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We all know that everything in our bodies is connected… But do we really understand what that means?
Our hormones are the messengers which control how our bodies work.
Our brain receives signals and sends messages to the appropriate gland – and the hormones released by that gland have a knock on effect on all of the other glands and the hormones they produce. This impacts how we feel in the short term, and our health in the long term.
It’s incredible – our bodies are machines of adaptation – and also quite eye opening to realise that something relatively simple can affect our whole system.
Let’s look at stress – let’s understand how the HPA axis works.
It’s a conversation between our brain and our adrenal glands, which produce stress hormones.
It starts with some kind of stress. It could be seeing an emergency, drinking a shot of espresso or reading an infuriating email – it’s all the same to our bodies.
The hypothalamus in our brain receives the message and tells our pituitary gland (also in our brain) that there’s some stress and we’re going to need stress hormones making.
The pituitary gland sends a message to our adrenal glands to ask them to produce stress hormones, which they do, and then send a message back to the pituitary to say they’ve done it and to please turn off the request.
This is how it’s meant to work.
But, if the stress is continuous, and before the adrenals have returned the “I’ve done it” message, the pituitary is asking for more stress hormones to be made… we end up in what’s called HPA axis dysfunction. It means that the ‘I’ve produced the stress hormones, please stop asking’ response becomes irrelevant and so your adrenals are firing out stress hormones continuously.
This is where we end up with a whole host of stress related symptoms, of which there are an awful lot, ranging from obesity, diabetes, digestive issues, anxiety and skin issues to autoimmune disease, high or low blood pressure, heart disease, heart attacks – etc!
And, knock on effects affect your whole system.
High stress hormones trigger an increase in blood sugar to provide you with glucose for energy to escape the danger…. Elevated blood sugars increase oestrogen production. Excess oestrogen can increase stress hormones.
Beyond this, in order to keep producing these stress hormones, our body has to prioritise the stress over making another sex hormone – progesterone. Progesterone has a calming effect, and so reduction of it is not helpful to the overall picture.
Stress is a really big deal – but the good news is that there are ways we can manage it.
Is this interesting and relevant to you? Would you like to understand more about this?