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[00:00:00] Jenny Swisher: Welcome friends to this episode of the Sync Your Life podcast. Today we’re diving into adrenaline. Yes, adrenaline. We’re going to talk about what it is and what it means in the grand scheme of your hormone health. I have come across some new information recently myself on this topic that’s helping me better understand my own body.

[00:01:15] Jenny Swisher: And I hope that this helps someone out there listening. So let’s start with just the brief overview of the four legged hormone chair. I have an episode, an early episode of the podcast on this topic that I’ll link up for you in the show notes, but I want to do a little recap here. Each leg of the chair represents an aspect of our endocrine system.

[00:01:32] Jenny Swisher: We have our thyroid, blood sugar, sex hormones, and cortisol. Cortisol is our fight or flight hormone, also known as our survival hormone. You could say that it’s the king of all hormones, as your body is always going to prioritize survival over anything else, including reproduction. You can think of your body as this amazing roadmap, and when there’s a traffic jam, cortisol comes to the rescue down its own superhighway, sometimes stealing pregnenolone, which is a grandmother’s sex hormone, simply to keep you alive.

[00:02:02] Jenny Swisher: It’s impacts on all aspects of our four legged chair are huge, which is why stress in our lives plays such a role in our energy and overall health. If cortisol is there to keep us safe, and we’re constantly finding ourselves in a fight or flight state, you can see why and how the dominoes fall not in our favor.

[00:02:19] Jenny Swisher: Our bodies can in turn hold on to the weight, especially in your belly, our sleep might become disrupted, and stress begins to take its toll. So how then is adrenaline connected? Well, according to Cleveland Clinic, quote, During times of stress, your body can release cortisol after releasing its fight or flight hormones, such as adrenaline, so you continue to stay on high alert.

[00:02:40] Jenny Swisher: In addition, cortisol triggers the release of glucose, sugar, from your liver for fast energy during times of stress. As we’ve always said here on the podcast, cortisol and blood sugar oppose each other and are always working in a dance to keep us safe. Recently, I came across the work of Dr. Michael Platt, the author of Adrenaline Dominance, and my mind has been blown.

[00:03:01] Jenny Swisher: I want to read to you an excerpt from Adrenaline Dominance, a revolutionary approach to wellness. Dr. Platt says, quote, There is a healthcare crisis in America that is completely under the radar. Almost every family is affected some way or another.

[00:03:15] Jenny Swisher: It is associated with adrenaline, a hormone that most people know as the fight or flight hormone, which is released in large quantities whenever we are in danger. It is an extremely powerful hormone and has significant physiological effects on our body. These episodes are usually short lived, and as soon as the danger passes, the adrenaline levels go back down.

[00:03:34] Jenny Swisher: However, there is another reason the body releases adrenaline, and it can occur throughout the day and night for sustained periods. Needless to say, this can have a significant effect on our health and certainly on the quality of our life. For example, excess adrenaline can prevent us from falling asleep or staying asleep.

[00:03:50] Jenny Swisher: In certain people, it makes the mind race, causes restless leg syndrome, results in bruxism or teeth grinding, tightens the jaw, TMJ, and causes nighttime urination, especially around 2. 30 in the morning when levels of adrenaline are the highest. During the day, it is the primary cause of anxiety. It creates anger, including road rage, cuts off circulation to certain areas of the body not needed for survival, resulting in cold hands or feet, as well as IBS, makes muscles tense, leading to the buildup of lactic acid, causing the pain of fibromyalgia, and it creates an overactive bladder in women and bedwetting in children.

[00:04:25] Jenny Swisher: In addition, it is the underlying cause of ADHD in children and adults. It creates muscle tension in the neck, resulting in tinnitus and headaches. It is the cause of conditions felt to be incurable, such as chronic interstitial cystitis and PMDD, a condition found in about 5 8 percent of menstruating women, often causing severe mood swings.

[00:04:45] Jenny Swisher: End quote. Fascinating. So many women I know are suffering from PMS or PMDD, headaches, cold hands and feet, IBS, and so much more. What if it really was as simple as being connected to adrenaline? So I’ll relate this for you to my own story. As you know, I’ve been suffering again from hormonal migraines, and interestingly, when the problem started to creep up again around a year ago, my first signs were headaches and fatigue that would often happen within an hour of exercise.

[00:05:13] Jenny Swisher: This is interesting, since we know that exercise induces adrenaline. If I was to get a headache in the afternoon after my workout, I took that as a sign that I needed to go higher on my progesterone cream that night, using more of the cream. Going up on the cream would often resolve the pain.

