The advice and informational content does not necessarily represent the views of mother's market and kitchen, mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition.

Hello, I'm Kimberly king, and welcome to the mother's market radio show, a show dedicated to the Truth, Beauty and Goodness of the human condition. On today's show, everybody struggles with stress, but sometimes it's hard to pinpoint what to treat in our bodies to help combat the issue. Today we discuss adrenal stress and how that can help us feel better overall. So listen, close later. We'll tell you what's going on around town.

But first up, Dr. Maria is a graduate of the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine and Canada's premier institute for education and research in naturopathic medicine. Through her passion for education, Dr. Marita leads by example and hopes to empower others to choose positive choices in order to live optimally, she actively lectures across the country with a special focus on women's health.

Dr. Marina is the co-author of the adrenal stress connection and has recently released her own book, Making Sense of women's health, and we welcome her to the mother's market radio show.

Dr. Maria, how are you?

I'm wonderful, how are you? Alright, thank you so much and thanks for being here. Thank you, why don't you fill our audience a little bit on your mission and your work before we get to today's show topic.

Absolutely, so I am a naturopathic physician, and I have a full-time clinical practice up in Victoria, British Columbia. I've been in clinical practice for almost 10 years now with a special interest in women's health, so one of my biggest reasons for becoming a naturopathic doctor was I love the philosophy behind being an naturopathic doctor education... Really empowering people to take charge of their health to live optimally. And so that's one of my main goals, is to travel across the country, educating women, educating younger women to be more proactive, to really eat better, exercise, stress management, keep their hormones and balance, and I truly do love what I do, so... Did you have a life moment or life-altering, something happened that made you think about living optimally in naturopathic scientists?

I actually, as I was on my way of becoming a medical doctor, I loved working with people, I love the sciences, I excelled in the sciences, so I thought the logical explanation would be, Okay, let's go into medicine. And when I was in university and I was doing my Pre-Medical Studies, I sort of lost a little bit of my drive and my focus and I thought... I took a step back and thought, Okay, is this really what I'm doing? Does this sort of align with my philosophy and what I really want to achieve, and I have friends that are medical doctors, I've not against medical doctors, but I think from an education perspective and really taking the time to educate people about eating healthy and meditation and stress management, I kind of discovered that I wasn't really gonna be able to do that within the paradigm of conventional medicine, so I went the naturopathic medicine route, and I have friends that are medical doctors, I work with medical doctors. But yeah, I'm really happy with the path that I chose to become a naturopathic physician, you know what, the moment you sat down, you just appear to be happy and you're glowing and it's anywhere as well.

Yeah, once a day, we are talking about adrenal stress, and I do wanna start by asking you, you did co-wrote the adrenal stress connection, the name of the book with Dr. Karen Jensen and I wanna find out what the connection is between your adrenal glands and stress...

Oh, it's huge.

I think there's a lot more information that's definitely coming out with regards to adrenal health, I think when my patients come in, I guess 10 years ago, when I was talking about adrenal health, a lot of times people would say, I have ever heard of my adrenal glands what are your adrenal glands? demean women have adrenal glands, and so I find in the last few years, people are hearing the topic a lot more, but the whole mission of the book was again, to really educate the masses about how chronic stress does have a huge impact on your health and virtually affects every system in the body.

So it's not just about your mental health as far as anxiety, depression or insomnia, but it's your immune system, it's how your body heals, it's the inflammatory response, it's how women go through menopause.

So in the book, we've sort of laid it out very simply on kind of explaining the connection between the adrenals and all your other hormonal systems in the body, and then what you can do as far as herbs and supplementation. Dietary supplements, but as well as the lifestyle component as well, because that's very important, and that is great to draw it out as a map here for a lot of women and men, as you say too, I think people... Echl, Rene, I'm even seeing a lot of younger, like the college students or the high school students that have so much pressure, they're trying to work full-time jobs, and then they're trying to get straight As in the school and they're trying to maintain... You know that social balance and extracurricular activities, and then we think about all of the electromagnetic frequency and radiation that I wasn't exposed to when I was slut in high school.

