Adrenal Love
When Billy is upset he said ‘Mummy cuddle, Billy sad’. We cuddle, we have a talk – sometimes he tells me things that haven’t been ‘berry nice’ and he goes off and plays.
On my website you’ll see an article I wrote about adrenal fatigue. Following on from that let’s chat about what you can do to support your adrenal glands, because like Billy – they need a cuddle as there are most likely sad.
As I’ve mentioned before – we live in a world where we are always ‘on’ and we need to be off. We perceive things that aren’t life threatening as stressful – turning on our stress response. This stress response floods our body with hormones that wreak havoc with our mood, sleep, weight and the ripple effect of relationships and general life enjoyment. There are various schools of thought on how to support your adrenal glands – and this is my take, from working with many many clients on this exact same thing.
Firstly – get yourself a good naturopath – I work closely with Ebony at Des Lardners in Horsham – she does online appointments as well and I get no pay back from recommending her. We all need to know where our hormone levels are at and what our body is lacking herb and supplement wise and Ebony is your chick. Majority of woman are iron deficient. And eventhough your blood tests say within normal range – they may be at the lower end and that is not at all optimal for best functioning.
Secondly – learn to diaphragmatically breathe. This technique is all about retraining you to breathe into your diaphragm, away from the shallow, shoulder breathing. I’ll share a post on this later in the month
Thirdly – work out what is vitally important in life. And I don’t mean – oh my family is the most important thing (because yeah we know that) – I mean – is it really important to you to have an immaculate house? So much so that you are a crazed banshee trying to pick up after your six kids ALL the time and you are raging with adrenaline and cortisol? Is it really important that you answer that work email at 11pm? Does it really matter that a person you were best friends with 10 years ago, doesn’t give a shit about you now – but you keep hanging in there, hoping it will change? Do you really want to spend your precious energy on trying to force change in this situation? Does it really matter that your child said ‘fucking hell’ whilst at the supermarket?
Work out what is important. And what is causing your adrenaline to lose its shit. Because we need to turn off that stress response – and YOU are responsible for that – with your warped perception of what is urgent.
So, maybe you need to sort a cleaner or get rid of the shit that the kids keep lying around. Or maybe having a house tidy is vitally important to you – and that’s ok, but get it to a point where you aren’t running high on stress hormones over it. Or maybe you need better boundaries and that work email can wait until the next day. And maybe that friend and you have gone in different directions and you need to let it go. And maybe it really was a time for fucking hell to be said in the supermarket and it’s just a time to laugh about it and move on – not get stressed and embarrassed.
Fourthly (is that even a word?) – flogging yourself with high intensity exercise when your adrenal glands are ‘sad and need a cuddle’ is not helpful. Actually it is reverse helpful. Yoga, walking, Qi Gong, Pilates – anything that is calm and restorative is your jam. Ali at My Yoga Well can help you out with yoga, your legs can do the walking, Brenda at Birchip Lifestyle and Fitness can help you with Qi Gong and Janelle with Pilates at Sukha Pilates and Fitness.
Fifthly – lots of leafy greens, lemon, beetroot, limiting high inflammatory foods (gluten, dairy, sugar, coffee, alcohol) will help as well! Dr Libby my secret Biochemical Nutritionist crush has all the information about this. I shared an article of hers recently too!
Sixthly – Meditate, Meditate, Meditate. I cannot emphasise this enough. It will change your life.
Obviously there is a lot more that can be done to support your adrenal system – and it is through individual consultations that that can be nutted out – but the above is a brilliant start! Oh and having a bit of down time and fun is important too – and who can’t go past Sheldon and the Big Bang Theory – adore.