel can very quickly lead to death. And, yes, all these conditions respond favorably to adrenal fatigue treatment.

The happy ending to my story is that I met a holistic healer who not only cured me from my condition, but who took a liking to me and taught me all his amazing secrets. I used to sit in his office for hours watching him work and listening to him educate his clients on how to get healthy and stay that way. This is also your good fortune since what I write about is mostly from what I learned from my good friend “Dr. G.” Sorry, I won’t even ask him to lend his name to what I do, but I’m happy to refer anyone who wants to see him in his Oakland, CA office.

There is a lot more to the problems that adrenal fatigue can lead to. I cover some of that in my book Adrenal Fatigue — Get Your Life Back, as well as on here at SelfAdjustingTechnique.com.

You can get Adrenal Fatigue — Get Your Life Back as an instant download so you can get started in finding great health. Here’s the link again: http://selfadjustingtechnique.com/my-books/adrenal-fatigue-book/

Whatever symptom you’re experiencing I’m sure you can turn it around by following the suggestions in my book. As always, I do guarantee that you will find the answers you are looking for or your money back. You can also email me to ask any questions you have about the book. You can use the contact tab above, or the email you get when you order.

I usually answer quickly because I get a lot of email and things tend to drop off if I don’t. Be sure to email again if I happen to miss you though. And, stay healthy!

Sacroiliac joint between
sacrum (1) and iliac spine (2)

What happens is that stress causes a strain on the adrenal glands. The stress can be from diet, emotions, physical over-exertion, chemicals and more.

The adrenal glands handle stress
The adrenal glands are natures answer to stress, and they do a good job at it for how we evolved. Unfortunately, the stress that ancient people faced was about a thousand times less than what we experience in modern life. Oh, the wild animal is more likely to kill, but your body’s reaction is the same as when you have a near miss on the freeway, or from eating a piece of cake. That spinning class isn’t natural either, more like being chased by wild animals than exercise.

Adrenal glands get preferential treatment
The point is that the adrenals take a hard hit and grow weak. Thing is, the same nutrients the adrenals need are also needed by your ligaments and tendons to keep them strong. The adrenals are much more important, so the body diverts the nutrients to them to keep you running.

The lower back supports the entire body
The sacroiliac joint is what supports the weight of the entire upper body. Those ligaments tend to be the first to go since they bear the most weight.

Addiction
My friend had been on a crazy tour, traveling, eating what was available, and having her sugar addiction come back with a vengeance. Don’t worry, we all have that very same addiction. Most addiction is sugar addiction.

Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done for lower back pain until the adrenal glands are taken care of. It can be quick too.

Herbs for the adrenal glands
Fortunately, she has access to inexpensive acupuncture. Plus a good Chinese Herb shop near by.

Herbs are the best for quick lower back pain relief. The adrenal fatigue herbs listed are the ones that are the fastest working I’ve ever seen or experienced. There are two of them, licorice and Siberian Ginseng. They work great together, though sometimes the Ginseng can be too much for women, like with my friend. Astragalus is a good substitution, but it might not work as fast.

You just have to say “NO”
I told my friend that if people knew as deeply how bad sugar is for them, if they knew the physiology of what happens, that they wouldn’t eat it. It’s become a bit of a slogan, but sugar really is white death, it’s just slow so you don’t notice so much.

Health starts with adrenal health
Most major illnesses start from adrenal fatigue. Well, it goes deeper than that, but brain chemistry and behaviour is a subject I haven’t gotten into yet. But, things like heart disease, cancer, depression, gastrointestinal issues, diabetes and more can be traced biochemically traced back to the adrenal glands. Even lower back pain.

Cup Cake

Another email came in today from someone happy to find information about adrenal fatigue. She was looking for something for her husband because he was having so many problems — 35 of the 50 symptoms of adrenal fatigue.

The doctors found that he was really low in testosterone, so they boosted it to the levels of a teenage boy. Still no energy in this guy at all. Argh! I could go on for hours about the dumb things they teach at med school!

She was happy to find something that might help him out. She’s thinking Adkins diet modified with fruit that he likes. Fruit because he won’t eat vegetables. He does eat a lot of junk food especially those packaged cupcake things, McDonald’s and sodas.

My response was that diet is everything when healing. Her husband could not expect to get better unless he stopped eating junk.

There’s really no other way.

And, I’m afraid that is likely to include the fruits he likes, like bananas, red apples, grapes, oranges and other sweet fruit — it’s all sugar.

A friend of mine was trying to get his mother to see me. She kept putting it off and making excuses. Finally he asked her what was up. She said that she was afraid I’d tell her to stop eating ice cream. He asked her, “Mom, would you rather feel good or eat ice cream?”

She didn’t even have to think about it, said she’d rather eat ice cream.

It’s just like that for some people. They have a choice, and should be allowed to make it — what else could you possibly do?

I understand, I really do. I used to be terrible. I was lucky I guess, I almost died when I was young enough to fully recover. All do to junk.

When I was about seven I started telling everyone I was going to live to be 100. A long and healthy life is still important to me. Much more important than my taste buds. So I found a healer who taught me how to achieve that childhood goal.

Now you have an idea why I am so into natural health. My views are pretty different from the main stream, but they are what brought me and hundreds of others back to full health, so I present on this site.

I can’t believe that I used to think I was doing fine with the amount of processed foods I was eating. Worst, it wasn’t obvious at all until serious symptoms showed up.

