Eric Bakker, the naturopath. Thanks for coming back and checking out my channel.
Let's talk a bit about adrenal function today, and more particularly, about the role of cortisol
and insulin, and also how sugar comes into it. So this will be quite an important video for people
who are tired, people who've got adrenal fatigue, people who love eating sugary foods. I'll try and
explain some of the concepts why refined carbohydrates are not a really good idea
and why grains aren't bad, whole grains. You've got guys like Dr. [inaudible 00:00:47] walking
around saying eliminate grains, eliminate [inaudible 00:00:51], eliminate, eliminate,
eliminate, but you can't go along eliminating all these foods all your life,
but you can wise up to the fact that refined foods are no good and whole foods are far better.
Probably the biggest reason, if you look at white flour, for example, the grains have just been
stripped. All the essential nutrition is taken away from the grain. Wheat even contains vitamin
B6 and magnesium, the whole wheat, but when we strip it down and take the starchy component
and convert it into white flour and then donuts and crap like that, all we're doing
is we're giving the body something that it can react on quickly to give us a very quick energy
spike, but then over an hours period, that energy will slowly go down because there's no further
nutrition to sustain that energy. And then we crash. So a coffee and a donut in the morning
is a bad idea because basically what you're doing is you're putting your foot on the gas
pedal really hard and then you're letting it go again. You're not operating on cruise control.
If you have a bowl of rolled oats in the morning, like I have, for example, more whole grain,
that just, to me, is like keeping the foot on the throttle. You're doing 50, 60 mile an hour
and you're cruising all morning instead of doing 80, 90 mile an hour for 10, 20 minutes and then
backing off going, "I'm exhausted." And for many people, there's this rollercoaster that occurs,
coffee, donuts and all this kind of business through the day.
Eating solid meals two or three times per day will negate that rollercoaster.
So the adrenal glands make many different hormones,
including a very powerful hormone called cortisol. Our biggest anti-inflammatory hormone possibly is
cortisol. It's a hugely potent hormone. It's a steroid hormone. It works in conjunction with
insulin that the pancreas produces to give us energy. So insulin produced by the cells,
only about a few percent of the pancreas contains these small cells that produce this stuff,
a hormone called insulin. Insulin basically knocks on the door of the cell to open it up
to allow the sugar to go in there, or the food for the cell to go in. That's what it does.
It's one of the big roles of insulin besides other roles, and cortisol, produced by the adrenals,
is produced particularly in relationship to stress, but also low blood sugar.
So when our blood sugar drops, cortisol is secreted into the bloodstream by the adrenals
to initiate what we call gluconeogenesis, or basically, it's going to hit on the liver
basically for food so it can break it down. So proteins and fats, different
foods can get broken down into a sugar, which is initiated by cortisol. And then of course,
insulin comes in and regulates it. So it's a very beautiful system that works,
a bit like how your car works. But we all know how some people get in the automobile and they just
abuse that automobile. They trash it. They wear it out in no time at all. The brakes are worn out,
the engine's worn out. And this is very similar to what people do
by not eating the right type of foods several times per day. They're trashing their adrenals.
But on top of this, we live our life. We have people who pass away around us. We have awful
things that occur in our daily life like COVID, for example. We lose loved ones, we lose our
ability to earn money, and all sorts of emotional crises occur, which push hard on our adrenal
function, which stimulate the adrenals to make inappropriate amounts of cortisol, inappropriate
amounts. This leads to adrenal fatigue. I've seen this so many times in the clinic. I specialized
in adrenal fatigue for over 10 years and learned quite well from Dr. James Wilson, who spent quite
a few years here in New Zealand. And of course, James wrote Adrenal Fatigue. Dr. Wilson, in fact,
coined the phrase adrenal fatigue. And he's a very dear friend of mine who's taught me a tremendous
amount about HPA dysfunction, the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis, or the stress axis.
Stress kills more people than any other thing I've ever known, any type of disease or whatever.
Stress just kills people and it does it very slowly and insidiously
by undermining their ability to produce energy, by undermining their immune function,
by undermining their hormonal function. And the medical doctors laugh and scoff
at this term. They think it's a joke. They say it's unproven science. But I can tell you from
where I'm sitting, I've seen plenty of people recover from many diseases once the adrenals were
finally worked on properly, when the patient finally understood the concept of what the
adrenals are and how they can really build health up. When the penny finally drops, the person can
see that and help to build adrenal health up. It's phenomenal how the health can change.
So remember, the immune system is very intricately tied in with cortisol. Cortisol has a very big
effect on many aspects of the body, particularly the lymphocytes, How the lymphocytes or the white
blood cells work. When cortisol in fact goes sky high, really high with serious stress,
it actually cripples white blood cells. It stops them even from being produced.
But under the correct amount of precise control the cortisol can do, it can get
your immune system working to a beautiful high functioning level where it's supposed to be.
But stress, again, can inhibit all that. So really, when you look at stress it's
a sword with two sharp edges. There's eustress, which is the good stress, and there's distress.
So eustress is like what I'm doing now. It's a bit of a stress talking to you guys. Well,
I don't see it as a stress, but many people see speaking as a stress. Distress is when you found
out some really awful bad news, so we don't really want to go there. But if we do get distressed,
we want to recover, and that's what the healthy adrenal gland will do. It'll make us recover.
But the devastating effects I see occur when people have not much understanding
of soda drinks, refined carbohydrates, donuts, all these sort of junk foods, and then on top of that,
they've got a high stress lifestyle. So this leads to accelerated aging and many chronic diseases.
So don't forget, when you're tired, you need to rest up and also eat the correct type of
foods. I've made many videos on this channel explaining things about fiber, proteins and fats.
So please watch some more of my videos to understand why refined carbohydrates
are not the best idea. Whole foods, particularly whole grains, and making the right choices as
far as sweet foods is concerned, can give you so much more energy than you've already got,
and such a powerful immune system and such better sleep and such better libido. All these
things are influenced by adrenal glands. Small, powerful glands that sit on top of your kidneys
that punch out almost 50 different hormones. We've got so far about 170 in the body, and the adrenals
may close to 50 of those so you can see how important they are. They're placed centrally
in the body right next to a very, very big artery, where they can really get the body working well.
But if your life's working well, your diet's working well,
you understand the adrenals, you can have an amazing life. Thanks for tuning in.