Hello, hotels participants, welcome to week three. So we are halfway there. And we have covered so far, basically everything all about nutrition. So hopefully by now you have been rising to the challenge of moving your body every day, purposely for 30 minutes at least. And hopefully also you have been really making some great changes and improvements to your nutrition and followed some of those awesome menu plans that you've been given, and really just adopted that lifestyle mentality of thinking. So week three is all about stress, the adrenal glands and the thyroid.

So first of all, I wanted to just recap what you will have received this week as far as handouts go. So you will have received a handout on stress and the adrenal, as well as stress and weight loss. a handout on sleep and how to get your sleep back on track and a dreaming drainage healing protocol handout. So this goes through and really shows you the things that you can do to heal your adrenals. In these high notes, there is an adrenal health questionnaire. Now this is really a great thing to take some time and fill out there's a lot of questions, and I want you to pour yourself a cup of tea, sit down and fill out that questionnaire and tally up your answers and see where you're at when it comes to your adrenal health.

The adrenal glands are foundational for pretty much everything in our body. So it's really important to identify if you are having any issues in that area. And finally, you will have also received your week three menu plan recipes and done for you grocery list. So let's get started on today's webinar. We are going to be talking all about the adrenals and thyroid function. And I'm going to start by sharing my screen and getting the webinar started for you.

So the stress effect 43% of all adults suffer from adverse effects due to stress. 75 to 90% of all visits to primary care physicians are in some way related to stress. So when we consider these statistics, we pretty much know that none of us are exempt from the effects that stress can have on our body. It's not just stress. So oftentimes, patients will say to me, oh, it's just stress. I can't sleep.

It's just stress. Oh, I don't have any energy. It's just stress. My moods are all over the place. It's just stress, I'm depressed, it's just stressed and anxious. It's just stress.

And I always think to myself, please don't put the word just in front of the word stress. Because stress is implicated in almost all health conditions. It's a catalyst to begin the detrimental effects on our body that can lead to some irreversible health conditions. So we don't want to minimize stress, we need to know the importance of the effects that stress is having in our life. Now, not all stress is bad. We need a certain amount of physiological stress, to remain upright to remain alive, to remain thinking and on our feet.

So it's not bad to have stress. It's just negative when there's too much of it when we can't handle it when our emotions can no longer happen. handle the emotional stress it starts handing it over to our physical body. And then it starts presenting as physical symptoms. And you can see that because almost all visits to primary care physician so this is family doctors, almost all of those visits are in some way related to stress, and almost half of us are suffering from adverse effects from stress. So it's never just stress.

The adrenal glands are two little great sized glands that sit on top of our kidneys. And they have the enormous task and responsibility for governing governing our stress response by secreted certain hormones in order for us to respond to the stressors. So when the adrenal glands are overworked fats and calories get stored, energy is conserved and wait starts, acumen As our bodies prepare for adversity, so these little grape sides Glen's really, they should be the size of watermelons, they have such an enormous task in our body, they are so helpful. they secrete these hormones that we need in order for us to respond to acute and chronic stressors. And it's interesting that when the adrenal glands become overworked, so think about yourself, if you have a job, if you're working, whatever it may be, if you're at home, caring for the home, or if you're out of the home in a job, and your days are full.

Can you imagine that somebody comes in and says, Here is double the work, here's triple the work, here's quadruple the work, and you say, Well, I simply can't get all of this done in a day. And so what happens is, with the adrenal glands, when they get so overworked, that the body almost kind of goes into survival mode, and it starts storing It's calories and conserving its energy. So you just start to become depleted, and weight starts accumulating, especially in our midsection. So I'm sure you've maybe had the experience or you've known of someone that's had the experience, who will say, I mean, I was under stress, and I gained like 1015 pounds all in my midsection. So it's very well documented that the abdominal fat cells have more receptors for cortisol, otherwise known as our stress hormone than any other cells of the body. So let me explain what that means.

There's more cortisol receptors on our abdominal area than there is anywhere else in the body. So the more receptors we have for cortisol, the more cortisol will be stored in that area. And cortisol is a fat storage hormone. So this is why when we get stressed for long periods of time, that we can pass weight on the midsection. And it's also the hardest place to lose from as well. And this is why the adrenal glands need to be in optimal health.

And one of the underlying causes of weight loss resistance is adrenal fatigue. And this is why because of these cortisol receptors in our abdominal area, so the stress affects symptoms, some of the symptoms that can manifest in your body if you have been under chronic stress. So the stress can be the reason for some of these things that you might be experiencing depression and or anxiety. So it can be both or one of the other increased abdominal fat, tired for no reason. Difficulty waking up despite adequate sleep, so you're sleeping well, but you're not restored. How it should be, is when you wake up in the morning, there should be there's a bit of a scale so not everyone isn't An absolute morning person, but you should be able to wake up, get up and feel decent.

