Maintaining fitness of a lifetime, and better health - Overtraining & Adrenal Fatigue (Part 2)

The term adrenaline, comes to mind when one experience scenarios such as roller coaster ride or perhaps being chased by a stray dog. But, in fact, cortisol is really our primary stress adrenal hormone. It has huge variety of influences. It response to stress, involve in carbohydrates, protein and fat metabolism, it is also a catabolic hormone. Most fitness enthusiasts and gym rats know what anabolic is, and in this case, it is the opposite, which means breaking things down. But, we do need a low amount of cortisol for function such as repairing the gut and address inflammation. It is a true blood sugar hormone, and our  adrenals release cortisol when we are in a state of surival mode, flight or fight situation. Our body goes for the rocket fuel because it may think that we are under threat and the need to outrun or fight off a predator. 

In the modern society,  people stressed out in their lives, blood sugar can be chronically elevated, and for most elite athletes, cortisol level is chronically high, peak output is a stressful thing to do. High ortisol equally to elevated blood sugar and vice versa. In the world of  'dreaming of 6 pack abs' body or getting the physique of a bodybuilder or even fitness models, we have officially raise the 'cortisol bar' of new stress standard. Many of us self abused our body physically and hormonally. Think of burning a candle faster then what it should be, your adrenals are taking the hit round the clock. 

Some of you may have a considerable clean diet, but constantly thrashing your body in the gym or training for marathon or trialthon may well age you faster, increase gut permeability, damaging brain cells (BDNF), and always set your sympathetic nervous system ON, while enabling your body in a catabolic state. In a perfect world, it releases in a rhythmic pattern,  high in early wee hours, and lower when the sun is setting down, and lowest when darkness increase with very minimal light. We should be able to get a good night sleep, but more and more people are now suffering from insomnia, either difficulty to fall asleep, or poor interrupted sleep during the night. Sleep is as vital as your exercise and diet routine, and if your body is contantly in catabolic stressed out mode, it will lose the ability to cope with recovering and repairing itself, thus, more damage then doing good. 

Well, some of you may wonder, how can I measure my stress hormone cortisol? Would the standard blood test tell me anything? Think of watching a movie teaser of maybe 60 seconds. Would you be able to know the entire story and what's happening to your circadian rhythm or adrenals health? Of course not. You may do a salivary adrenal test (ASI), to measure salivary level of cortisol. Blood levels of cortisol serum is about 99% of protein bound and unable to be utilize by the body. So, if you are looking at the free form of cortisol level in body (done throughout the day with different time), the real time data obtained will give a much bigger picture of what's happening with your adrenals and circadian rhythm. In other words, you get to see what kind of pattern your body is operating in. You would be surprise to find out how many people are suffering from adrenal fatigue, the insomniac and the 'snooze-heavy butt' , people who have problems waking up in the morning having to drag their ass off the bed. Meanwhile, most people cortisol rhythm is out of whack during the day too, as levels go sky high in the afternoon, mainly from dependancy of caffeine and stimulants such as sugars and wheat. 

As more cafes and coffee shops are opened from time to time, we are growing into a caffeinated population. Commercially sold coffee products are high in mycotoxins and pesticides, further destroying the hormones and suppressing the immune system. Some people have the need to drink a pot of coffee just to get the morning going, and feeling irritable and agitated during the day has become so common, that we are seeing more 'bad-mood' society around us. Think of roller coaster, a similar pattern of energy all over the place. This particular person who dependant on caffeine to get the day going, are so tired and ending up unable to wind down during the night and have a restless 'high-cortisol' sleep.

Now, imagine you tired, restless, maybe partial brain-fog too, and you realize that you are on schedule to hit the gym and need to workout today. No pain no gain remember? You then ignored what your body is trying to tell you, and you guzzle down more energy drinks and coffee to get the day through, and maybe a protein shake when you are in the locker room of the gym before your RPM or LES Mills class. The cycle will keep on rolling as vicious as it gets, and your body is catabolizing itself into survival mode, infections and inflammation are brewing inside the body, and autoimmunity is just the matter of time before the alarm goes off. I'm sure you have friends or fitness buddies who often tell you that they are sick and down with flu or cold. A society of fit but sick human being. 

 In the current fitness industry, the mainstream approach is GO-GO-GO! Burn more calories and workout more regularly. Want short cut to weight loss or body transformation? Drink your shakes and add in more weight loss supplements, and don't forget, participate in marathon or daily gym sessions. We are being constantly chase by sabre tooth, lions and tigers almost 98% of the time. Human body has evolved for thousands if not millions of years, to be in a relax state of mind, which is the opposite of what we are going through right now. Perhaps the reserved 2% is used for hunting and emergency survival situations. Coming from a fitness background, myself has witness a commercially money driven industry, which not only drain and stressed out the clients adrenals and state of health, this has becoming comical in some way, which almost the entire community is buying into the whole no-pain-no-gain calories burning approach. The self-abuse paradigm is not only decreasing life-span ,quality of life and health, as our ancestors will never do things in such a way. 

Now, let me present to you Dr. Hans Selye. He was often regarded as the father of stress physiology. A brilliant endocrinologist and researcher, and was nominated close to 10 times for Nobel Prize. His findings, research and his adrenal exhaustion model are still being taught as of today, by some of the naturopathic doctors, holistic health practitioners and even clinical nutritionists. 

Dr. Hans Selye

Are you really suffering from adrenal fatigue or faulty signaling from the brain?

The model of Hans Selye proposed in 1950's seems intially logical and theoretically progresses in three stages.


1) The acute stage, in which an initial stressor causes a release of stress hormone cortisol.
2) The resistance stage, during which cortisol levels may be either high or low.
3) The exhaustion stage, in which cortisol release becomes chronically depressed due to adrenal exhaustion.

The last stage of this progression, is regarded as the last nail of the coffin. By that point, your adrenals are 'barbecued' and gone. Although Hans Selye proposed adrenal exhaustion model is right about most things, but today's researchers in the field of stress physiology may debate one or two things. Stress and adrenal exhaustion do not necessarily progress in a predictable stages. For instance, we now know that a person can go into elevated or depressed patterns of cortisol release almost overnight. A traumatic event could easily trigger this state, it doesn't matter if you are a female or male, or even at any age. Any yet for someone else, stress maybe chronic or even severe for many years, and his or her cortisol levels may never change. Unfortunately, most of the natural medicine is still in the 1950's with respect to adrenal issues. In conventional medicine, if it isn't full blown, end stage Addison's or Cushing's disease then it isn't real.


Stay tuned for next post.