The Secret To Quieting A Frazzled Mind (And Why It Really Matters)

The same thoughts keep percolating at the back of your mind, your mind is stuck on a loop, and you can't think straight long enough to make it stop. Music, exercise, cleaning, working—nothing stops the whirl and tumble.

I confronted this situation last week, working on moving. I wasn't moving far—just from one side of a mountain to the other—but the event was tied up in many other significant life changes. I was stressed for a lot of reasons, and this was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

When I'm stressed, my mind tends to get loud—what ifs, catastrophic thinking, pessimism, the whole battery. But after the move, when life was supposed to get back to normal, I still couldn't stop the runaway train.

I was frustrated with myself and with my circumstances, making no progress in any direction, and there, in the mess of it all, I had a moment of stillness. I had a life-changing insight. I realized that awareness is gratitude.

I had been striving so hard to get back my inner peace that I had circumnavigated it entirely. So, I took a moment to acknowledge my gratitude for the inner calm I'd achieved before and knew was waiting for me in gratitude. I started to feel better almost immediately.

Centering myself in gratitude allowed me to make necessary decisions and balance my daily needs with the demands of a new life. It helped me find the perspective to be a source of encouragement to others around me.

When you're stuck in stress mode, here are the clear, simple steps you need to guide yourself back to center:

1. Acknowledge your thoughts and let them go.

It's easy to feel incapable when you're struggling to keep your thoughts in check. But you’re fine—it happens to everyone. And it’s a challenge that reminds us of the importance of inner quiet. Give yourself a break. Sneak in a little self-hug. Cry if you need to cry. Then, accept all of your former thoughts. That's what gives you the power to change them.

2. Express your gratitude.

Once you learn to be grateful for your inner quiet, this practice can have an almost magical effect on you. Speak (in your head or aloud) your gratitude to whatever higher power you believe in. Then, try to experience that gratitude on a physical level—cellularly, molecularly, chemically. Feel silence surround you with a silver cloud of pure potential. At this point, your thoughts become drops on placid water. You'll feel complete calm.

3. Find focus and excitement in creative possibilities.

Just as art and architecture need space to be beautiful, so do your thoughts. When you get bogged down in mind chatter, it deprives you of the mental and emotional energy you need to synthesize all the data from your environmental inputs and create or express insight or beauty. When you are centered and at peace, you make the necessary space for creativity to flourish.

If you’ve had a hard time with Step 2, feel grateful in advance for the insight that will inevitably come in the space of inner calm and for all the beauty you’ve created up to this point. Even that can help you get closer to the feeling of calm.

Once your feelings of gratitude are flourishing, begin again from a place of peace. Start the day over from wherever you are. It makes all the difference.

by Daniel Dowling

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-24506/the-secret-to-quieting-a-frazzled-mind-and-why-it-really-matters.html

Constantly Stressed & Exhausted? 8 Ways To Heal From Adrenal Fatigue

Out of all the health issues my patients come to me with, fatigue is by far the most common. I witness the epidemic of extreme exhaustion on a daily basis.

Patients wake up feeling exhausted, craving cups of caffeine. They are irritable and "hangry" for salty or sugary foods. They can't lose weight, despite dieting and exercise, and have little to no sex drive. Their energy level crashes in the afternoon, but they often get a "second wind" before bed. Then they have trouble winding down in the evening, only to have another night of restless sleep.

Sadly, many think this is normal. That's because they look around and see everyone looking just as tired and miserable as they are. But just because something is common doesn't make it normal.

This is not normal — this is the epidemic of adrenal fatigue.

What are the adrenal glands?

Your adrenal glands sit on top of your kidneys, like little kidney baseball caps. They regulate many critical hormonal jobs in your body, including the release of your main stress hormone, cortisol.

Our bodies are built for stressful events, and throughout time they have adapted to them. We are here today because the human species can handle stressful events. If our ancestors were chased by a predator, the sympathetic response, our body’s fight-or-flight mode, would be activated. During this stress response, cortisol would be released, ramping up blood pressure and blood sugar, which were needed to cope with the stressful event.

When things calm down, cortisol secretion then decreases, along with your blood pressure and blood sugar levels. Normal balance is intact.

So what is adrenal fatigue?

Cortisol is neither bad or good — it just is. But problems occur when there's an imbalance in cortisol.

In a healthy individual, cortisol is higher in the morning and slowly flows lower throughout the day. Melatonin, your "sleepy time" hormone, is inversely proportional to cortisol. So when cortisol is high, melatonin is low and vice versa.

Adrenal fatigue happens when there's an imbalance in this cortisol rhythm: Cortisol is high when it should be low, low when it should be high, or always high or always low.

The secret to understanding adrenal fatigue is understanding its origin: your brain. Your brain tells your adrenal glands what to do through a complex web of communications called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA Axis), or simply the brain-adrenal axis. Your hypothalamus releases corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), which tells the pituitary gland to release the adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). ACTH then tells your adrenal cortex to release cortisol.