Like if it takes you until 10 to get yourself going, or you're reliant on three or four cups of coffee to get your day started, there's a good chance that you're experiencing the stress effects symptoms, feeling rundown or overwhelmed, like you just can't simply handle the stressors in your life. And you think to yourself, wait a minute, I think I used to be able to handle these things much better memory and concentration issues. So difficulty focusing, walking into a room and thinking, what did I come in here for Where did I put my keys? I can't believe I forgot that appointment. You know, having to write everything down, lowered immune system catching every cold that comes around, increase startle response. So you're standing at the kitchen and chopping some vegetables and someone comes up behind you and taps you on the shoulder and you jump out of your skin.

That's an increased startle response, which is almost always related to stress, food craving. So insatiable cravings, usually for salt but can also be for sugar, or can be both. There's something called adrenal fatigue. And Adrenal Fatigue is when these adrenal glands of ours are just simply starting to shut down. There's three stages involved. The first one is called the alarm stage.

And in the alarm stage, this would be considered the normal stage. So basically what happens is we get exposed to stress. Our adrenal glands burst with cortisol and adrenaline in response to the stressors, so that we can respond, and this results in the fight or flight response. So this is normal. This should happen and it's called the alarm stage. So we think about hunters and gatherers of centuries ago And they would go out foraging for food.

And there they are hunting. And next thing you know, a tiger jumps out at them and threatens their life. And so they go running because their body's in fight or flight. So the body has recognized a physical stress. And the fight or flight response requires physical response. So the hunter runs and runs and runs, runs, finally finds a place to hide the tiger circles a little bit and then retreats and gives up and goes on his way.

And so then the hunters hormones, cortisol and adrenaline. They've already been spent because he ran and now they're normal, and that would be a normal response. Now, unfortunately, in our day and age, if that Tiger represents stress, it's circling us all the time. So the adrenal glands don't differentiate between types of stress. Just me sitting in front of this laptop recording this webinar, the electromagnetic radiation that's coming off of this laptop is literally stressing the cells within our bodies and within my body, and you sitting there watching it is stressing the cells within your body. So we are getting exposed to all sorts of stressors that people 102 hundred years ago and so forth, never ever got exposed to pollution, the pesticides and herbicides in our foods, not to mention our pace of life.

So we are moving at a much faster pace. We're doing way more things than people did 50 100 200 years ago, so our bodies have not evolved. We have the exact same physiology exact same body, but we are under much more stress, which is why Adrenal Fatigue is so much more prevalent now. Two is called the resistance stage. And what happens here is the body uses high cortisol levels to free up energy that helps the body physically resist the stressor. So, what happens is, when you go into fight or flight, your body requires energy in order to run.

But of course, many of us are just sitting at our desks, sitting at a table sitting on the couch, not necessarily running when we get stressed. Like Think about it. Every time you get stressed in a day, do you get up and physically run? Of course not. But that's what our body is thinking and expecting us to do. And so what happens over time, it's kind of like the tap gets left on.

So cortisol remains quite high. And when cortisol is high, that's called the resistance stage and excess cortisol floating around our body can start interfering with the action of other hormones like progesterone, which is a hormone produced by both the adrenal glands and the ovaries. And we're going to talk all about progesterone next week, testosterone and the thyroid. So the thyroid really requires the adrenal glands to be functioning optimally so that it can also be in a healthy place in our body. If the adrenals are not functioning well, the trickle effect is going to show up in the thyroid, and I'm going to explain more about that as we go. And not stage three is the exhaustion stage, I think at this stage as the top has run dry.

So at this stage, the adrenals are either depleted from producing too much cortisol or they're reacting to the detrimental effects of high cortisol and this reduces the cortisol duction significantly. So what happens is the cortisol ends up going really low, and you need enough cortisol to thrive. I really think about cortisol as Goldilocks, like, not too much, not too little, just right is where we need to be. These are some of the symptoms that can happen if your expense experiencing high or low cortisol. Some of them are different, but some of them are the same. So it's interesting, specifically, with moods and anxiety, you could be having those symptoms from low or high cortisol.

So high cortisol usually feels like tired but wired, like you're so exhausted. You can't wait to get to bed, you climb into bed. Your brain starts going, your eyes are wide open, you're exhausted, but there's no way that you can fall asleep. So you have difficulty sleeping, you have the abdominal weight gain, your blood pressure might be high. You may even be experiencing hair loss. muscle mass loss, anxiety and inflammation or dissolve and can be produced from inflammation.

So if you've got some type of pain going on in your body, your adrenals will produce cortisol in response to that. But the problem is, is that as cortisol is circulating through the body, it creates inflammation. So you've got this round and round cycle going if you're in stage three, but some of the low cortisol symptoms can include fatigue, especially in the morning, like you just are dog tired, like it might take you until late morning like 11 to wake up. Increasing accessibility to infections are catching everything that goes around decreased recovery from exercise. So you go for a walk, you go for a run and like you just cannot recover allergies. So you'll say I never used to have hay fever before now and sneezing every spring and summer, low blood sugar so you skip meal and your body literally revolt, you feel hangry like you're going to commit some type of crime unless you get some food, feeling just burnt out like you just can't do it anymore, depression and low libido.

