- What's goin on Jigsaw land
It's Thomas DeLauer and I'm talkin more
about the adrenals, minerals,
and this time really focusing on cortisol.
So stick with me Jigsaw land
cause I'm gonna break it down,
I'm gonna give you the facts
on what cortisol's doing in your body
and why you may wanna become friends with it
versus seeing it as an enemy.
Let's get down to the science
of the adrenals
and let's get down to the science of stress
and cortisol.
What I wanna talk about today is
how stress directly impacts cortisol
and how high cortisol levels
affect you and how high cortisol levels
ultimately turn into low cortisol levels
which cause even more damage.
And then lastly,
at the end of this video
I'm gonna give you the main
three causes of adrenal fatigue
that directly have to do with
your cortisol levels.
But first and foremost we have to understand
what happens when we're under stress.
See it starts when we get stressed out.
Our brain sends signals to a small gland
that sits above the kidneys
known as the adrenal gland.
And that adrenal gland produces
a lot of different catecholamines okay?
It produces a lot of different hormones.
But for the sake of argument
today we're just gonna talk about three.
The first one that it produces is adrenaline.
We all know what adrenaline is.
But what we don't really realize
is that adrenaline
really focuses on just a couple of things.
Adrenaline is the fight or flight hormone response.
It's the job of adrenaline to get you amped up,
to get you that initial surge of energy
that you need to get a job done.
Then there's another catecholamine
or hormone released
and that's called norepinephrine.
Now norepinephrine and adrenaline
are very, very similar.
But norepinephrine's job
is more so
to give you alertness, okay?
It's job is to actually divert
blood away from the organs and
get you blood to where you need it
right out the gate.
Then when we're stressed out
the third hormone that the adrenals produce
is cortisol.
This is the one that we all hear about,
the one that we really don't give
enough credit to because it's really
more good than it is bad.
It's really
our own fault that it turns bad.
What cortisol does is deliver glucose
to the cells so that the cells can have energy.
So when you get stressed out it's like
a three part equation.
Adrenaline gets you that initial surge.
You can ride on adrenaline.
It's like a fake energy
that you get for a little bit,
it's like artificial.
Norepinephrine diverts the blood
away from the organs out to the cells,
out to the extremities.
Then as a result of the norepinephrine
carrying the blood away
the cortisol
increases blood glucose levels.
So the cortisol increases the sugar in the bloods,
the norepinephrine can move the blood
to get to the cells in your extremities
so that you can burn the glucose
and have energy to run away or fight
or whatever you need to do.
So you're not getting blood flow to your brain
that's for sure.
Okay so let's talk a little
about how this cortisol actually
works in your body though.
Cortisol also slows down other functions
in the body.
So it's gonna slow down your digestion,
it's gonna slow down your immune system
it's gonna slow down
your reproductive system
and the whole purpose of that
is to make sure that your body
is only focusing on what's important
at a very given point in time.
You don't need to be focusing on having sex
when you are running from a tiger
but you can see how if we have chronically high
levels of cortisol that's not good.
It's gonna make our immune system suppressed.
It's gonna make it so we're not digesting food.
It's gonna make it so we don't have a sex drive.
It's gonna make it so our brain doesn't function well.
But believe it or not
having a high level of cortisol
isn't really the problem.
It actually comes down to having
lower levels of cortisol
which is called hypocortisol.
Now when you have low levels of cortisol
it's a direct result
of having high levels of cortisol
for too long of a period of time.
Now there's a couple of different
reasons behind why you might
ultimately end up with low cortisol
but most of them are pretty much
hypothesized.
We don't really know a solid way
that this is happening or a solid reasoning.
But it's been shown in a few studies
to have to do with the
hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access
which is the communication between
the pituitary and the adrenals.
When your cortisol levels are super high
for an extended period of time
you start to wear out that access
so the brain no longer gets a chance
to really communicate
with the adrenals very well.
Now we have to remember that cortisol's
also all about homeostasis.
You see we always give cortisol
this bad name,
like we always think it's just terrible
but in reality,
when cortisol goes up
other hormones go down.
When cortisol goes down
other hormones go up.
You see it's always just a balancing act
and cortisol weighs a lot more.
Cortisol can weigh down and cause
other hormones to go way up.
And when it's up the other hormones
go way down.
So you can see how if cortisol levels
are elevated then it's throwing off
that balance.
But if cortisol levels are low
it's also throwing off that balance.
See cortisol really holds the power
to keep our body in a positive state
as well too.