Adrenal fatigue is really a dysfunction of your brain’s communication with your adrenals — not the adrenal glands themselves.

What causes adrenal fatigue?

Our modern life, with its many ongoing stressors, can turn on your stress response and throw away the key. Unlike acute stress, for which we’re biologically hardwired, chronic stress turns on the fight-or-flight response without any rest.

If the stress response doesn’t leave, those cortisol triggers never stop. Some chronic stressors that can lead to adrenal fatigue include:

• autoimmune conditions
• emotional stress
• excessive exercise
• food intolerances
• microbiome dysfunctions
• toxins

If you're struggling with adrenal fatigue, you're likely experiencing most of the following symptoms:

• You're slow to start in the morning
• You crave salty or sugary foods
• You have a low libido
• You're fatigued in the afternoon
• You get a "second wind" in the evening
• You can't stay asleep
• You experience dizziness when standing up quickly
• You get afternoon headaches
• You have blood sugar issues
• You have chronic inflammation
• Your nails are weak
• You're often moody
• You have difficulty losing weight

So, what's next? If you think you might have adrenal fatigue, I recommend these tips:

1. Consider having labs done.

One of the labs I run on patients is a 24-hour adrenal stress index — a salivary test that tracks your cortisol levels, HPA axis quality, and other hormone levels throughout the day — to get a comprehensive view of what’s going on in your particular case.

Because adrenal fatigue is mainly a brain-based issue, it's also important to rule out brain inflammation. In Signs You Might Have A "Leaky Brain" And What To Do About It, I go over the brain labs I often recommend.

2. Improve your chronic stressors.

Working on the stressors listed above — such as testing for food intolerancesand removing toxins — will be essential to breaking the chronic stress cycle, regaining your health, and feeling like yourself again.

3. Eat calming food medicines.

The foods we eat will either perpetuate stress in our body or calm it down. Oysters and avocado are two of my favorite foods to help de-stress the brain and hormonal system.

4. Practice breathing exercises.

Breathing is a major factor in reducing stress. Take time throughout the day to become aware of your breath — it's a great way to diffuse stress levels and calm your brain-adrenal axis. I recommend mindfulness meditation or present moment awareness to my patients struggling with adrenal fatigue.

5. Start yoga or tai chi.

Bring practices of intense alertness and stillness into your life. Yoga and tai chi are two of my favorite ways for people to start balancing out the stress in their lives.

6. Try natural medicines.

Rehabbing the brain-adrenal connection takes time. What works for one person may not work for you, so it's important to discuss this with a qualified practitioner. Here are some general natural medicines that can help:

• Adaptogenic herbs: Ashwagandha, Rhodiola Rosea, Holy Basil, and Eleuthero Ginseng can have a regulating effect on cortisol rhythm.
• Magnesium: Magnesium is the original chill pill. It helps support the adrenal glands, relaxes stressed muscles and nerves, and promotes quality sleep.
• Methylation support: Taking activated forms of B12 and folate are effective ways to support healthy methylation pathways, which help balance the melatonin-cortisol rhythm.
• GABA support: Your calming, inhibitory neurotransmitter is GABA. Herbs like passion flower and amino acids such as theanine, glycine, and taurine can help calm you down by acting on the gabaminergic pathways in your brain.

7. Get enough sleep.

Make sure you're not staying up too late — you need to allow your brain and adrenals to recuperate overnight. Promote quality sleep by turning off the TV and smartphone a few hours before bed and reading a book instead.

8. Consider functional medicine.

Depending on your individual brain-adrenal dysfunction, you may need to work with a qualified practitioner to carefully replace a small portion of the levels of the missing adrenal hormones for a period of time. Specific amounts of DHEA and the precursor to cortisol, called pregnenolone, can stimulate your body to begin producing it naturally.

Consider a free webcam or phone evaluation to see if functional medicinemight be right for you.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

by Dr. William Cole

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-21980/constantly-stressed-exhausted-8-ways-to-heal-from-adrenal-fatigue.html

P.S. You Are Great and Everything is Going to Be Okay (Guided Meditation)

Do you ever catch yourself wondering, “Why am I here and will it all be okay?” when you’re feeling stressed as you go through your day?

When you feel this way, sometimes all you need is to be reminded that you’re doing well, and that everything is going as planned.

This is why we really loved this 15-minute Abraham Hicks guided meditation; it’s like experiencing the comforting and uplifting words of your best friend when you’re feeling down, and a balm for your soul.

Watch it and share how it made you feel below.

http://www.finerminds.com/meditation/p-s-you-are-great/

9 Steps To Heal Adrenal Fatigue Naturally

Have you ever caught yourself thinking, Wow, I'm burned out! It's a feeling most people can identify with. But what does that really mean, and how does it happen?

I recently saw a patient whose story exemplifies true burnout. She was a 44-year-old working mom with two young kids, a high-powered job and busy city life. She had always been on the go — even her vacations were more like sightseeing missions than breaks.