So I wanted to come back to one of your handouts. This one is from the stress and weight loss handout that you have. And I want to go through this with you. Because I think this really helps to describe how stress can affect our bodies. So stress no matter where it's coming from disrupts your body's internal balance, which is known as homeostasis. So homeostasis is basically like the balance system in your body.

There are two different categories of stress there is acute which is short term, and chronic which is long term. Acute stressors are co occur when you're driving, someone cuts you off and you have to slam on your brakes or someone scares you or you're running late. That's acute stress, it's going to end. As soon as you get it all the way to the person that is on the road or you get to where you're going, this stress is over. Chronic stress is long lasting, and it's linked to some serious side effects. So examples of chronic stress would be caring for an aging parent, feeling unhappy in your home way.

And during a long illness or a divorce moving on job changes. That's all long term chronic stress. But no matter what type of stress you are under your body activates what's called the general adaptation syndrome, which is responsible for returning your body to a state of homeostasis or internal balance. So we have everything we need in our body to get our bodies back into balance. So the general adaptation syndrome, otherwise known as gas, basically what happens is number one, you experience an extra Don't stress either physical or emotional. Number two, no internal alarm goes off signaling the fight or flight response in your brain.

And number three in reaction to the fight or flight response, your autonomic nervous system, the one you can't control in voluntarily secretes two hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, which are required to help us maintain the balance in our body to homeostasis. So adrenaline keeps you alert by increasing your heart rate. So your stress you feel your heart pounding, your blood pressure goes up, and it quickly mobilizes your energy. So what that means is, you could actually get up and run faster than you normally could without that adrenaline in your body. And cortisol works much more slowly. It helps to replenish your energy supplies and prepares the immune system to handle any type of threat that might be happening.

So when you're feeling stressed, your brain is affected and your autonomic nervous system cannot tell the difference between physical and emotional stress. Let me repeat that. Your brain does not differentiate between types of stress, therefore it reacts the exact thing. So the response to stress to immediate stress, if there is a physical threat, that's how your body responds, your body thinks you are under physical stress, physical threat. So you might be just having an argument with a co worker, or maybe your boss is being stressful to you. Your body thinks you're under physical threat.

So what happens is, you are under fight or flight but really there is no need for you to fight or flight. You don't, you don't flee. And stress is related to weight gain, because in order to fight or flee, you need energy. cortisol is responsible for helping you to receive the energy that you need primarily by increasing your blood sugar. So your body knows it needs energy because you're in fight or flight. So cortisol increases your blood sugar.

And this happens because protein in your body gets converted to sugar, and then it releases stored sugar in your liver. So now you've got all this sugar floating through your bloodstream. This is also why people crave carbohydrates when they're feeling stress, the brain has sent a signal indicating that energy is needed in order to fight or flight, fight or flee and so your body needs carbohydrates or thinking on so hungry. That's why people stress eat. When the blood sugar levels are elevated, insulin which is a fat storing hormone is secreted in order to transport that blood sugar into the brain and Working muscles. But here's the catch.

The muscles aren't working. Because there is no physical stress. It's only emotional. People are usually sitting and not moving for long periods of time when feeling stressed. What happens next is that the excess sugar you just secreted in response to that stress and eight in the form of carbohydrates gets stored completely as fat. When you are chronically stressed, this cycle continues and continues and continues.

So that's how you end up gaining weight when you are under chronic stress. I want to share with you how to decrease stress quickly in your life. So you can do this exercise on an as needed basis. Or what I recommend is that you actually do it at least once a day. At when you get into bed at night is a really great time to do it. And if you do it every single day over again of time, it will gently start calming the overall state of your body down.

But you can also initiate this technique if you're under acute stress. So it's called diaphragmatic. Breathing and basically it means breathing from your diaphragm. This can take just a couple minutes of your time so it's not a big undertaking at all. So it's a four part breathing exercise. So you inhale deeply through your nose, so that the breath moves down past your clavicle, which is the bones in your front shoulder area and your chest before expanding your ribcage and into your stomach.

Your stomach should expand upon inhalation and your chest should not move in or out. So you want to make sure that you're actually breathing through your stomach and not your chest. So it takes a little bit of practice, you have to really relax your stomach muscles. Starting from your stomach, exhale, slowly through your mouth with control through your chest clavicles and out your mouth. So really forcefully, slowly exhale the breath through your stomach up through your chest clavicles and out through your mouth. As you exhale, pull your belly button towards your spine to diffuse the stale air from your lungs, make sure you are getting all of the air out of your lungs.

