The feeling of being overwhelmed is all-encompassing. It can take all that you have to just get going and manage how you feel
throughout the day. The pandemic has only made people feel even more overwhelmed with responsibility, are you doing things right? Fear, loss, feeling scared, these emotions are all part of taxing the adrenals and having this overwhelmed feeling of burn out. I look at this as the 3 F’s. Feeling Overwhelmed can lead to Fatigue, Forgetfulness, and brain Fog.
Does this picture represent you? I know it did me for a long long time, I felt like when I got up I just walked around in a cloud, I was always overwhelmed as I had a ton of daily tasks, work, puppy walks, finding time to cook food, exercise, and oh yea, the relax time. I felt like I was just “getting” through my day, my memory faded, I was beyond fatigued, and every Doctor I went to whether it was western or eastern said I had adrenal burnout. What was that and how do I help my adrenals? I was never really given a plan, or even any idea on how to help myself, except, do some yoga and meditate. Yes- those are all essential to reduce stress, but how did I get this way in the first place?
I had an incredibly poor diet growing up, in and out of fast food restaurants (can we call these restaurants?) maybe, fast food chains are a better description. I was always on the go as a kid playing a ton of sports in high school (all varsity since freshman year) and college traveling with my teams and never a free moment with academics filling any free time I had. I remember my junior year in college on the lacrosse team, we had made it to nationals that year and we all had to travel together to Maryland from up-state New York. We all had specific times of waking and sleeping, eating, and practicing together. Our coach 2 weeks before we left restricted all of us to not being able to drink any kind of soda. I thought, what am I going to drink? Um..water? Electrolytes, and adding fruit to our waters. However, we all made the switch to gatorade, and this is also not the best choice as I have learned now. But what i remember was I felt amazing giving up soda. That was my last soda I have ever dank. I immediately, (actually we all did) felt better, more energy, brighter mind, felt more alive and you could see how we were as a team doing this together. We won that year, the national championship, overtaking Maryland who were undefeated for many years prior. Now, I don’t think quitting soda enabled us to win, however, it really did show major effects on my body and everyone else felt the same.
Many years later, living in Colorado I was coaching my own lacrosse team, 6-8th graders, and I put my nutrition expertise to the test. Before getting on board with this team I had found out they had never, ever, won a game in all the years they were a lacrosse club. I had my work cut out for me, starting from the basics. At the first tournament I noticed the girls in-between games went to the cotton candy stations, or had ice cream “dots”, hot dogs, sodas, etc. We usually had 3 games in 1 day over 2 days at these tournaments. This was no way to play a game. After I got aquatinted with the parents, I started sending out emails to entice better nutrition at 1/2 time and in-between games if we had a tournament. The parents were the ones that were harder to get across to as they wanted the quick and easy food. The girls started noticing how much better they felt during the games and how much more energy they had when eating better and cutting the soda. They started wanting electrolytes in their water instead of soda, nut butters with apples, clean energy bars, oranges, and they were the ones to ask their parents if they could have better food. These girls were brighter, more focused at practice, wanted to learn, be a team, and they started winning games. By the time the “real” season started we won every game and became the new undefeated championships winning in overtime. I remember the cheer on these kids faces, the parents feeling love and joy for their kids winning games and being part of a team, plus they all learned how proper nutrition changes attitude, brings more energy, and focus to their children on and off the field. On that final day, at the championship game, it was one of the girls birthdays and her Mom asked if she could bring a cake for the team to enjoy after the game, I gave a “funny” look I guess, because she said, ‘ Oh no, its gluten free, and dairy free except she used eggs, and hardly any sugar.” I was over joyed that everyone was learning the benefits of nutrition.
These are a few stories at how nutrition can play an enormous role in health, focus, less fatigue, and memory building, now lets talk about why it happens. When we eat food that is less than nutritious, the body has to detox what we put in, this puts a lot of strain on the liver and the adrenals. The adrenals are responsible for making hormones, cortisol mainly. Cortisol is released every time we have stress, but did you also know its also released every time you eat sugar? So that means when you eat sugar the body releases a hormone that’s suppose to help with stress. No wonder people feel awful when their blood sugar is constantly jumping up and down all day long, their adrenals are literally get over taxed. If we can just let go of sugar, we can think better, see better, focus better, sleep better, and of course poop better. Ok, now that you can understand this…why can’t we just eat less sugar? Here’s the challenge, Sugar is literally wired into us, it’s the most addictive drug out there, and on top of that sugar fuels the bad bugs in our bodies. So any pathogen living inside us, including cancers feed on sugar, so we need to stop it at its source to reduce the pathogens. This is extremely hard, no doubt, as these bad bugs are driving our mind control, it’s why you end up at the refrigerator in the middle of the night wondering how did you ever get there? I have a plan to help with this, I can help eradicate those bad bugs if needed. It is not your fault! (entirely) when we are really trying to get rid of sugar, we need the balance of cortisol, the balance of blood sugar to maintain a healthy brain, sleep patterns, for a long vital life.
Please reach out to me for more information, need help with these bad bugs or feeling overwhelmed? Are you addicted to sugar and can’t figure out why, I bet there is more driving it. I’m here to support you, get you “fixed” up…
