Heal adrenal fatigue naturally

Notice how you feel when you read through this list:

• Long hours at work
• Exhaustion of parenting wee ones
• Living with teenagers
• Relationships
• Your annoying co-worker
• Emotional stress
• Bad food choices: coffee, sugar and highly processed foods
• Traffic
• Lack of sleep
• Illness and disease

Are you stressed out yet?

What about when your alarm goes off in the morning and you either jolt upright out of bed or do the hand-scramble as you flop it around feeling for the OFF button?  No matter which way you respond to that morning alarm clock, your heart is now in your throat and we start out day exhausted and with an adrenaline rush all at the same time.

Working with clients on adrenal fatigue is a multi-faceted approach, AND, balancing it naturally via managing your lifestyle goes a long way.

Now, I can’t do without my Drenamin a lot of days, which is a raw organic supplement that contains whole food ingredients that support my whole body in dealing with adrenal fatigue.  That being said, a specifically clinically designed nutrition protocol is what I am in and it’s the whole versus the part that supports me.

The adrenal glands produce hormones in our body that help us respond to stress.  I personally notice a link with my blood sugar metabolism and immune response when my adrenals are suffering.

When you don’t have supplementation available to you, you can seek out the support of a Nutrition Response Testing practitioner, Naturopath or Acupuncturist and they will create a protocol just for you.

In the ‘meantime’, you know, that space between when you decide to take a step toward seeking support and when you actually do, there are a few lifestyle management tips you can implement to soften the sharp rise and fall.  I always say it can make the difference between feeling like you’re on the G-force roller coaster and the old wooden roller!

6 Tips to heal adrenal fatigue naturally

1. Implement a healthy sleep rhythm-settling into bed at the same time every night and rising at the same time every morning quickly establish a cadence your body will soon drum to.
2. Drop the refined and processed food and opt for whole foods.  At least commit to this for one meal/day.  Perhaps begin with lunch-opt for the salad bar, add a boiled egg and grilled chicken instead of the drive through McSandwich.
3. Cut sugar.  I know, you’re so sick of hearing about sugar as begin a culprit.  Don’t even get me going.  Just. Cut. It. Out.  It’s in your soda, in your bread, your cereal, your candy, your juice, your granola bars and cookies and fat-free this and low-fat that.  In just about everything that says “no sugar added”, they are just substituting it with an ingredient you can’t pronounce and thus don’t know it’s sugar.
4. Drink water.  Replenish your cells, please.  They are so thirsty and they try to tell you, but when you listen, you’re actually hearing that you’re hungry.  You’re not.  Often when we are thirsty we are already dehydrated and we opt for food instead.  Drink half your weight in ounces per day.
5. Turn off the screen.  I get you’re reading this on a screen, AND, I urge you to turn them off at least 30 minutes prior to sleep at night and read a book or take a bath instead!
6. Practice relaxation.  Whether it be sitting on a bench at the park, taking a restorative yoga class or participating in a meditation course, you need to implement relaxation into your life.

Now, I can relate to all of this.  In the past year I have struggled with adrenal fatigue and candida.  I did a candida cleanse during the summer, which took away the fog and the need for adrenal support.  My acupuncturist requested I turn my brain off at 6pm every night.  I agreed upon 8, then after seeing how much better I felt, I quickly took on the 6pm cut off.

It feels awesome.

I am very ready for bed by 9:30/10 and am very ready to jump out of bed by 5:30 the next morning.  I feel rested and peaceful and my skin glows.
Relaxation to me sounds like this: “I’ll just go for a 4 mile walk today instead of 5.”  That exercise is great and all but is not a practice in relaxation.  What I do is put myself into a book that has exercises for me to follow, or listen to meditation cd’s that require me to practice a visualization for even just a few minutes per day.  My weekly Higher Brain Living session does wonders as well.

Now that you know how to balance adrenal fatigue naturally while on your way to the support of a practitioner, which step will you implement today?

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Nichi

Nichi Hirsch Kuechle supports moms from pregnancy to parenthood as a Childbirth Educator, Birth Doula and Nutrition Response Testing Practitioner in Minneapolis. She publishes a weekly e-zine called Raising Healthy Families, which offers tips and ideas to bring ease, clarity and understanding to your parenting. She also teaches a variety of live and virtual workshops.

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