Could It Be Adrenal Fatigue?

What does our adrenal system do, and why do we need to nourish it? Think of your adrenals as the producers and regulators of your hormones and neurotransmitters. These hormones and neurotransmitters then regulate your metabolism. So we're talking reproductive health, brain health, weight management, energy and mood, and since the adrenals regulate all these systems, you can see why it's so important to keep them in check! If you’re feeling off in any of the following areas, chances are adrenal fatigue might be the culprit:

• hair loss

• blurred vision

• severe allergies

• unexplained weight gain or loss

• muscle aches and pains

• dizziness when you stand up

• low libido

• infertility

• chronic fatigue

• feeling tired but can’t sleep aka “tired but wired”

Most of us have some degree of adrenal fatigue, and it comes with no surprise *stress* holds court as the leading suppressor of adrenal glands leading to their fatigue. Read below for a few steps to keep stress at bay and to heal your adrenal system:

• Eat clean: avoid inflammatory foods like gluten, dairy, refined sugar and too much caffeine

• Get plenty of zzz's... shoot for 8 hours!

• Do not over-commit. No is a complete sentence.

• Regulate your blood sugar by eating protein within an hour of waking each morning and by pairing your macros (our nutritionists can help with this!) 

• High-intensity/high-impact exercise elevates cortisol levels, so limit this as your exercise form when you're in a healing season

• Take the time and effort to heal emotional trauma.

• Supplements can help as well! Come get a B-complex shot or check out our adaptogenic herbs to reboot your system. If after 8-10 weeks you do not see improvement, we recommend a deeper look through a Functional Medicine appointment.

The beautiful thing about our bodies is they’re able to heal when we let them. Through dietary, lifestyle and supplemental adjustments, adrenal fatigue does not have to stick around for long. At R+R, we offer several healing modalities to support your adrenal system and the healing process!

Healing Is Not Linear

In this age of instant gratification and go-go-go, when our health shifts for whatever reason, the resulting recovery time can be incredibly frustrating. Sick days are viewed as cop-outs, and we place those who don’t take them (like ever) on pedestals. The expectation to dust yourself off and get back on the proverbial horse penetrates just about every industry. Case and point: on average, women in the United States are granted 10 weeks of maternity leave. Great job cooking up a child for ¾ of a year, but can you please be ready to part with him or her in a little over 2 months and pick up right where you left off? 

Maintaining all political correctness and never equating something as beautiful as child birth to a “health issue”, while we love our American go-getter attitudes and adore our bootstrap roots, it’s no wonder we place the pressure on ourselves to just get over it and toughen up when a health challenge comes along. Just as x number of hours typically yields y number of project progress, we believe x number of days should equal y improvement in our health. While sometimes this can be the case, for the most part: healing is not linear. 

We believe in the mind, body, spirit connection, and we believe that by God’s divine, intricate design, our beautiful bodies need a little more TLC than we’re often willing to give. The more we push, push, push past whatever the issue(s) might be on the front-end, the more we compound the work on the backend to unwind what’s broken in order to fully heal. Most often, a chronic health issue didn’t pop up overnight so the amount of time to heal likely won’t either. 

Frustrating? Sure. Catastrophic? Nah. 

At the risk of sounding trite and altruistic, we encourage you to be patient with yourself. Like an onion, our bodies are layered and our healing is too. One day you might feel great (and yay for improvement!), but don’t be discouraged if the next week pulls you back down. Sometimes our bodies are simply crying out for rest, but other times, this means you’ve healed one layer and another painful root pulls through. You’re not going backwards! It’s all part of the process. The name of the game at R+R is root-cause therapy, and we’re here to walk alongside you through our mind, body and spirit therapies as you peel back the layers to your best self. 

If you’re currently feeling great and this really doesn’t apply to you, yay for you! At R+R we preach preventative care and self-care. While the following services are beautiful additions to a gentle detox, our foot baths, IV therapy, vitamin shots and infrared saunas also serve as valuable tools in preventative care to keep both acute illness and chronic conditions at bay. A steady incorporation of these services will help you function at optimal levels to keep you feeling your best and to ease the healing process if and when a health struggle pops up. 

In sum, we’re all for working hard and showing up, but not at the cost of your health. Be patient with yourself and focus on how far you’ve come in the healing process when frustration starts to creep in because healing is not linear!

