beanlicker
03-19-2014, 02:48 AM
“I’m at my wits end,” Todd B. told me as soon as I closed the exam room door. “I’ve seen eight different people. Two diet experts, a nutrition specialist and five different doctors. I’m taking four prescription medications and spending a lot of money on other natural healthcare products. But none of it’s working.” He said, “I love being an entrepreneur, but I have to run these companies and I’m working 80 hours a week. I only sleep about 5 hours… I don’t even have time to cook for myself. I eat out. I barely have a few minutes to run on the treadmill in my basement.”
I teach my physician assistants what to look for, but I can often feel it when I walk into the room with a patient. People with severe stress and adrenal overload have a “pressured” kind of speech. They have an uneasiness you can feel if you’re receptive to it. Todd was overweight, with low energy, anxiety, depression, and an almost non-existent sex drive. My tests showed he had high blood pressure, low testosterone, and high triglyceride levels. He was also deficient in a few key vitamins and nutrients.
I said, “I can help you reverse all of these conditions, but we need to cure the underlying cause.”
I call this kind of long-term stress “adrenal burnout.” It’s a commonly missed diagnosis, and doctors often treat the symptoms instead of the cause.
One of the main physical responses stress sets off is hormonal. Your adrenal glands start to work overtime, and one of the things they do is pump too much cortisol into your bloodstream. This can be devastating to your health over time. Just a few of the effects are:
Mental Breakdown: Chronic high levels of cortisol put you at greater risk for a host of psychiatric problems, including depression, anxiety or worse. Studies show that people who suffer from personality and mood disorders have abnormally high cortisol levels.1,2
Diabetes: High cortisol levels increase your insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes. One study shows that insulin resistance increases in step with amount of cortisol in the blood, regardless of your fitness level or body fat.3
Hormonal Hunger and Obesity: Cortisol can strongly influence what you eat. One of the latest studies found that the kind of “daily hassles” Todd B. dealt with stimulates your desire for snack foods even when you are not physically hungry.4
I’ve treated dozens of patients with this common issue, so I gave Todd my solution. “You need to set aside more time to relax.” I gave him a mindfulness exercise that I use and that’s proven to work. “It’s all because of stress? It can’t be that simple.” “All it takes is a few minutes a day,” I said. “The U.S. Marines even use this to knock out stress.”
In a recent study, they divided 48 male Marines into two groups before they deployed to war. Thirty-one took a mindfulness meditation course, while the other 17 Marines did nothing out of the ordinary. After only 8 weeks, Marines meditating for about 12 minutes a day scored better on mood evaluations, and had improved working memories.5
Another study done by the Mind Fitness Training Institute and the University of Pennsylvania looked at 30 Marines preparing to deploy to Iraq. The high-practice meditation group scored significantly better on test assessing reducing stress and anxiety. The control group that did nothing scored significantly worse.6
And in one recent study that is still underway, Marines took a “mindfulness fitness” course at the University of California at San Diego. I read about it in Pacific Standard magazine.7 After their mindfulness training, Navy researchers took blood and saliva samples from the service members, and also gave them MRIs. Meditation helped the troops recover better from stressful training. And their brain scans showed similarities to those taken of elite Special Forces soldiers and Olympic athletes in their ability to handle stressful situations.
One of the reasons meditation works so well is that is has a positive effect on your telomeres. Long healthy telomeres help protect your cells from damage and aging. A recent study looked at family caregivers in their very stressful jobs. They found that after only 8 weeks, those who meditated had their bodies’ telomere protection enzymes skyrocket by 43%.8
Here’s the technique I gave Todd that the Marines and Special Forces use, and you can use too. One thing to remember is that the benefits come from being mindful and focusing your concentration.
Sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes.
Let your awareness settle on the movement of your breath.
Follow the in-breath and out-breath, perhaps by saying “breathing in, breathing out” quietly to yourself.
