Blood-Sugar Balance, Energy, Sleep & Mood

I had an interesting chat with a woman last night who has been using the Zoe mobile app to monitor her blood-sugar response in order to better manage her weight. She's been finding it really helpful and stated that her sugar and carbohydrate cravings have noticably reduced and her afternoon energy has improved, but said that what had really surprised her was how much calmer she felt. She said "I don't think I've shouted at the kids once since I've been using it." 

Our adrenal glands are tiny little things, but they do an awful lot of work to maintain balance throughout our whole system. They are the glands that kick into action when we're stressed - the flight or fight response - by pumping cortisol into our system to protect us. When we evolved as humans, this stress would have probably been a woolly mammoth or invading horde every so often. However, the adrenals don't differentiate and nowadays this stress is often psychological, but can come from overtraining, starvation, or a nasty virus and that stress is often near-constant. The adrenals will just keep trying to produce more cortisol to protect us. Many of us regularly over-produce cortisol and this causes mayhem in the body - it messes up our sleep patterns, the thyroid hormone cascade and sex hormone cascade amongst other things and can lead to burn-out of the adrenal glands - which is one main reason for chronic fatigue syndrome. 

I personally beleive that many of the symptoms attributed to the primenopause or menopause are, at least, exacerbated by overproduction of cortisol and overtaxed adrenal function. If we avoid over-producing cortisol, this makes a big improvement on our sex hormone production and balance. I will blog about this soon. 

But back to the blood-sugar balance and not shouting at the kids. One of the subsidiary jobs the adrenals glands perform is to kick into action if our blood-sugar levels drop. Therefore, eating a low-glycaemic diet helps balance our blood-sugar levels and, consequently, takes the pressure of these little, hardworking glands. The proof of the power of this simple change is what the woman has experienced - simply by better balancing her blood-sugar levels she was noticably calmer. Her adrenal function had a bit of spare capacity and she could feel the difference.

There are many stressors in life that we can't avoid, but blood-sugar balance is something we can manage, so it's one of my golden rues for patients wanting to support adrenal function - whether that's to sleep better, maintain better mood, better sex-hormone function or to maintain weight - blood-sugar balance is essential. 

I work with patients to adopt a Paleo or Keto diet to support good blood-sugar balance. I also teach Mindfulness and breathwork techniques to calm the autonomic nervous system which is essential for taking the pressure of our adrenal glands and providing that essentail spare capacity. I also provide treatments - acupuncture, massage & reflexology - to encourage the relaxation response. I find this three-pronged approach a great way to help patients achieve their goals. 

If you are interested in working with me, contact me on: https://www.lisarutter.info