You want to inhale for a count of four, hold for two seconds, exhale for a count of four. Keep doing this until you feel relaxed. So if you're doing this under acute stress, then you're in you're driving in your car or whatever it might be. Maybe you do it once or twice and you feel better. Maybe you're under chronic stress, and you're just feeling so anxious. If you do this several times a day.

Just lay down and do it several times until you feel a relaxation feeling taken. And over your body. The next thing that you can do is called progressive relaxation. So this is a really great exercise to do if you're feeling stressed and tense. Lie down on your back with your palms facing up beside your sides. Let your toes fall open to either side, individually contract the different muscle groups for a few seconds, then release.

So I like to start from my toes and go all the way up my body. So think about your feet and tense the muscles of your feet hold versus a few seconds, then release. Then your calf hold release. Then your five hold release your buttocks hold. Go all the way through every muscle group in your body. Hold for a few seconds for each group, and then release.

It's called progressive relaxation. Remind yourself to relax each muscle group and release any tension that is being held. There's also some time management techniques. That you can instill in your life. So set some priorities, really look at your life and ask yourself what is a priority? Are there things in your life that don't even need to be there?

Like look at your schedule and dissect it, analyze it and say, Do I really need to have my kids in like 10 different activities in the week? know you don't pick the things that are the top priority? And what are the rest, if stress is an issue for you, and according to the statistics, it's an issue for all of us, then we really need to clean house, organize your day. So don't just get up and put your feet on the ground and wonder what's going to happen in the day. Like if you're working and you're balancing all these different things, you need to organize your day. You need to know what you're doing ahead of time.

You need to make sure that you have everything in place. In order for the day to go smoothly. Of course, unexpected things are going to come up but as much as you can, the more organized You are the better things will flow and done delegate tasks and responsibility. A few nights ago, I was in such a rush and I had to make my kids lunch for the next day. And my 12 year old was sitting there and I said, You know what, you are officially my new sandwich maker. So from now on, you are going to make the majority of the lunches from here on it.

And he had no problem with that. And we sat and I was prepping dinner and he was making the lunches and we had a great conversation. And so delegation is really important. Ask for what you need. Ask your spouse to help you. People don't know how to help you unless you ask them.

Don't over schedule yourself. Don't say yes to everything. One of the best things that I ever did in my life, is that I put a 48 hour time limit on any response I needed to make. So what I mean by that is I am at my heart I'm a yes person. I want to say yes to every opportunity every invite. I don't want to miss out on a thing.

I just Want to do it all. But what happens when you do that is all those great things end up turning into negative things like they're good, but there's so much of it, that it feels so stressful. And so I knew that I had to put some boundaries in my life. So I started by putting this 24 hour boundary and but I realized even after 24 hours, I'm still saying yes to everything. So I learned that I am a 48 hour response. So somebody asked if I can do something, if I can do a talk or be involved in something, I will say, I can get back to you in two days, I just need to check my calendar.

But really what I'm doing is I'm sleeping on it for a couple of nights. I'm really allowing myself and asking myself, is this something that I really want to do? Like truthfully, at my heart, I don't want to make the decision based on fear of lost opportunity or hurting the other person's feelings by saying no, I simply need to examine my heart and my needs and what is right for me So after 48 hours, I can either say yes or no, depending on what is going on in my life. And that has been such a great change for me. I've said no to all sorts of things that I should be saying no to, but I would have previously said yes to, I would have totally over scheduled myself. So put some boundaries in your life.

And this one's hard, but you need to ignore perfectionistic tendencies. Everything can't be perfect all the time. You have to let some things go. So that is a moment by moment, choice that I make in my life as well. I'm at heart a perfectionist, I want everything to be perfect all the time. And that's exhausting.

And so I know that for me, I can't just wake up one day and say, Okay, I'm no longer a perfectionist. No, I'm a recovering perfectionist. And so in every decision decision, I need to really ask myself, is it important that my house looks perfect right now? No, it's not. Is it important that I do all the dishes right now? No, it's not.

It's more important for other things to happen. And so really letting go of that. perfectionism is a great way to reduce a lot of the stress in your life. So when it comes to healing your adrenals, the first thing that you want to do is take the questionnaire now if that questionnaire if you've scored on that to a level where it's indicating that you've got some problems, you really want to consider getting the proper testing done, which is called a salivary adrenal test. And this will help you to determine your level of adrenal fatigue. So it's basically a take home kit that you do and you collect your saliva at four key points in the day.

And this shows you where your cortisol is at throughout the day. Your cortisol has what's called a circadian rhythm. So your cortisol should be nice and high in the morning. And then it should slowly trickle down as the day goes, and be nice and low by nighttime so that you can go to sleep properly. So this testing tests all of your adrenal hormones, and it shows you where you're at and how your body's responding to the normal stressors in your life. This is a real life changer for a lot of people.