Sit upright, with spine straightened and chin tucked in, while you calmly observe your breath.
Do this for ten to fifteen minutes a day.
That’s it. Try to do this practice every day. It helps to lower blood pressure, slow down your thoughts, refresh body and mind, and reverse the stress that can shorten your telomeres and cause disease.
I teach my physician assistants what to look for, but I can often feel it when I walk into the room with a patient. People with severe stress and adrenal overload have a “pressured” kind of speech. They have an uneasiness you can feel if you’re receptive to it. Todd was overweight, with low energy, anxiety, depression, and an almost non-existent sex drive. My tests showed he had high blood pressure, low testosterone, and high triglyceride levels. He was also deficient in a few key vitamins and nutrients.
I said, “I can help you reverse all of these conditions, but we need to cure the underlying cause.”
I call this kind of long-term stress “adrenal burnout.” It’s a commonly missed diagnosis, and doctors often treat the symptoms instead of the cause.
One of the main physical responses stress sets off is hormonal. Your adrenal glands start to work overtime, and one of the things they do is pump too much cortisol into your bloodstream. This can be devastating to your health over time. Just a few of the effects are:
Mental Breakdown: Chronic high levels of cortisol put you at greater risk for a host of psychiatric problems, including depression, anxiety or worse. Studies show that people who suffer from personality and mood disorders have abnormally high cortisol levels.1,2
Diabetes: High cortisol levels increase your insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes. One study shows that insulin resistance increases in step with amount of cortisol in the blood, regardless of your fitness level or body fat.3
Hormonal Hunger and Obesity: Cortisol can strongly influence what you eat. One of the latest studies found that the kind of “daily hassles” Todd B. dealt with stimulates your desire for snack foods even when you are not physically hungry.4
I’ve treated dozens of patients with this common issue, so I gave Todd my solution. “You need to set aside more time to relax.” I gave him a mindfulness exercise that I use and that’s proven to work. “It’s all because of stress? It can’t be that simple.” “All it takes is a few minutes a day,” I said. “The U.S. Marines even use this to knock out stress.”
In a recent study, they divided 48 male Marines into two groups before they deployed to war. Thirty-one took a mindfulness meditation course, while the other 17 Marines did nothing out of the ordinary. After only 8 weeks, Marines meditating for about 12 minutes a day scored better on mood evaluations, and had improved working memories.5
Another study done by the Mind Fitness Training Institute and the University of Pennsylvania looked at 30 Marines preparing to deploy to Iraq. The high-practice meditation group scored significantly better on test assessing reducing stress and anxiety. The control group that did nothing scored significantly worse.6
And in one recent study that is still underway, Marines took a “mindfulness fitness” course at the University of California at San Diego. I read about it in Pacific Standard magazine.7 After their mindfulness training, Navy researchers took blood and saliva samples from the service members, and also gave them MRIs. Meditation helped the troops recover better from stressful training. And their brain scans showed similarities to those taken of elite Special Forces soldiers and Olympic athletes in their ability to handle stressful situations.
One of the reasons meditation works so well is that is has a positive effect on your telomeres. Long healthy telomeres help protect your cells from damage and aging. A recent study looked at family caregivers in their very stressful jobs. They found that after only 8 weeks, those who meditated had their bodies’ telomere protection enzymes skyrocket by 43%.8
Here’s the technique I gave Todd that the Marines and Special Forces use, and you can use too. One thing to remember is that the benefits come from being mindful and focusing your concentration.
Sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes.
Let your awareness settle on the movement of your breath.
Follow the in-breath and out-breath, perhaps by saying “breathing in, breathing out” quietly to yourself.
Sit upright, with spine straightened and chin tucked in, while you calmly observe your breath.
Do this for ten to fifteen minutes a day.
That’s it. Try to do this practice every day. It helps to lower blood pressure, slow down your thoughts, refresh body and mind, and reverse the stress that can shorten your telomeres and cause disease.