Why Your Adrenal Glands Could be the Cause of Your Weight and Mood Problems

Okay, I'd just like to qualify the above statement a little. Your adrenal glands aren't actually tiny villains sitting above your kidneys, plotting to make your life hard! However, when we expose our adrenal glands to constant stress (from our environment), adrenal fatigue can result. If you've tired the poor little guys out, you are probably experiencing poor concentration, low moods, low tolerance to noise and stressful situations, and often difficult to shift excess weight. We explain the process of adrenal fatigue, and look at alternative health products and lifestyles to cure it.

What do the adrenal glands do?

The outer layer of the adrenal glands produces cortisol. The center of the gland produces adrenaline.

These hormones help our body go into a fight-or-flight state when faced with a stressful event. However, this state takes precedence over all other metabolic functions -- basically, if your stress hormones are constantly kicked in, they prevent the rest of your body from working properly.

Events that affect your adrenals

The stressful events that trigger the adrenal response (and overtake all your other functions) are prevalent in modern life. This is why there have been plenty of alternative health products developed to compensate! These events can include:

• Death of a loved one
• Relationship troubles
• Work stresses
• Financial trouble
• Reliance on stimulants like caffeine and sugar
• Skipping meals
• Illness and infection

The functions these events impair

We mentioned that other metabolic processes are shunted to the side when stress occurs. These processes can be things like:

• Normal healing
• Bone growth
• Hormone production, including melatonin, serotonin, dopamine, thyroid hormone, etc
• Digestion
• Mental function -- electrical transmission in the brain
• Immune function

DHEA - Where alternative health products come in

DHEA is the antidote to cortisol, if you will. It is the hormone that helps us calm down after something stressful occurs. When cortisol is produced in large amounts, consistently over time, we lose the ability to make normal levels of DHEA. Taking an alternative health product containing DHEA can help you overcome low mood and energy levels, decreased sex drive, anxiety, weight that can’t be shifted (a stressed body wants to hang onto its energy stores!), and even allergies.

Inflammatory Depression

Depression is now seen to be in the top three illnesses affecting the aging population. The leading cause of death people younger than 35 in some areas of the world, according to a recent Australian study, is actually suicide. Untreated chronic depression is linked with a whole host of other diseases, including dementia, Alzheimer's and coronary heart disease. New schools of thinking are starting to suggest that inflammation could play a part in developing depression. Today we are looking at the rationale behind that thought, and the alternative health products that can reduce inflammation in your body to help reduce your risk of becoming depressed.

Chris Meletis, a naturopath, points to a growing body of evidence that the natural mood enhancers that are often prescribed to treat depression (Specific Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors or SSRIs, for example) also have anti-inflammatory properties, and these may actually be the reason that people feel better after taking them.

Evidence for the above

Male patients with increased early life stress have shown an enhanced inflammatory response to psychosocial stress later in life. (Published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, September 2006)

Patients with bipolar disorder were also found to have higher serum levels of the inflammation marker C-Reactive protein. (Published in the Programs of Neuropsychopharmacological Biological Psychiatry October 2006).

Possible remedies through alternative health products

Melatonin is a critical part of this equation, and alternative health products that provide glandular support to the pineal gland may be of special use in treating depression. We know that going without sleep makes us feel depressed, and we also know that going without sleep decreases our melatonin levels. It is a fact that melatonin is involved in regulating the anti-inflammatory response, as well as being responsible for circadian rhythms. Alternative health products that provide the support the pineal gland needs to function properly could help depressed patients feel better with much more natural substances.

Drug free treatment of depression

You can give those alternative health products a boost along their way to your better health by doing the following:

• Stop eating foods that produce an inflammatory response -- trans fats, refined carbohydrates and gluten are the number one offenders. For some people, dairy, eggs, soy and nuts may also be.
• Eat plenty of essential fatty acids -- if you don’t eat fish, get these through a natural health supplies store.
• Eat plenty of fruit, vegetables and fresh herbs and spices such as garlic, oregano, turmeric, ginger and green tea.