She complained that she had started gaining weight a year earlier, and it wouldn't budge despite her usual cardio routine. She'd gone on a pretty strict Paleo diet, which meant restricting carbs, but she wasn't losing weight.

Her main issue, though, wasn't the weight; it was that recently her energy had "tanked." When she fell asleep she felt "knocked out," but still woke up feeling exhausted after eight hours.

Her brain felt foggy, she was irritable, and she was drinking three cups of coffee a day to get through her afternoon slump. At night she became super mom, cooking and taking care of the kids. Usually she was at her laptop until about midnight, which is when she physically couldn't keep her eyes open. Everything she described was classic for adrenal fatigue, but I wanted to make sure we were on the right track.

We tested her cortisol levels using a saliva test, and found that not only did she have the symptoms of stage 3 adrenal fatigue, the test confirmed it. Instead of following a curve that starts high on waking in the morning and trends down to its lowest point at night, her cortisol curve was a flat line. Her DHEA, another adrenal hormone, was also low, as were her free T3 — the active thyroid hormone — and her levels of B12, vitamin D, zinc, magnesium and selenium.

We put her on an adrenal reboot program, and in about six weeks she was feeling better. In three months she felt the best she had in years.

But before we get to her plan, we should back up and talk about what it means to have adrenal fatigue.

What is adrenal fatigue?

Adrenal fatigue is a phenomenon characterized by a disruption of your adrenal glands' ability to make cortisol in the right amounts at the right times in response to stress.

The adrenals are the body's hormonal powerhouse. Two little glands that sit on top of your kidneys, they're the linchpin of a feedback loop coordinating nearly every hormone in your body.

The Three Stages Of Adrenal Fatigue

There are three stages of adrenal fatigue. Each one is associated with a different type of cortisol imbalance, and typically people progress from stage 1 to stage 3 sequentially over time.

Stage 1: Wired and tired 

This stage is characterized by high cortisol levels, especially at night, leading to insomnia, insulin resistance and abdominal weight gain. People often feel energized but in an edgy "wired" way.

Stage 2: Stressed and tired

In this stage, many people wake up early in the morning (often around 3am) and are unable to fall back asleep. Later in the day some stressor kicks in, and they feel more awake. Their cortisol peaks early, flattens out, but often has midday or early evening rise.

Stage 3: Burnout

This stage is characterized by exhaustion regardless of hours slept, a flat cortisol curve, and in some cases low DHEA and thyroid hormone levels. My patient was in stage three — a dangerous place to be because it's associated with higher risk of autoimmune disease.

To get her back from the brink of hormonal collapse she did the following 9 Step protocol.

1. Follow the adrenal diet.

This means getting rid of foods that you are sensitive to and foods that cause inflammation, and eating lots of brightly colored vegetables, lean clean protein, and whole grain gluten-free carbs.

In my patient's case this meant eliminating dairy, which it turned out she was sensitive to, eating more vegetables, and eating more carbs. A strict no-carb diet can stress the body even more, worsening adrenal burnout. Of course, we didn't tell her to eat cookies and cakes, but rather quinoa, lentils and buckwheat.

2. Go bed early.

Getting to bed before 11pm is a must in any stage of adrenal fatigue. Many people get a second cortisol surge after 11pm, which further disrupts sleep patterns.

3. Flood the adrenals with B vitamins.

B vitamins (B5 and B6 in particular) are food for the adrenals and can be low in a high-fat, low-carb diet. B12 and folate also help with energy production.

4. Cool inflammation.

Using omega-3 fatty acids, curcumin, and vitamin C supplements we lowered her systemic inflammation levels allowing the adrenals to recover.

5. Replace important nutrients.

Vitamin D, selenium, magnesium and zinc are all important for proper thyroid function and adrenal function.

6. Focus on hydration.

Dehydration is also a hallmark of adrenal fatigue. My patient took a multi trace mineral supplement so she would absorb more water into her cells. You can also add fresh lemon juice or Himalayan sea salt to your water instead.

7. Use adaptogenic herbs.

My patient's formula was designed for stage 3 specifically, and included licorice root, ashwagandha and rehmannia, a Chinese formulation that helps balance and stimulate the adrenals.

8. Build rest into the day.

The last thing my patient needed was high-intensity cardio that would further burn her out. We added Iyengar yoga into her schedule twice a week and taught her to take two 20-minute rest breaks a day; these weren't naps, but time outs alone to breathe and restore.

9. Change your perspective.

Is your definition of success killing you? In many cases, what you perceive as success is driving you into adrenal overload. Helping my patient internalize the idea that "it" doesn't have to be perfect to be great made a huge difference in her stress levels.

We did not start her on any kind of hormone replacement. In some cases hormone therapy can be helpful, and if someone has an autoimmune disease called Addison's, it can be necessary. But for most people who live their way into stage 1, 2 or 3 adrenal fatigue, it's just a matter of living their way right back out of it and into balance with their bodies.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-17502/9-steps-to-heal-adrenal-fatigue-naturally.html