And this test gives the information that you need in order to go on the proper healing protocol to really get your health back. This test is done very often in my practice, and probably one of the most popular tests that I've run. So if you want more information on that, post that in the Facebook group or send me a message and I'm happy to get you set up to get that testing done. distressing Your life is one of the most important steps that you can do. You can't have a healthy balanced life. If you have way too much stress now course there are things in your life that you cannot change.

This is why I recommend that you actually start by doing an identification process. So sit down and write down all of the different stressors in your life, no matter how big or how small. And whether you have unfinished projects you've been meaning to do, or you have a light bulb that you've been meaning to change, there's a barking dog in your neighborhood, you have family stress, you have a mortgage, you can't handle you're going through a divorce. You have a rebellious teenage child, whatever it is, write it all down, just get it out of your head and get it onto paper. Then really, objectively, look at that list and ask yourself, what on here Can I change? Be honest with yourself.

There are things that you can change. Sometimes we just don't want to or we're afraid to, but be brave and be courageous and make the changes that you know that you need to make Write down how you can change it and when you can change it. So if there's unfinished business in your house, or you know, it's something simple like changing the light bulb, how can you change it, I can change the light bulb, when Well, I'm going to put light bulbs on my grocery list. And when I go grocery shopping tonight, I'm going to get a light bulb and I'm going to change it, I'm going to cross it off my list. That's a very simple example. But all these little things add up.

Every time you walk past your closet, that's a disaster. That's a stressor to you. Every time you walk past that neighbor that you've had an argument with, that's a stressor. Every time the phone rings and you're afraid that it's gonna be one of those family members that you're not getting along with. That's a stressor. Every time your spouse comes home, and you guys aren't talking, you're silencing each other out.

That's a stressor. So change the things you can change except the things you can't. That's the most important thing that you can do when it comes Do your adrenals recognize your stress? What stresses you out? Like? What are your triggers?

They're different for each person. I know for me, I cannot handle being in a rush like that is a it's not a weakness. It's just a trigger. I like being early. I like being on time. I don't like being late.

If I am late, my heart is pounding. My body's in fight or flight. The adrenaline is flooding through me. It's such a response, I can't handle it. So I set my life up so that I do my very best to not get myself into that situation. So in the morning, I get up a couple hours before I need to leave, because I don't want to be late.

Life is unpredictable. What if something comes up and I need to deal with it and then that makes me late. I need to put time in there to address those types of changes. So figure out what you're doing. triggers are and then establish some boundaries in your life. And you need an outlet for your stress, you need something that is just for you.

So not something that will benefit anyone else. So not volunteering in your child's classroom. So that's lovely. And that's a great way to connect with your child and give back to your community. But an outlet for your stress will be something that is just for you. So it might be exercise might be walking.

It might be something creative, it might be dancing, it might be an art class, something that only benefits you. That's your outlet could be journaling, whatever it is, whatever floats your boat, find your outlet and do it on a regular basis. One of the things I love is a product called relaxation and this really helps to calm the physical effects of stress. It's probably one of the top selling products in my clinic. Really Popular and it what it does is it helps to balance cortisol levels. So it is a product where you don't really need to know if your cortisol is high or low because it will balance you either way, it takes the bite out of the stress, and it really helps to level out your mood.

And you want to take the proper nutrients for adrenal gland function. I think to myself, I am in the frying pan of life. I'm happily in the frying pan, but I am in the frying pan and I'm like a pad of butter. And I want to make sure that I don't completely melt and scorch the pen. So I've got a very busy family life. I've got a very busy practice.

I love doing all of these extra projects and writing books on the side. I love to exercise. I love to be involved in my church, I love to hang out with my friends. There's not a lot of extra time in the day to get everything done that I want to do. And so the things that I do have in my life or priority for me, but I also know that I'm in the frying pan of life, meaning there's Lots of stuff going on. And so I need to properly support my adrenal glands to get through this stage of life, and likely so do you.

So some of the proper nutrients that you can take are some really basic things like vitamin C, vitamin D complex, a stress B complex can change your life, magnesium, fish oil and vitamin d3. All of these products you can find on my online store and don't forget that you get a great discount during the life of this program. And so, just doing something like a stress B complex, your vitamin D, which is one of your foundational nutrients and extra magnesium can really help to calm the body down. There are some great Herbes that help to support and restore adrenal gland function. So things like ashwagandha, licorice root, rhodiola, and maca. A great product is called adrenal mend and that's available from my online store.

And that's it really helps if you are under like intense chronic stress and you're feeling exhausted. Like if you're having a hard time getting up in the morning, and you just feel like man, I just can't handle stress, you're feeling so overwhelmed. adrenal men is a really a great product to start taking. You want to avoid low blood sugar crashes by consuming food every three hours. So as I mentioned, your adrenal glands can't differentiate between types of stress, they just know stress. And so even skipping a meal is highly stressful to the body.