I don't even think I had as well.Phokas a really good point mentioning that because also it's the hurry up and grow up, because you have to get into college and you have to have straight As and you have to compete with everybody else, and so you're right, that are in a teaching art... And I think it's the mind, the mind is constantly being stimulated over and over and over again to everything that we're getting bombarded with.

Yeah, that's a really good point. And you did mention that, that it is just how do we relax and come down and so... Yeah, thank you for writing that book.

What exactly is adrenal fatigue, and you just started to talk a little bit about that... Yes, so the adrenal glands are referred to as the stress plans, so they release hormones that help our body adapt to and increase our resistance to stress, so what happens is, is if we're exposed to little stressors, which we usually are life, day-to-day, live life stressors, the adrenal glands release these hormones and then we cope with the stress and then the hormones re-balance themselves. The problem arises when we're exposed to chronic stress over long periods of time, so those adrenal glands can only keep up for so long, and then eventually what happens is, is your resistance distress becomes greatly reduced because those adrenal glands can't keep up that demand, they start becoming a lot tired, they become fatigued, and then instead of the body working in balance, for example, your body's immune system being able to release compounds to help fight infection, or your body's ability to deal with inflammatory processes that are going on the body... Because the body is so fatigued from that chronic stress, you start seeing the other systems become compromised, so often people that are adrenal fatigue... I mean, one of the most common symptoms is chronic fatigue, most people are waking up completely exhausted, a lot of my patients will complain that they can't really function without coffee, not just one cup of coffee, but five cups go through the day, they have really brutal cravings they can't shut their brain off at night, they might suffer from anxiety or depression, they're chronically ill, so all these symptoms can definitely contribute to an underlying adrenal fatigue picture, and in my clinical practice, every one of my patients gets tested for adrenal fatigue, and most of them I'd probably say 90% of them have some kind of underlying varying every degree of an adrenal fatigue, adrenal stress, and just to peel that back, what does your test look like too?

So there's a lot of different tests. A lot. So I spent a good portion of my intakes with a good medical history, so if somebody comes into my practice and says, Oh well, I've had pneumonia five times and on we went through a brutal divorce, or I moved my whole family across the country, those are very very significant stressors. So I always look at the history of what's happened 10, 20, 30 years down previous, and then for... Some of the tests that I use, salivary cortisol testing can be very beneficial. So cortisol is one of the main stress hormones that are adrenal glands release, we need cortisol in order to survive, but when we're too stressed out or we have adrenal exhaustion, the cortisol levels will either be too high or too low, and that's where we see it affect other systems, so by testing salivary cortisol, we can actually see the balance or the path or the direction of where the cortisol levels are going, so for example, your cortisol level should be the highest in the morning. So we have a huge amount of energy. First thing in the morning, we bounce it a bed, we don't need coffee, and then the cortisol level should decline as the day progresses, when we test salivary cortisol in an adrenal exhausted individual, it's completely opposite, so that curve is very, very low. Cortisol is very low in the morning and then it ramps up as the day progresses on, and going to... And this is, I have to be careful about asking this question, but going to a regular physician, they would not normally test somebody for that, like for chronic fatigue? No, yeah, it's difficult because in conventional medicine, typically when they think adrenal Disease, adrenal disease, they think of very, very serious diseases of the adrenal glands, like an adrenal tumor or Addison's disease or Cushing disease, which are the extremes of adrenal exhaustion or adrenal stress, and they're very rare diseases. So if somebody, if one of my patients went in to see their medical doctor and said, Oh, well, I think I have an adrenal issue, they would look at them and they'd say, No, I don't think you do, because in those cases, they're... In some cases, they're quite life-threatening diseases, but there's that gray zone, like adrenal exhaustion, adrenal stress isn't typically a condition that is recognized by conventional medicine, so they may test your blood cortisol levels, but they may not test blood cortisol morning, mid-afternoon, late afternoon, evening to kind of see that whole curve, right, and then that they would wanna put the band-aid on it or do something, but meanwhile you're there to actually help and get you to the point where you're not... Yeah, you're not suffering from that, so you're there to help, so... I see. How would you know if you've had so recognizable symptoms? Yes, so most of the patients that come into my practice, one of the... We talked about chronic fatigue, one of the biggest ones is people that may sleep, don't maybe sleep like 10 or 12 hours at night, and they're still waking up completely exhausted in the morning.

