Summary: Thanks for joining us for episode 19 of The Ancestral RD podcast! If you want to keep up with our podcasts, subscribe in iTunes and never miss an episode! Today we're going to be talking about how a paleo diet and lifestyle could actually be causing you to develop adrenal fatigue syndrome, which is also referred to as HPA axis dysregulation in the medical community. Remember, if you'd like to submit a question for our podcast, or suggest a guest that we should host, CLICK HERE. Here's what Laura and Kelsey will be discussing in this episode: What is adrenal fatigue? How your diet might cause adrenal fatigue syndrome? Overtraining and how that taxes your adrenal glands Why lifestyle might be even more important than diet and exercise when it comes to your adrenal health How an overly restrictive diet can actually lead to adrenal fatigue syndrome Links Discussed: Sign Up For The Adrenal Fatigue Email List TRANSCRIPT: Laura: Hey everyone. Welcome to episode 19 of The Ancestral RDs podcast. I’m Laura and over there is Kelsey. Kelsey: Hi everybody. Laura: Today Kelsey and I are going to be talking about how a Paleo diet and Paleo lifestyle could actually be causing you to develop adrenal fatigue syndrome, which is also referred to as HPA axis dysregulation in the medical community. There’s been a couple of articles that have come up. I’m thinking specifically of the one on PaleoForWomen.com about how adrenal fatigue is not a real thing, which that article as we know actually kind of said that it was a real thing, it’s just the terminology is not appropriate for it. Kelsey: Right. Laura: Unfortunately, I feel like it’s one of those terms that has stuck. We call it adrenal fatigue because that’s what the common term for it is. But I just want to make sure everyone knows that when we talk about this, we’re actually talking about HPA axis dysregulation. Kelsey, do you want to explain to our listeners first of all what adrenal fatigue is and why we call it HPA axis dysregulation instead of adrenal fatigue? Kelsey: Yeah, sure. First it’s probably a good idea to talk about what the heck the HPA axis is because if you haven’t heard of that before, it kind of sounds elusive and scary. The HPA axis, basically it stands for Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal axis. It’s basically the connection between the hypothalamus, the pituitary, and the adrenals because they all really work tougher to activate the stress response when we come into contact with any kind of stressor. You can think about this like let’s say something jumps out and scares you. Your body goes through this whole process, and I won’t dive really deep into this, but your body goes through this whole process where it secretes a bunch of different hormones that eventually cause the release of cortisol from our adrenal gland. This happens normally. It’s a very normal response, it’s supposed to happen. But what can happen for us kind of in the modern world when we’re exposed to stressors pretty much all day long. Even just thinking about waking up from an alarm clock going off, that’s a little jolting. You should try to maybe pick some soothing music to wake up to instead of a blaring alarm going off. Laura: I know. I have an alarm, it’s very soothing and there’s birds chirping and stuff. There’s been a couple times in the last couple weeks, specifically after daylight savings time, where I slept through that. That’s the one downside is that’s so soothing that it doesn’t wake me up. Kelsey: I used to have the Jawbone Up, it’s one of the fitness wristbands. Laura: Oh yeah, kind of like the Fitbit. Kelsey: That would vibrate to wake you up and it was so awesome. Yeah, it’s like a FitBit. That was a much better way to wake up. But mine broke unfortunately and I haven’t gotten around to getting a new one. But that’s the best alarm out there I feel like. It’s like nothing to wake you up, but it still does the job.
