How the Adrenals Cause All Kinds of Problems

Excellent explanation  from Hashimoto's Healing of blood sugar, cortisol adrenals and thyroid and how they intertwine:

But other things you don’t normally think of, also place just as much of a burden on the adrenal glands. 

These include blood sugar swings, gut dysfunction, leaky gut, food intolerances (especially gluten), chronic infections, environmental toxins, autoimmune problems and inflammation.
All of these conditions sound the alarm and cause the adrenals to pump out more stress hormones. 

So really, stress can be thought of as anything that disturbs the body’s natural balance (or if you like, homeostasis). 

Adrenal stress is one of the most common problems encountered in modern clinical practice, because nearly everyone is dealing with at least one of the things I just discussed...

Adrenal stress weakens these barriers, weakens the immune system in general, and promotes poor immune system regulation. 

Cortisol can impact this in both directions. Too little cortisol causes the immune system to rev up and can lead to an over aggressive immune response. 

Too much cortisol can weaken the immune system and make you more vulnerable to attacks or unable to defend yourself. 

When these immune barriers are breached large proteins and other antigens are able to pass into the bloodstream or brain where they don’t belong.
If this happens over and over again, the immune system gets thrown out of whack and we become more prone to autoimmune diseases...

Click here to read the rest. 

Blood Sugar Blues

This is an excellent explanation from Hashimoto's Healing of the affect that blood sugar and cortisol have on the adrenals and thyroid: :

When your blood sugar levels drop below normal, your adrenal glands respond by secreting cortisol. Cortisol then tells the liver to make more glucose, bringing blood sugar levels back to normal. 

Hypoglycemia is a condition in which there is not enough cortisol to raise blood sugar into the normal range. 

The problem is that cortisol (along with epinephrine) is also a sympathetic nervous system stimulant involved in the “flight or fight” response. This can end up wearing out the adrenals.
In fact, we often see adrenal fatigue and hypoglycemia together.

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Stop Painful Nerve Pain In Its Tracks

From Suzy Cohen:

Neuropathy may cause more than the discomfort you describe. It can also cause pain, weakness, dizziness when standing up, burning sensations (even in the tongue), shooting pain, trigeminal neuralgia, tingling, numbness, cystitis, urinary urgency, and vibration/buzzing sensations... 

Neuropathy is a symptom of post-herpetic neuralgia (shingles), high insulin, diabetes, gluten sensitivity or Celiac, heavy metal toxicity, autoimmune disorders, Lyme disease and medications. A little known fact is that medications can mug your body of nutrients that would otherwise protect your nerves, so neuropathy pain is a side effect. The list of drugs that can indirectly do this goes is in the hundreds and some classic ‘offenders’ include antacids, acid blockers, oral contraceptives, hormone replacement therapy, corticosteroids, statin cholesterol reducers, breast cancer drugs and fluoroquinolone antibiotics. That last class of drugs, the fluoroquinolones (Cipro, Floxin, Avelox, Levaquin) have a fluoride backbone. Fluoride is known to harm the thyroid gland, reduce thyroid production and cause irreversible damage to the nervous system. 

One solution for neuropathies is to reduce insulin and blood sugar.

Click here to read the rest (including her list of suggested supplements- which all happen to be in Plexus products!)

Many Diseases Linked to High Insulin – The Longer Story

From Suzy Cohen:

For those who don’t realize, insulin is a pancreatic hormone that reduces blood sugar which rises in response to eating. Many physicians routinely measure your blood glucose, but not your insulin. The ratio of glucose to insulin is more valuable than the level of either one alone. That’s a very important statement and it often comes as a surprise to folks who are used to having their blood glucose measured (FBS) but not their insulin. Just because your blood glucose is normal (and you are sent home with the good news that you do NOT have diabetes) does not mean that everything is hunky dory. 

The following information is hard to find, and I’m happy to share it with you. A person’s insulin levels may be SKY HIGH because the pancreas could be working on overdrive to push the blood sugar into the cell. Remember, insulin puts sugar into the cell, so if you have a lot of sugar on board (from eating the typical American diet or lots of carbs) then your insulin can be very high for many years while your blood sugar is normal. This is a dangerous place to be, and many doctors never think to measure a person’s insulin. The insulin can be high because the pancreas is pumping it out all day long to push the sugar into the cell. Good time to tell you that insulin makes a person fat. The more insulin, the more weight gain. So as a side note, if you are dealing with stubborn weight that refuses to come off, you may have high insulin. 

So you see now, why it’s the ratio of glucose to insulin that is so important. High insulin gives you a higher risk for many diseases.

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Insulin and Its Metabolic Effects

From Mercola.Com

Westerners' insulin levels are more out of control now than ever before as sugar continues to be consumed at an alarming rate, especially by teens and children. 

Obesity rates and diseases like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune problems, and autism have skyrocketed. Metabolic problems and inflammation have been set ablaze by decades of bad dietary advice.

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How to Start Trim Healthy Mama (Excellent Info on How Blood Sugar and Insulin Affect Our Health)

This video is excellent and definitely worth taking an hour to watch. Serene and Pearl are so enjoyable and easy to listen to and this is full of health information. They especially do a superb job explaining the effects of blood sugar on the body. Trim Healthy Mama and Plexus Slim are both based on the same principle of balancing blood sugar, by which a host of other health issues are then resolved. I think that THM and Plexus would work beautifully together. (Or for those like me, who just aren't able to follow the THM plan right now, Plexus is a great place to start.) :