So that's a big one. Cravings are huge, so people that, again, cannot function without coffee or their craving sugar, or they're craving the junk foods, they're current raving the carbs, that's another really big symptom of adrenal fatigue, but I also will notice that in a lot of cases, there'll be other underlying issues going on.

So, for example, with women, they might have extreme PMs or they might have extremely heavy cycles, or there might be another underlying issue, for example, like thyroid, like low thyroid, because the adrenals and thyroid works so closely together, so the adrenals aren't working properly, then often that can cause a thyroid problem, and then that contributes to weight gain, so that's another one. A lot of women will say, Well, you know, I can't lose weight. What's going on with this belly fat, I hit perimenopausal menopause and I can't... I'm doing everything, I'm eating well, and I can't seem to lose any weight, so that's a big symptom of adrenal fatigue as well.

Okay, so we talked a little bit about those signs and symptoms, what are adapt ogee herbs and how can they help with a journal health? So there's a lot that we can do, obviously for nourishing the adrenal glands and definitely helping with that stress response, so adapt ogee herbs are a group of herbs that basically help your body adapt to and cope with the stress response, so all of these herbs, for example, like rodeo, Ashland, Suma, Hasan, DRA, all of these herbs have been well researched to help to modulate and re-balance out those cortisol levels, so an adapted basically, if your cortisol levels are too low, then it helps to bring them up into balance. Same thing is, if you're in that chronic anxiety, hyper-stress mode, cortisol is too high, it'll help to bring it back into a normal balance so that your body is able to be equipped to dealing with further stress down the road, but they're very gentle herbs. I often get the question, if I take these herbs, are they gonna make me sky high and they work 'cause they're adaptations, they work very gently, and they don't typically cause people to have sort of agitation or anxiety, they just help to keep people very calm, and that's great, well, this is really interesting information, and right now we need to take a quick break, but more with Dr. Marita, just a moment. Don't go anywhere. We will be right back.

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And now back to our interview with Dr. Maria and we're talking about adrenal stress and Dr. Rader, we were just talking about adapters and how they can help with adrenal health, and is there a specific formula that you use in your clinical practice...

I do... There is a specific formula that I love to use with my practice, or in my practice with my patients, it's called a Drina sense, it's by natural factors, the women sense line, and it combines all those herbs that I mentioned, all those really gentle adaption herbs, and I've been using it in my clinical practice probably for last seven years now, with great success for people that suffer from adrenal fatigue or chronic stress, and it just helps people sleep better, it helps people's energy levels stay a lot more balanced and stabilized as well, cuts down the cravings, so it's called Arena sense dries.

Okay, and that would be available at mothers and... Absolutely.

Okay, how does adrenal stress impact blood sugar levels?

So one of the symptoms we talked about was craving, carbs, junk food, sugar cravings can be a really, really big one, so sugar for ourselves is almost... It gives our cells energy, and if you can think about the whole stress response, the stress response takes a lot of energy out of the body, and so typically people that are stressed out, what happens is, is the blood sugar levels increase to feed that increased stress demand and by doing so, what happens is, is there's this whole cascade of events because then your pancreas starts releasing Insulin, insulin is responsible for driving sugar into the cells to utilize it for energy, so you can just imagine high sugar and then your sugar levels can actually drop you can become hypoglycemic because of the stress response, and then if your sugars are too low, then that will actually cause your body to want to eat more sugar, and so it can become this vicious cycle with chronic stress, having this YoYo effect with your blood sugars and then cause you to want to eat more forge.

Wow, thank you for explaining that. You explained that really well.

Yes, and it's true, it is a vicious cycle, and I know that it can start at a young age, but when especially maybe women going through menopause or whatever that stress compound is, you and I were talking a little bit off air about the perception of stress, let's talk a little bit about that.