[00:05:28] Jenny Swisher: But now, after reading Dr. Platt’s book, I’m convinced that this is because progesterone can be a precursor to adrenaline. For those of you unaware, there is such a thing as a pregnenolone steal. In the hierarchy of hormones, pregnenolone is the grandma to progesterone, and cortisol, which remember is our survival hormone, can steal from these in order to survive.

[00:05:48] Jenny Swisher: The pregnenolone steal notion states that since all steroid hormones use pregnenolone, which is derived from cholesterol, as a precursor, The elevated secretion of cortisol caused by acute or chronic stress will inevitably result in less available pregnenolone to serve as a precursor for the production of DHEA and other downstream hormones.

[00:06:07] Jenny Swisher: So does this mean that in regulating our nervous system and its adaptations to stressful moments and experiences that we can offset surges in adrenaline and cortisol? Does this also perhaps mean that the use of progesterone supplementation or pregnenolone supplementation in women, especially in perimenopause, can also offset not only unnecessary symptoms, but maybe further hormone imbalance?

[00:06:29] Jenny Swisher: This is what I’m led to believe. My question for you is this. Have you experienced rushes of adrenaline? My friends, this is a trick question, because we all have. But as we know, women in perimenopause with depleting levels of progesterone often find themselves experiencing anxiety or panic, sleepless nights, and heightened levels of stress.

[00:06:49] Jenny Swisher: I don’t think this is a coincidence. I’ll make sure that I link up for you this book and the show notes in case you want to go deeper by reading it on your own because it’s truly fascinating. But according to Dr. Platt, adrenaline dominance is a genetic condition. This is also interesting, especially if you’ve heard any of my prior episodes with trauma informed therapists on the topic of genetic trauma.

[00:07:08] Jenny Swisher: There has to be a correlation. To come full circle, this phenomenon of adrenaline dominance is helping me better understand my body. I am a type A, go getting machine in the realm of productivity. In fact, my love language is ROI, and my absolute biggest pet peeve is wasting my time. Take a rest day? Why?

[00:07:26] Jenny Swisher: What would I do with my hands? A vacation? Well, okay, but can I work out and bring my laptop? While I am far away from an adventure seeking, jump out of a plane with a parachute type, I am an adrenaline junkie in my own right, by way of exercise inducing endorphins, accomplishments, and a high paced lifestyle.

[00:07:44] Jenny Swisher: It makes sense, then, that adrenaline would be a factor for me, and also why low progesterone has plagued me most of my life and has manifested in the realm of migraine headaches. It was my body’s way of saying, slow the F down. In the last few months, I have learned so much about the superpowers of progesterone.

[00:08:01] Jenny Swisher: I can’t wait to deliver more here on the podcast on this amazing hormone that gets way too little recognition. But in the meantime, I’m learning that managing my adrenaline and supplementing with progesterone, not as a band aid, but as a way to keep my body safe is key for me. As I learn more about Dr.

[00:08:17] Jenny Swisher: Platt’s work, I’ll make sure that I share it here. But my friends, I’m finding myself saying this so often lately. What if it really was this simple? Getting our bodies as women into a parasympathetic state. Regulating our nervous system can be life changing when it comes to regulating hormones. Take clues from nature.

[00:08:35] Jenny Swisher: Listen to our body’s whisper before they scream. So I ask you, do you run on adrenaline? Have you been diagnosed with adrenal fatigue before? If so, I encourage you to reframe adrenal fatigue as Platt does. He argues that there’s no such thing, but that instead, our adrenals are being suppressed in the effort of survival.

[00:08:55] Jenny Swisher: This is all such fascinating information, friends, and I could really go down a rabbit hole for much longer than this episode allows. But I’ll make sure that I link up for you in the show notes Dr. Platt’s book, and any previous episodes of this podcast where we talk about things like adrenal fatigue, the hormone share, and many other things.

[00:09:10] Jenny Swisher: I’m so grateful that you take time out of your week every week to listen to me and my new findings, my new research, and the things that are working for me in my own hormone health journey. It’s truly a blessing to lead hundreds of women all over the country, really all over the world, on this topic of just becoming more hormone literate, helping them to better understand their bodies so that they can reach that maximum energy.

[00:09:30] Jenny Swisher: I hope that you will continue to tune in, that you’ll share this out with your friends, and if you are an adrenaline junkie like me, check out the book too, because it might just be a life changer. Thank you so much friends for tuning in. Until next time, we’ll talk soon. Bye bye.