The fact is, humans simply did not evolve to eat junk! And, it’s impossible to go from being ill to health while eating it.

On the other hand, what is life without a little enjoyment? Having a little treat from time to time is fine for those who are healthy. But, for those on the mend, it is really important to get your priorities straight.

If you do indulge, use moderation and eat a generally well balanced diet with plenty of fresh vegetables. Add in some regular exercise, and you’ll be practically impervious to the occasional treat.

Of course, it’s your choice.

You can heal the adrenal glands with a few supplements and herbs. My book, Adrenal Fatigue — Get Your Life Back tells how. Or, you can contact me to get the right protocol for your particular case.

This email  came in today form a woman who knows from a test two years ago that she has adrenal fatigue. Her husband had triple bypass surgery at age 50. The stress left her in worse shape, with debilitating insomnia, a common result of adrenal fatigue. To compound the problem she doesn’t really have the money for the supplements and herbs that will help her out of her adrenal mess.

Here’s what I wrote to her:

The cause of your husband’s clogged arteries is the same casue (at least one of them) of your adrenal fatigue: processed foods and sugar.

OK, I’m not psychic, and I could be wrong, but that is usually the case. The fact is that processed food is the primary cause of most of our modern ailments.

You can help yourself a lot by not eating any grains or sugar at all. But, that’s very hard to do cold turkey.

Start with sugar, it takes about five days for the cravings to lessen, a month to go away completely. More animal protein helps. This is all sugars too, even the “healthy” ones. Honey, for example, is actually worse than table sugar in certain ways.

Stop refined grains asap — don’t go crazy! Start by eliminating refined grains, work slowly. A refined grain is anything that has been chopped or ground, “whole grain” doesn’t mean a thing to the adrenals if it’s chopped up because they release sugar almost as fast as table sugar.

Then start limiting whole grains as well.

Finally, the adrenals are driven by the hypothalamus gland which reacts to intense emotions (stress) by tells the pituitary gland to tell the adrenals to produce stress hormones. You can effectively turn the hypothalamus off with certain herbs. A good investment would be in some relaxing herbs. Get the relaxing herb combination that are ground up in capsules. Drinking a couple of cups of Kava a day works well for some people.

Get some other herbs and supplements as you can afford them.

Kalidasa

Edit: I recently released two free reports on the adrenal glands. The first one is an expansion on 30 Symptoms Of Adrenal Fatigue. There are now 50 symptoms in this free report. And, there is an article on what you can do to help your adrenal glands come to full health. This report is based on Traditional Chinese Medicine. You can get both these reports and more free information on the adrenal fatigue at the link.

Karen asked a good question about adrenal fatigue and DHEA today. I thought I’d write about it as this can be a serious issue.

“I drink Yogi brand tea everyday with many of these herbs (mentioned in an article on this site) – especially KAVA and CHAMOMILE. Is this method as effective as taking supplements assuming the same levels for each? If my DHEA levels are low, do you endorse taking DHEA to get back to a normal level?”

The most important part of this question has to do with adrenal fatigue, but the most serious part is concerning DHEA, so I’ll cover that first.

DHEA is a precursor to the sex hormones. It is often recommended for people with adrenal fatigue symptoms since the adrenal glands produce it. Supplementing with DHEA will take the pressure off the adrenal glands, but there are problems.

Because of the problems with DHEA, many practitioners will recommend 7-keto DHEA instead. 7-keto DHEA is thought to be less of an issue because it isn’t supposed to be metabolized to the the male or female hormones. Unfortunately, they are basing this on ideas rather than hard scientific evidence. Lately, there is more evidence that this is not the case.

I have a friend who is a medical doctor. We have a great deal of respect for each other as healers in our particular fields. She knows a great deal more than I do, yet she appreciates my approach to healing. We have a great time discussing various issues, especially where it concerns our health issues. She is pretty old at this point, I’m not sure how old, but I’m pretty sure she is in her 70’s.

Anyway, she has been dealing with age related issues. Unfortunately, her medical training didn’t address many of the things that I have been studying for the last bunch of years. As a result, she has had issues that have cropped up from ill informed choices. A few years ago she decided to take 7-keto DHEA to help with her adrenal fatigue symptoms and other issues that this product is supposed to help with. The result of this was that she developed breast cancer.

After researching this form of DHEA subsequent to her developing cancer, she determined that it was the 7-keto DHEA that was the direct cause of her cancer. There are other factors involved with most cancers, but the DHEA was the final straw.

There are many other ways to deal with adrenal fatigue symptoms, so taking this dangerous supplement should not be considered.

Yogi tea that Karen mentions does have herbs in it that can help with adrenal fatigue. However, you would have to drink a LOT of that tea to obtain a therapeutic dose. And, I have no idea about the quality of the herbs in the product.

Quality is very important when choosing herbs and supplements. I recommend only the highest quality products for my clients, family and friends. It really is worth a little more money, just a couple of dollars more can increase the effectiveness many fold.

A friend of mine and I are working on a program that will allow us to offer such recommendations to people. I will be announcing this soon to people that are subscribed to my blog through the link on back pain relief. Sorry, I haven’t set up the system for you to subscribe without getting the back pain information.

Sign up anyway, it’s good information, and you can always ignore it. Then, watch out for the email announcing our new product, we will be offering a significant discount for subscribers.

My doctor friend? She was able to skate through the breast cancer using a combination of medical and holistic therapies. She’s doing fine in that area now.