Your body will respond with cortisol output when it doesn't really need to, you could just eat and then you don't have to go through that. So make sure you're eating every three hours, even if just a small handful of nuts as a snack, that's great. And you want to reduce the top five dietary adrenal stressors. So there's five dietary things that will stress an already stressed system. So if you score high on the adrenal questionnaire, if you are identifying with a lot of these high or low cortisol symptoms, taking these particular foods out of your diet will allow your body to heal much quicker, doesn't mean that you have to keep them out forever, but you at least want to set yourself up for healing. So the top five dietary stressors are number one is sugar.

And I know you've heard me talking about this again and again. But here we are back to sugar. Sugar is the number one dietary stressor for the adrenal ones. And then the other four are tied for second position. So we have gluten, most dairy, excess caffeine, excess alcohol. So identify your relationship with each of these foods.

Are you reliant on caffeine to get up in the morning and then reliant on a glass of wine to unwind at the end of the day? Are you so busy that you're just kind of gobbling down like a processed muffin at a drive thru or grabbing some kind of stone for an afternoon snack is sugar something you need to make it through the day? Are you addicted to cheese and just want cheese all the time. These are signs that your body is under dietary stress from these foods. And so you really want to as much as you can avoid these top five dietary stressors and get adequate sleep by giving you a great handout on sleep, and I want to go through this with you. So there was a study that was done in 2006.

And it followed more than 68,000 women for a period of 16 years, which is one of the longest studies and the study was done on the association between reduce sleep and weight gain in women. And it found that those women who slept five hours or less per night are more likely to gain weight than those who got seven hours of night or more. So insufficient sleep doles brain activity, specifically the Until low due to a lack of mental clarity when it comes to food choices. So in addition to this dampening of the frontal lobe, the brain's reward center is stimulated. So when you're not getting enough sleep, your reward center is on high alert and it wants to be rewarded. Which is why when you're not sleeping properly, you simply have a much harder time making a good food decision because your brain is literally sending you towards the doughnuts when you should be eating the broccoli.

There's two very important hormones that control our appetite center. And a lack of sleep can cause imbalances in these hormones, which can then of course, lead to weight gain or weight loss resistance. So sleep deprivation, so getting less than five hours of sleep per night, increases a hormone called ghrelin, which triggers appetite and decreases the hormone called leptin, which tells us when we're full. So just by not getting proper sleep, it throws your appetite hormones off makes you feel more hungry. And when you do eat, you can't even feel that you're full. So just by transforming your sleep, you can totally changed the way that your metabolism is functioning.

There's some great tips on your handout as to how to regain your sleep. But first of all, you need to know if you are suffering from sleep disruption or disturbances. There's some symptoms that can kind of point you in that direction. So if you are having difficulty falling asleep, or difficulty waking up in the morning if you're having daytime drowsiness, or having micro nods or not like just falling asleep, having a hard time driving home from work or falling asleep in meetings nodding awfully or watching TV, zoning out during a conversation. It's You're talking to someone and thinking, Oh my gosh, I haven't even been listening. difficulty concentrating difficulty making simple decisions.

So trying to figure out what to wear or what to make for dinner, just little things and you just can't even get it together for that. Feeling clumsy like injuring yourself all the time, feeling emotional for no reason. So really having an emotional response more so than you normally would snoring, or having sleep apnea, routinely falling asleep within five minutes of lying down, like patients will tell me Oh, I fall asleep within like 30 seconds of my head hitting the pillow and I'm like, that's not actually a good sign. That's a sign that you're not getting enough restorative sleep, and waking up frequently during the night and having a hard time falling back to sleep. Those are all signs that you are suffering from a sleep disorder. There's some great tips on your handout.

And what I want you to do is go through and highlight the things that you're already doing and really key on the things that you can bring in. These are sleep hygiene techniques. So you can't just expect to go through your busy day and then to just fall asleep at night. Like, you have to really set yourself up and set the stage for a good sleep. So there's all sorts of things that you can do to ensure that's happening. And the other day I was talking to a patient who has really poor sleep and very poor sleep hygiene.

I said, You know what, right now you need to be so protective of your sleep, because you're not getting good sleep. And she kind of was like rolling her eyes going, are you serious? I was like, Yes, you have to really focus on making sure that you are meticulous with your sleep hygiene right now. And eventually your body will be back into the habit of sleeping well and then you won't have to be so meticulous about it because you'll be back into the habit of sleeping well. So if you're doing all of these things, You're still not sleeping, I've listed some products that you can try. The great thing about these products is that none of them are addictive.

They're not habit forming, they don't have any side effects. I find that sleep aids are like trying on shoes, what fits for one person doesn't necessarily work for the next person. And so try one of these things. And if it doesn't work, then move on to the next thing. The good thing about this is it doesn't take long for these to work. So if you don't notice that something isn't working within that first bottle, don't ever refill it move on to something else.