So the other thing that we have to remember is, yes, taking all of these herbs and these vitamins and dietary supplements are really important for the stress response, but also our perception of how we deal with stress can have a huge impact and how you perceive that stress if you think that stress is going to be negative, it's gonna have a negative connotation, it's going to do damage to your body, you think it's actually gonna be harmful to your health, then your body and your cells have a memory, and that is how your body is physiologically going to respond to that stress. But what I try to tell my patients as I say, words are very powerful, so what you keep telling yourself, if you keep telling yourself that that stress is doing you harm, it's damaging your body, it's causing you to not sleep at night and have anxiety and cravings, then yes, it is going to have that physiological response in your body, and there's actually a really excellent TED Talk that I watched last year, and it's called Let's stress be your friend, and I really encourage the listeners to look it up, and it's just a very short eight-minute talk, and she is a psychologist, and she actually talks about the perception of stress and quotes a study that they did where they found people... Was really interesting. So what they did is they ask people their levels of stress, and then they ask them, Okay, do you believe that that stress is harmful to your health, so the people that actually had high levels of stress, but believed that that stress was harmful to their Health... Had a much greater risk of dying down the road versus the people that had the same level of stress, but perceive their stress as more of a positive or more of a challenge, so just to show you that really how you perceive that stress can have pretty interesting effects down the road.

Yeah, the outcome... And it does also tell us about our personalities, if you're a go-getter, and I love to see those challenges, and if you just wanted just a debt, and it also... I would imagine if you were diagnosed with a life-threatening disease or if you had cancer, I would also just would tell you how you would attack that diagnosis perhaps, or just in life and how you would... Absolutely, I do see cancer cases in my clinical practice, and one of my patients just comes to mind, here's a woman that has been diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer, and her doctors have basically said, You know, there's not really much more we can do for you, but her outlet outlook on life is amazing, she's eating all organic, she's juicing every day, she's still getting out and doing your meditation and her yoga, and she's still living that healthy lifestyle. Because she said, Dr. Rana, I just wanna live my life to the fullest, like I'm not gonna let this and beat me... Right, and I just thought...

You're amazing.

Yeah, you want a view that flagship, you want... If everybody I'm like, I'm gonna support you to do that, I'm gonna help you... 'cause she has a very, very large family. She's like, I wanna spend as much time as I can with my grandchildren and my kids and my husband, and... Yeah, so she's really turned that whole stressful situation into a really, really positive one. And thank you for sharing that. We were talking about you become a therapy micro Theresienstadt, and also to this, you are what you think you are, and that's the mindset of how words are so powerful and in so many ways it is what we're feeding ourselves and that stress and... Life is hard when you lost somebody, are you gone through a very painful divorce, whatever it is that you go through, it is... You could make it become a life moment and just take it and turn the prison a little bit, so thank you for sharing that.

Back to the connection between our adrenal stress and cardiovascular disease, can you talk about that? So we all know that the root cause of most disease, especially cardiovascular disease, is chronic inflammation, and so when we look at cortisol as our stress hormone, cortisol is actually also our natural anti-inflammatory hormone, and when we look at people with adrenal fatigue where their adrenal glands have just run out of steam. The reserves are greatly diminished, they might not have the reserves there to help them deal with inflammation, this is how chronic low-grade inflammation just brews in the body, and this low-grade inflammation can obviously start doing damage to our arteries or blood vessels. This is how we get platform Asian, and then down the road, if we're not careful, we don't take care of ourselves or take care of the underlying root cause, which is the chronic inflammation, which may be due to the stress, what can happen is a heart attack or stroke or some kind of cardiovascular event, so I know it's not sort of black or way, there's a lot of other things that are involved, but if we look at, again, the stress response and that chronic inflammation, there is definitely a link, so if we have healthy and strong adrenal glands and our body is able to deal with that inflammatory response, then that'll reduce the insult to our cardiovascular system, and what steps can be taken to maintain an dental health...

Oh, there's so many.