For the love of libido

The Hallmark Holiday to crown all Hallmark Holidays is upon us, and we can’t help but succumb to the conversation hearts and pink explosions. Love is in the air, people! Can you feel it? Setting aside your appropriately placed eye roll, at R+R we’ve got love on the brain and want to help you set the mood. Speaking of the mood (wink, wink), attaining this elusive feeling can be harder for some than for others.

What’s up with that?

Our libidos can fluctuate (read: plummet) for a litany of reasons, and it doesn’t just happen for those more senior in their years on earth. In keeping with our Functional Medicine pillar of root-cause therapy, our goal is to help you figure out why your libido is a low-bido.

What can cause low libido?

• hormone imbalance

• nutrient deficienies

• medication side effects

• hormonal birth control

• chronic stress

• poor diet

• environmental toxins

Yes you read that right, the pill can cause a dip in sex drive as can many other prescription medications including various heart medications, synthetic hormones as well as anti-depressants. With hormonal birth control, the issue is in the liver. According to hormonal guru Jolene Brighton, “Research has shown hormonal birth control alters the genetics of your liver and may permanently result in a lifelong missing libido.” Don’t despair! There are many avenues to restoring your sex drive, some of which are listed below, and our Functional Medicine practitioner would love to help you get to the bottom of it as well.

Nutrient deficiencies sneak up on us and can often wear a mask much darker than what you might suspect. Depression, anxiety, low libido (hi, hello), moodiness, sleeplessness, (the list goes on!) can all be yucky side effects of mineral deficiencies. If you’re not quite ready to pony-up for a Functional Medicine appointment just yet, we recommend a ZYTO Scan for a dependable read on where your body is out of balance and which minerals and vitamins will supplement your unique body appropriately.

Hormone imbalance can also lead to a limp in your libido. Many factors contribute to hormonal imbalance (another blog post for another day), but chronic stress stands as a leading contributor to out-of-whack hormone levels. When your body is in overdrive physically and mentally, you’re running on fumes, amiright? When this happens, the hormone progesterone plummets and cortisol - the stress hormone - sky-rockets, thus creating a deficiency in progesterone and an over-abundance of cortisol. When you start messing with your adrenals and your hormone levels, the results build upon each other and can appear in the form of anxiety, acne, belly fat, depression, and you guessed it - reduced sex drive, among other zero-fun symptoms.

So that’s the bad news. The good news is there are lifestyle changes you can make today to improve your libido and your overall health!

• Ditch the processed junk. Yeah yeah, we know it’s not sexy, but it’s true. Get back to basics: organic fruits and veggies, heart healthy fats (nuts, seeds, olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, ghee), organic and grass-fed meat and wild-caught fatty fish. Skip the processed sugars and keep alcohol consumption in check. For the sugar addicts out there, try a piece of 80% or higher dark chocolate for libido boosting bonus points without the added sugar.

• Find ways to reduce stress in your life. Where can you delegate? Where can you loosen the reigns on perfectionism? Where can you say no? What fills your cup? Where can you make room for self-care and stop beating yourself up for it? Wake up 10 minutes before the kiddos wake up. No kiddos? Wake up 10 minutes earlier than normal. Take the time to breathe, pray and relax your body into the day.

• Kick environmental toxins to the curb. Cleaning supplies, dryer sheets, perfumes, lotions, make-up, body washes, hair care… all these babies can be loaded with fragrances and chemicals that single-handedly might not cause you any harm, but the compound effects can be detrimental to your endocrine system, reproductive health, hormones, mental state… the list goes on!

• Book a Hanky Panky IV Drip! This baby is full of the nutrients to get your libido cooking like Arginine, B-Complex, Vitamin C, Zinc, Carnitine, MIC/B12 and B6. Better yet, book with your bae and receive 15% off each service now through February 14th!

• Come shop! Treat yo’self to our WOO Organic Personal Lubricant for all the fun without the nasty additives and synthetic chemicals. The carefully curated ingredient list touts vanilla essence, a natural aphrodisiac, alongside stevia, coconut oil and beeswax. That’s it! One woo girl quoted on their website says, “This is like Whole Foods for your vagina.”

Now that we’ve got your turning all shades of pink, consider our work to get you in Valentine’s mood already well on its way ;) In all seriousness, living with a low libido should not be your norm. Let R+R set your feet on the path toward healing because no matter of health should be taken for granted! Call (817) 720-6220 to book today.