You shouldn't have to take a sleep natural sleep aid for months and months and months for it to kick in. I've listed them in accordance to strength. So in the list, it starts off with a product called insomnia tall which is a nice gentle sleep aided has a whole bunch of different ingredients in it so it kind of covers the vast majority of the different reasons why someone isn't sleeping. Then it goes into melatonin PR that stands for prolonged release. This is specifically for people that are waking up but they can fall asleep but they can't stay asleep. Then there's a nice high dose melatonin called melatonin.

10 Milligrams. This is great for people who can't fall asleep or stay asleep. It's a higher dose one brain calm is specifically for people that have mind chatter going on. So if you're waking up, and your brain is just like boop, boop, boop, boop and you're just like reminiscing about the day or you can't fall asleep, because you're just talking talking, talking inside your brain. Brain calm really helps to calm that down. And essential sleep and essential sleep.

Altra are the strongest sleep aids, they're still natural. They're just for people that have really big issues when it comes to sleep. So give those a try. Make sure that you are doing the sleep hygiene techniques. Sleep is very Important for adrenal healing. And let's move on to the thyroid.

So the adrenal and thyroid gland, our partners, it is critical that the adrenals are working properly so that the thyroid can also work properly. The thyroid is a butterfly shaped gland in the neck just below the Adam's apple. So it's right here. And it's the Master metabolizer and energy generator that fires up genes and keeps the cells in our body properly functioning. Every cell in your body has thyroid hormone receptors, and the thyroid is therefore fundamental in all aspects of health. 12% of the American population will develop a thyroid condition in their lifetime, and women are affected five to eight times more than men.

According to the American thyroid Association. That's a lot. Patient patients with underactive thyroid tend to have a very low basal metabolic rate. So what That means is that their metabolisms are quite slow. And often the metabolic burn or the level of metabolism continues to fall as calories are reduced when dieting. So one of the main things with thyroid is women gain weight and men and gain weight or can't lose weight so often they'll start restricting their calories more and more, and then their metabolic burn falls even more.

So consequently, some people with a low thyroid can have weight gain even when they severely restrict their calories. So how does the thyroid go out of balance? Well, it can be an autoimmune response, which is basically when your immune system is attacking a certain area of your body because it's not recognizing it as its own. Hashimoto is one of the top reasons why the thyroid goes out of balance. So it Hashimoto is is autoimmune thyroiditis. So it's basically an autoimmune response where the body starts attacking the thyroid gland.

Sometimes it doesn't well, oftentimes it doesn't get diagnosed properly, but it can be going on for 1015 years before it even shows up in standard tests. People will often experience symptoms of low end high thyroid, so they'll swing from hyper to hypo. Getting the proper diagnosis is key. You really want to know if you have Pachi motors or not, because the treatment of it is different than just thyroid conditions. And I'll be talking more about the testing in a second. So Adriel imbalances, we've just learned all about the adrenal glands and prolonged stress and that trickle effect can cause the thyroid to go to balance.

Your cortisol is too low or too high. It can really affect the thyroid gland. A lot of people come to my practice and they'll say I think I have a thyroid issue. I'll say well, let's test your hormones. So we test and their thyroid levels are completely fine, yet they have all the symptoms. have low thyroid function.

When we do their testing, it shows that their adrenal glands are fatigued. And so we don't even have to do anything to the thyroid, we just need to get their adrenal glands functioning well and then all their thyroid symptoms disappear. estrogen dominance and progesterone deficiency. We're going to be learning all about that next week and how that can affect the thyroid. The thyroid will commonly go out of balance and extreme hormonal fluctuations such as pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause. Food allergies can cause the thyroid to go to balance, specifically celiac disease, which is a gluten intolerance, as well as Candida, which is the overgrowth of yeast that I've talked about.

A vitamin D deficiency can cause the thyroid to go to a balance. It's estimated that 35% of women are deficient in vitamin D. iron deficient anemia. So if you're anemic, there's a connection between that and the thyroid. Other nutritional deficiencies and heavy metal toxicity. So there's lots of reasons for the thyroid to not function well. Some of the symptoms of low thyroid function include weight gain or the inability to lose weight, profound fatigue that lasts all day long, poor concentration and memory or brain fog.

Low grade depression often accompanies low thyroid function for eyebrow growth, dry skin, thinning hair, hair loss, cold sensitivity, so you get cold and you cannot warm up like it's summer and you're bundled up. muscle pain, weakness or cramps specifically in the legs, low libido fluid retention, I talked about my patient in last week's webinar who was suffering from idiopathic edema and no doctor could figure it out and in the end, it was her thyroid and once we got that balance, it went away completely. High cholesterol, hoarse voice or excessive earwax. These are some of the most common symptoms of the low thyroid, there's definitely some testing limitations when it comes to thyroid. Commonly, medical doctors will test TSH as a standalone test for thyroid function. The ranges for that differ between the US and Canada us is much more proactive at diagnosing thyroid issues.