So we talked about obviously perception, how you perceive stress, I always talk to my patients about, Okay, what are you doing for you... Start with... And it's surprising because sometimes I get this... The answer, and they're like, What do you mean?

Like, well, do you... Do you take time for yourself? Do you go for a massage? You go for a while, but a lot of the women that I do talk to, specifically women, again, they're taking care of the husbands taking or the kid is working full-time trying to cook dinner, get the lunches ready, so... Yeah, and they do, unfortunately. So that's one thing I start with. Even if it's just take a walk for 15 minutes out of your lunch day, go outside to do some deep breathing yoga, even if you just do some yoga poses for 10 or 15 minutes first thing in the morning before you start your day. So that's really important. We talked about the adaptor herbs, the adenosine, which is an excellent formula for really, really helping to increase your resistance to stress, some of the other vitamins that are essential for the stress response, B vitamins, everyone knows that when you're stressed out, you take your complex or B-vitamins, magnesium is a really important mineral for, especially for people that have insomnia, the ham anxiety, restless leg syndrome, also very good for the heart and our bones.

Vitamin C, most of us are familiar with vitamin C as an immune supportive, but actually we like to call it the adrenal anti-oxidant, so it's very important for supporting adrenal health, the more stressed out you are, the more you're going to actually need vitamin C as well and that's why when we're stressed, our immune system can definitely be compromised as well, so those are some of the big main stress supportive that I use in my clinical practice.

Excellent. And does the health of the adrenal glands... In fact, women's menopausal symptoms as well.

Oh yes, that is definitely sort of the missing link when it comes to menopause, sort of just a summary, when women go through menopause, we talked about how important the adrenal glands are for stress, if we can think of menopause as being quite a stress on a woman's body as well, because the hormones are fluctuating often, like estrogen progesterone are declining as well as testosterone, but a lot of them, and don't realize that the adrenal glands, they don't just secrete your stress hormones, but they also produce small amounts of estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, and they essentially, become the back up when our over shut down.

So I'll just give you sort of an example of one of my patients. So if she's going through menopause and say her adrenal glands are completely exhausted while she's going through menopause, the adrenal glands are the back up for hormone production, how do you think her symptoms are gonna be through menopause yet... Very good. lashes nighters, insomnia. swings of the above, absolutely.

So that's one key component that I definitely talk about when I lecture, I definitely talk to my patients about that you wanna support your adrenal glands early on, or when if you're in IT and you weren't aware that your adrenal glands should have been supported long ago, you definitely, any menopausal women needs to be taking adrenal glands along with any kind of menopausal verbal support, or even if they're on hormone replacement therapy such as bio-dentil hormones, they need to look at the underlying root cause, which is adrenal health. A lot of times women that are or pre-menopausal or all of a sudden I hear about... My mom used to talk about the brain fog and everything else, and too... Let's talk a little bit about that besides the Hot flash is if that doesn't show up right away, what are the other symptoms that... I just remember my mom saying, Oh, I can't remember this, and waking up and just being in that brain fog... Memory pause.

Yes, everyone, every pass, that's definitely a big symptom, but I'd probably say so you get menopausal women to have that too, a younger... Yeah, I have some of my friends that'll say, Oh geez, they're in their 40s and they're like... My memory is not as good as it used to be. So yes, definitely memory pause is a huge... Can be a huge symptom for people that are going through menopause as well as younger women, it is related back to the adrenal glands, but it also is related to hormonal imbalances, specifically estrogen progesterone, with the hormones declining or becoming out of balance when we are in perimenopausal that's why I always say fish oil, is that what's the magic one on that one isolate, I will be tracking you down and... Well, thank you so very much. Very interesting information, and we really appreciate your time, Dr. Maria and some great advice. We really appreciate your knowledge and look forward to having you on again, but in the meantime, get more information on Dr. Maria and website of two websites, natural factors dot com, and also Dr. Maria dot com, and it's M-A-R-I-T-A. just so you know, we look forward to your next visit.

Thank you, thank you.

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Mother's recommends consulting your health professional for your personal medical condition,