How The Stress Hormone Cortisol Gets Triggered!
… and makes your hair thin, break & fall off… makes it hard to sleep… gives you brain fog… low testosterone… estrogen imbalance (and PMS symptoms in women)…
… but really the only reason you are stressed is because of all the crap you are going through because of this condition… and no matter what you do to “relax” your cortisol levels are still too low or too high?
Well… here’s what I found…
I used to wake up and eat first thing in the morning… but since everything I was eating was making me bloated, I began to start my mornings with a green smoothie…
1 cup of pineapple
1 cup of spinach
1 cup dandelion greens
1 cup of water
I knew one of my biggest problems was digestion.
As I started to switch to EASY TO DIGEST MEALS, I started noticing some relief.
My first hypothesis was that my body somehow was lacking the digestive enzymes it needed to break down food.
So whenever I ate heavy meals, especially meats like beef, chicken, etc., I would feel worse.
So I started to test out my theory by eating pineapple and papaya whenever I ate heavy meals…
Why?
Pineapple and papaya have PROTEIN DIGESTIVE ENZYMES, bromelain and papain. These enzymes helped my body digest the protein I was eating and I started to notice the first signs of relief just by doing that.
That’s what led me to the discovery of the first tipped domino that was affecting my cortisol levels the most…
It wasn’t that I was “stressed out”… not at all… it was that my digestive system was broken!
Here’s why…
Without the help of digestive enzymes, my body was unable to fully break down protein into amino acids.
The body uses amino acids to BUILD pretty much anything that regenerates in your body…
- it uses amino acids to make hair
- it uses amino acids to convert the thyroid hormone T4 into T3
- it uses amino acids to build muscle
- etc.
Amino acids are so important for the body to regenerate (“stay alive”) that it will do whatever it takes to get amino acids.
So if you don’t eat enough protein, the body will source amino acids from itself…
Worse… when you do eat protein, but have a BROKEN DIGESTIVE SYSTEM and are unable to break down protein into amino acids, the body will source amino acids from itself…
… and so the madness begins.
This is how the stress hormone cortisol gets triggered…
When your body doesn’t get amino acids through diet, it releases cortisol to break down muscle which is its easiest source of amino acids.
So I found that my digestive issues were the first tipped domino that triggered all other events…
… and cortisol was only one of them.
Picture this.
I eat a nice clean meal… A salad with grilled chicken… my body can’t digest the chicken. That alone makes my gut feel bad because I have a piece of meat unable to digest in my body, but not only that, my body is now entering fight or flight mode because it’s not getting protein so it kicks up the production of adrenaline & cortisol AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHER HORMONES (more on this later)… it starts to break down muscle, hence my muscles get achy, weak, numb, sore… my heart starts beating faster, getting heart palpitations making it impossible to sleep… and it does so until the adrenals burn out…
Once I reach adrenal fatigue, I go to the other extreme of low cortisol, my hair starts thinning, breaking, falling… I’m fatigued for no reason… even if I slept I feel like I didn’t and need to nap throughout the day…
… and now I have another problem…
All of my hormones are out of balance because of cortisol…
I am thinking I have an adrenal fatigue or adrenal insufficiency problem…
… but this is where I came across my second epiphany…
The adrenals are not the first tipped domino causing all these issues… the root cause was pointing back to my digestive issues… my gut health.
Having digestive issues meant I had poor gut health… poor gut health meant I had a weak immune system or worse, an autoimmune disorder.
I confirmed this after I watched The Thyroid Secret documentary and learned about different tests to take… There are many tests that most doctors won’t have you take like TPO (Thyroid Peroxidase) antibodies…
Another one is Vitamin D.
My Vitamin D levels were low at 22 ng/mL…
Normal levels are above 50 ng/mL give or take… some say lower, some say higher… I personally think it should be higher and here’s why…
Vitamin D is the gateway to producing and balancing all of your hormones!!
Vitamin D is the antidote I found for my gut health.
80% of your immune system is in your gut![/text_block]