Video summarized in article below
Dr. Carrie: Adrenal rushes. This is something very common, and some people don’t even realize what is going on. What it feels like is a sense of impending doom sometimes. They feel their heart pounding. They get really dizzy, especially when they stand up really quickly.
They feel this anxious feeling or some feel jittery, wired, and tired. Sometimes they could get confused with hot flashes because the menopausal women, they feel like this flush come over them where it’s hard to say if it’s a hot flush or an adrenaline rush.
Dr. Jeremy: Right, so adrenal rushes are very common in adrenal fatigue. It commonly happens when the adrenal glands start failing to produce enough cortisol for the body to deal with the stress that you’re encountering. So, when it comes to this stage, the body will then produce adrenaline to help combat the stress as a last-ditch defense mechanism.
Dr. Michael: Well, the important thing to remember is that symptoms don’t come on and off like a light switch. It’s a continuum. So, at the very minimum, when the body’s under stress and the sympathetic nervous system is being activated, you can just feel irritable. You can feel a little startled. For example, the phone rings and you jump. Then, when you stand up, you can feel a little lightheaded, but it’s not dizzy.
You can see all the doctors to check out for sure, and you’ve been told that you’re normal. You don’t have any cardiovascular issues. You don’t have any neurological issues, but somehow, it’s just not so steady. If you keep going forward into more advanced stages, more adrenaline, more epinephrine, and more dopamine is being secreted, it’s part of the autonomic response. Then the symptoms get a little more serious and more irritable. Waking up at night, a little bit more panicky sometimes.
These adrenaline rushes can be like tingling down your legs or your feet. You can have funny nonspecific whispers that your body gives you, but if you step back and take a look, it’s almost like the body is irritable. It is not happy with you. It does not know what to do. Therefore, these are just some warning signs, and if you have a sympathetic system that is being activated all the time—especially if you’re like a type A person—you are so used to having adrenaline rushes and being alert and you keep going all the time. You don’t even feel it.
For some people, when you have such a high level of stress, it builds up and then flows over. When it flows over, that’s when you have these adrenaline rushes, but remember they come in a continuum. So, don’t just get your mind start thinking, “Well, if I don’t have adrenal rushes, I don’t have a problem.” No, you have a graduation from mild to moderate to severe.
In the most severe cases, you will need to see your doctor because you can get panic attacks, and then you have to go to the emergency room, but we’re not dealing with that level of extreme. We’re talking about just the feeling along the way. While you are tired at certain times, you can feel anxious at another time. The slightest stresses can come and affect you. A slight argument can set you off, for example.
Dr. Carrie: Why is that reason is because adrenaline is usually a fight or flight response. So, when you see a bear, when you undergo a lot of stress, when your boss is yelling at you, your adrenaline goes up usually to help you fight or run away. Except when you undergo chronic stress, and your adrenaline is always up, and you are unable to have enough cortisol to help dampen that response over time. The adrenaline just stays in use and you just always feel stimulated. That’s why you have that little irritable feeling all the time.
Dr. Michael: It’s very important to note that adrenaline and its biochemical mother, called norepinephrine, are one of the very few—in fact, adrenaline is the only hormone in the body that does not have what we call an opposing hormone.
For example, in the body, it’s mostly designed in such a way that it balances. Estrogen is balanced by progesterone. Sodium is balanced by potassium. Calcium is balanced by magnesium for example.
But because it is a fight or flight response, it is designed to come out and does not have a balancing factor, because the body thinks, "If I need to have this activated, that means I’m in serious danger.” So, the more the better. Instead of having what we call a negative feedback loop system, adrenaline has no negative feedback loop system. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s called a positive feedback loop.
In other words, the more adrenaline that comes up generates even more. The more adrenaline on this side combines into even more. The snowball gets rolled bigger and bigger and bigger. In fact, it will end up in what we call a collapse. That’s the ultimate step. So, it’s a very interesting concept to understand in this Cardionomic circuit.
Dr. Jeremy: Okay. So, what can you really do about it? The first step is to really restore adrenal function. Once you restore your adrenal function and get that reserve back, then your body will be able to produce more cortisol. This will in turn really help reduce the need for your body to produce adrenaline, and slowly these symptoms will go away.
Dr. Carrie: To help calm the body down, you can do some adrenal breathing exercises with the belly, meditate to calm your mind down, and get your parasympathetic response up, which is basically to balance that sympathetic response that you’re always having.
There are some supplements that you could try to help calm you down, like magnesium is great. Some people will use GABA, valerian, passionflower, 5-htp, inositol, or theanine.
Make sure you just be careful when you use these because sometimes, they could have paradoxical reactions to them if you’re very congested or you don’t know how to use them properly. They’re also very dose-dependent, so make sure you ask your practitioner before you start using any of these supplements just to make sure because every person is so different.
Dr. Michael: Yes, as Dr. Carrie said, the more advanced you are in the adrenal fatigue state, the body internally is already upside-down. Therefore, you can have a reaction that’s hyper exaggerated or paradoxical.
On top of that, one keynote I want to make sure that everybody understands is that deep breathing is actually a sympathetic-driven event at the last tail end of it.
So, adrenal breathing is designed to help the body calm down with the parasympathetic bias. It’s not the same as deep breathing. You can go to my website and look more. It teaches you.
Dr. Jeremy: Right, so helping calm the body down really takes a holistic nutritional coaching plan. We don’t just rely on supplements. We need a good lifestyle diet and a total body approach to really help the body and calm down and help it heal. So, this is what we help our clients with. It’s a vital key to recovery, and it’s also part of Dr. Lam’s nutritional program. Not only supplementation but really a whole-body approach.
Dr. Carrie: So, to recap, to help with these adrenaline rushes, you need to deal with the adrenal function and learn how to calm the body down.
