The adrenal glands are your stress glands.  They are about the size of the walnut and are located just above your kidneys.  They release your stress hormones.  Any time you are under any type of stress, the adrenals release hormones to help you combat that stress.  There are three things that our bodies perceive as stress.

1. Mental/emotional stress

2. Chronic inflammation

3. Chronic infections

All of these will deplete the overall function of the adrenals.  When this happens it can affect our energy, moods, ability to think clearly and our ability to perform.

Whether you are an athlete, at the office or at home, we can all do things to improve our adrenal function.

  1. Be careful with caffeine. So that’s coffee, black tea, pop or energy drinks.  Too much caffeine stimulates the adrenal glands to overproduce these hormones, which gives you short-term burst of energy but long-term creates a fatigue situation and a dependence on this stimulant.
  2. Avoid refined carbohydrates. These are refined sugars like candies or processed carbohydrates like bread, pasta and pasteries which just turn into sugar as soon as you eat them.  These also cause a quick, feel-good response but lead to a bigger crash in blood sugars and adrenal function again creating a fatigue situation and a dependency on these substances.

So what can we do.

  1. We can feed them better and nurture them with vitamins and nutrients including B vitamins, vitamin C and a range of different minerals which can be found in our foods , in high-quality supplementation and vitamin IVs.
  2. We can manage our stress better. Stress is everywhere, it affects everyone, but it is how we manage it.  We can do this by taking time for ourselves, doing things like yoga, laugh, write, read and doing this everyday.