Adapting...Loving our Adrenals
Adapting: Loving our Adrenals
What does it mean to adapt?
The dictionary defines the word adapt as a verb meaning to make (something) suitable for a new use or purpose; modify; to become adjusted to new conditions; to attune to; to get one’s bearing’s in; to acclimatize oneself to.
A beautiful synonym of adapt is harmonize.
Life necessitates the ability to adapt. And, how harmoniously one adapts can often be a major factor in living a thriving life versus a life of disharmony, dis-ease and discomfort.
However, to have harmony, it could be argued one also has to have dissonance. The demand to adapt, the invitation to shift, to become adapted to a new purpose or direction requires the recognition or the realization that the current way of being is no longer optimal.
Nature is in constant flow, adapting and responding to adaptation demands. This year in California, in the span of a few short months, the land went from 5 years of drought; depleted reservoirs, dry land, dying trees and a constant brown hue; to having abundant water in the form of rain and snow. The drought is over. The rains came. And, the land adapted, celebrating the fluid richness with a veritable horizon of flowers, bright green grasses and new growth. With this water came beauty and challenge, as flooding destroyed roads and dams, as mudslides removed trees and hillsides; the landscape reshaped. This was an extreme shift, greater than the normal change of season.
The same exists within our bodies.
The human body is incredibly adaptable and incredibly resilient. But, resilience rests on the foundation of adaptability and requires a dynamic state of being.
Endobiogenic medicine and systems biology witnesses this dynamic state recognizing that the endocrine system and autonomic nervous system, working in a beautiful, harmonic, rhythmic dance manages the adaptive and metabolic processes of every cell, tissue, organ and of the human as a whole. Through this lens, patterns of adaptation that are not facilitating ease and harmony can be quantitatively measured and in turn, the body can be supported to return to a healthy adaptive state.
But, without getting into the nuances of disease, what has become abundantly clear to me over the past several years is that we have the ability every day to help our body and mind adapt in a more efficient, harmonious manner.
First, it is helpful to see the many ways, both seemingly small and large, in which the body adapts each day.
Maintaining appropriate hydration.
Maintaining appropriate blood sugar and supplying each cell with the nutrients it need to do the work demanded of it in any given day
Cleaning up the waste produced by each cell, which changes depending on how hard the cell has worked and who efficiently it was able to do it’s work.
Immune system surveillance and response
Digestion: adapting to each meal we choose based on mental, emotional, cultural patterns, taste, and availability whether or not it is optimal for our cells and body at that moment.
Mental, emotional and physical stress
Changes in routine
Changes in sleep patterns
Changes in temperature
Travel
Maintaining appropriate muscle control with changes in posture through the day
These are only a few, and do not even begin to list the stresses and demands placed on each of us at certain times of year, certain phases or life, or under extreme circumstances. These are the day to day steps in the dance of life, not the droughts or the floods.
So, first, I invite you to stop, take a deep breath, and give gratitude to this amazing body that most of the time adapts smoothly to its world, that maintains a reasonable degree of harmony, that recognizes disharmony and adjusts appropriately. WOW!
And, just as beautifully, we have the capacity to choose patterns which support healthy adaptation.
While the entire neuro-endocrine system is working in harmony, the adrenal glands in particular are responsible for setting up and modulating how efficiently the body adapts. There are phrases used commonly in natural medicine like “adrenal fatigue,” “adrenal exhaustion,” “flat-lined adrenals.” And, there are some who argue that everyone in our current culture has some degree of adrenal compromise. I do not completely agree with this concept and will argue that these terms are misleading and quite unfair to a gland that no matter how much demand we place on it to adapt to our own whims and poor lifestyle choices, continues to accommodate and does not fail outside of very rare disease states.
However, it is also true, that while life may be stressful, while there may be many things seemingly out of our control, while we may be exposed to greater and greater environmental toxins, while we may engage in activities that do not make sense to our bodies and require a greater adaptive demand; we do have the ability to every single day make choices which reduce the work of the adrenals. And, when the adrenals are not having to manage something simple such as “you got busy and forgot to drink water”, they just may have more capacity to handle the stressful phone call from your son’s school or the exposure to a bacteria or virus.
This is why I focus on nutritional and lifestyle treatments as the foundation of any plan. While the herbs and other treatments offer profound healing to a state that has become ingrained in imbalance, the choices we make each day to support harmony in our bodies bring incredible benefit and allow for the body to focus on the necessary healing.
Most of these have been addressed in earlier articles, and so here, I wanted to give a framework for why each of these is so important. The less our adrenals have to focus on the moment to moment management of our basic needs, the more capacity there is to handle the unexpected. And, even more beautifully, the more capacity there is to connect with those we love, to cultivate our spiritual connection, to create, to show up in our world in meaningful ways, to express the fullness of our unique beings without encumbrance.
Consistent hydration. Drinking the appropriate amount of water for your body, climate and activity level throughout the day, everyday.
Eating a diet which provides a consistent level of nutrients appropriate to your needs.
Maintaining a stable blood sugar (which generally means avoiding sweetened foods).
Eating a diet which limits the toxins our bodies need to remove.
Consistent sleep.
Healthy movement/exercise.
Breathing
Mindful activities.
I invite the perspective that we don’t choose to engage in the above activities because we are sick. We don’t need to enter into these patterns begrudgingly as if they inhibit some spontaneity or joy or freedom in our life. These are not rigid requirements. The body is fluid, dynamic and resilient. These are simply the gifts we give ourselves every day that allow for us to live with greater harmony. And, if were are ill, they are the gifts we give our bodies to allow for healing of the deeper stuck places. We water our gardens so that they may grow to their full abundant capacity and be resilient to the other ebbs and flows of weather and bugs and rodents. Is watering enough to mean there will be no challenges? Of course not. But, without watering, the garden will most certainly wither, the plants will adapt by making smaller fruits, or forego growth altogether. The analogy may not be perfect, but the invitation is similar. I invite kindness to our own beings and cultivation of habits that allow for ease and for our bodies to do their beautiful adaptive dance without creating undue demand.
If you feel you or someone you know needs more specific assistance in supporting healthy adaptation, please call. It is a joy to facilitate the cultivation of a a healthy, thriving life, family and community.
Dr Amy