So if we have it too low
it's just as bad as if it's too high.
But why exactly does cortisol
get low and why is it almost
worse than having cortisol
that's too high?
Well you see,
high cortisol levels
over an extended period of time
will cause brain damage.
They can actually cause your brain
to not function very well.
Now a couple of doctors,
Hellhammer and Wade actually did a study
a few years ago and they found
that very much so cortisol
did affect the brain.
So they saw that it was actually
a down regulation process
to protect the brain.
When cortisol levels were high
for extended periods of time,
eventually the body steps in and says,
wait a minute this is gonna start
becoming damaging to the brain.
And we almost like have this
physiology built in that tells us
it is bad to be stressed out.
We shouldn't be stressed out that much.
Now the other thing we have to look at
is corticotropin factor down regulation.
Now that is a big mouthful to say.
Corticotropin releasing factor is actually
a component of cortisol in and of itself.
You see we have different CRF receptors
on all of our cells and when we have
cortisol levels that are elevated
for an extended period of time
we end up having what is known as
down reguglation.
It's basically where these receptors
that are use to receiving cortisol
get so used to receiving cortisol
that they no longer receive it anymore.
So therefore
the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal
access isn't receiving the cortisol
like it should.
What happens then?
Well because it's not receiving
the cortisol that it normally would
it actually becomes very sensitive
to cortisol.
So you have this access that's completely
thrown off.
So then when you do get stressed out
the brain overcompensates
and produced too much cortisol
at any given point in time.
So you have these big spikes
and these big crashes.
That's why once you become
a stressed out person,
they say you have a short fuse.
Because it really does happen.
You end up developing a quicker
stress response because that
hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access
and the corticotropin releasing factor
down regulation is absolutely
screwing your over.
Alright now let's talk
real quick the basics.
What is causing all of this?
And this is simple.
I don't have to spend a lot of time
on this.
The biggest one is emotional stress, okay.
And it's how we perceive that stress.
Studies have shown that our perception
of stress dictates what levels
of cortisol are released.
So that means if you're excited
or you're really getting ambitious
about something and
you're releasing cortisol because
you're excited
it's gonna have
a different affect on your brain
and it's gonna have a different affect
on your CRF receptors than it would
if you were negatively stressed out
from some kind of emotional trauma.
Now we can't always avoid emotional trauma
but we can control how we react to it
and that's the big thing.
If we can control how we react
to emotional trauma we can control
how long our cortisol levels
stay elevated because if there's
anything if there's anything
you're learning from this video
it's that cortisol levels should not
be elevated for too long
of a period of time.
The next big one is sleep.
Sleep resets our
corticotropin releasing factor regulation.
Basically it makes it so that
your body can respond to cortisol better.
Remember you don't want to not have
a response to cortisol,
you want to have a good response to cortisol.
So adequate sleep is gonna make
a big, big impact on this.
And believe it or not
you can catch up on sleep.
Studies have shown that if you
actually catch up on sleep one day per week
and get a few extra hours,
you can actually recap
and help some of the neuroplasticity
and help some of the receptors
simply by catching up on sleep.
Lastly the big one is sugar.
Okay, remember how I mentioned
that cortisol works directly with glucose?
Okay, well glucose also works directly
with cortisol.
Every time we get a major sugar high
and we have that massive amount of inflammation
coming in the body it scews our brain's ability
to communicate with the adrenal glands.
And if there's anything again
that you're learning from this video
it's that access,
that communication between
the pituitary and the adrenals
that is so important.
Inflammation clouds the phone line.
The phone line doesn't work well
which means the brain can't send the signal
which means the signal isn't getting
to the adrenals and the adrenals
aren't producing enough cortisol
and therefor you're ending up
in that hypocorticoid state
where you're in trouble.
Now I know this isn't the answer
to all of your problems
but one of the biggest things
that you can start doing
is making sure that you're getting
enough potassium, enough sodium, enough magnesium
and keeping track of your minerals
cause that's the biggest way
you're gonna be able to help out your body
produce enough of the cortico minerals
that it needs to produce,
the aldosterone it needs to produce,
and of course the norepinephrine
and the adrenaline.
So the most important thing for you
Jigsaw crew is to make sure
that you get your minerals in
but also make sure that you take advantage
of Jigsaw's Adrenal Cocktail
because honestly,
that's got everything that you need
in one place to make sure that
you're getting the mineral support
and nutrient support that you need
to take the pressure off
the pituitary and
the pressure off the adrenals
that you can just focus on being you.
I'll see you on the next page.