In Canada, our range for TSH is quite a bit larger than the US and so a lot of people will fall within the normal range in Canada. Even though if we lived in the states we would be getting diagnosed properly. So we can't just go by what the TSH shows number one, the range is too big. And number two, there's three other hormones that are equally important. So the proper testing will include TSH and we follow the US range not the Canada range, three t for free t three and the thyroid antibodies. The thyroid antibodies will help us To determine if there's Hashimoto or not.

I have seen thyroid antibodies elevated in the infancy stages and have been able to help the patient to completely reverse that before it even turns into full on Hashimoto. And so it's really important if you are identifying with these thyroid symptoms. And you're saying, well, I've already been tested, my doctor tested my thyroid and said it was fine. I can tell you, I have heard that hundreds of times from patients, and you need to listen to yourself. If you identify with the symptoms of low thyroid function, and you've had testing done, please consider getting the proper testing done. We do the proper testing in my clinic all the time.

And it is so wonderful to be able to completely rule out thyroid function, maybe it's your adrenal, maybe that's what needs help. Or maybe you do have a thyroid condition that's been missed. It's actually estimated that 35% of adults have an diagnose low thyroid function. So 35% of people are wandering around with a low thyroid that's been mis diagnosed. And oftentimes they're placed on antidepressants because their doctor doesn't know what else to do with them. And depression is a common symptom for low thyroid function.

There's also something called functional thyroid deficiency that I see a lot in my practice. So despite adequate levels of the thyroid, so when we do the test, all of their levels come back normal, the tissue responds to these hormones is decreased due to other factors. So I'll use the analogy of a hockey team. Like you have enough players on the ice. You can't add more players, but the players that are playing are playing awful. And so what do you need to do you need to retrain these players, you need to give them everything they need to communicate and play better.

And so that's called a functional thyroid deficiency while you have enough of the hormone, but it's not working well enough. And so you still have all of the symptoms. So how to balance your thyroid restore your thyroid function? Well, really key is to get the proper testing. And just to reiterate and review what I've said the proper testing includes TSH, three, t Four, three, t three and TPO. That should be the standing first step to get your thyroid tested properly.

You need to identify and treat any underlying causes. So how did your thyroid get out of balance in the first place? Are there food allergies? Is there celiac disease, heavy metals, nutritional deficiencies, and of course adrenals. So when someone's test comes back with a thyroid condition, I don't simply just give them a thyroid supplement. And that's the end of the story.

I want to determine how did they end up here in the first place, Let's peel back the layers and treat all the layers so that they don't end up having a lifelong thyroid issue and eliminate gluten regardless of allergy, all of my thyroid patients are recommended to go off of gluten completely even if they're not allergic to it because gluten is inflammatory to the thyroid. And we need to make sure that the adrenal glands are functioning well before boosting up the fibroid. So once we've done that, often, we're going to initiate thyroid function supplements like tyrosine, iodine, copper, selenium, zinc, vitamin A, and some Herbes to really help to get things going well, there's a product I love called thyroid support, and whether or not you know, if you have a thyroid issue, this is safe to take. So it has all of the basic nutrients that your thyroid needs to function well.

So if you're not in a position to get the proper testing, but you really are identifying with some of these symptoms, you can take something like the thyroid support to start really nourishing your thyroid gland together. Give it what it needs in order to function well. And if you are doing the proper testing and you're a patient often what I'm going to use is a product called armorer thyroid. And this is a desiccated natural thyroid hormone, which contains both t three and T four in combination. And so I'll have lots of patients that come in that are already on thyroid medication. Despite being on medication, they're still having lots of symptoms.

And so oftentimes, we will add something into their medication. And in some cases, we've even been able to get them off their medication and replace it with something natural. It's really an individual journey. And it depends on the person whether or not we can get you off the medication. But there's definitely options out there. So if you identify with the symptoms and you haven't had the proper testing, that's the first place to start.

If you do know you have a thyroid issue and you're on medication, but it didn't really change a lot of your symptoms. There's much more than You can do so please don't think that this is it for you and that you just have to keep feeling that way. So we've learned a lot tonight on stress, the adrenals, and the thyroid, the ultimate balancing hormone guidebook, and has a lot more information when it comes to the thyroid, the adrenals and how to recover from that. So a lot of this information was based from this book. And, and we've got the other books that I've mentioned in the previous webinar. So those are really great resources for you to have.

So make sure that you do your exercise on a regular basis that you are following the meal plans that you have continued on with the nutritional changes that we have spoken about in the past two weeks. Make sure that you are accessing the Facebook group and asking all the questions that you want to ask. Do the adrenal questionnaire and how to see if the adrenals are an issue for you. And if they are, take some of the measures and tips that I've given you and really start incorporating those into your life. Next week, we are going to dive into hormones even more. We're going to be talking about a lot of different hormones and you're going to love the information.

There's more questionnaires in there. And I'm really going to help you to get all things balanced when it comes to hormones. So have a great week and I will see you guys next week.