Tag Archives: Neuroendocrine System

Understanding Weight Loss and Stress

Weight loss and Stress are linked, it is hard to lose weight when– Stress…Is Everywhere! says Dr. Dalal Akoury

Understanding Weight Loss and Stress

Lets face it people, stress will always be in our lives… to a certain degree anyways.  It is almost a way of life in the 21st century.  Stress can be a major prohibiting factor to weight loss and can even contribute to weight gain.  Chronic stress can be tied to an increase in appetite and ultimately stress-induced weight gain.  It all starts in our neuroendocrine system.  This system activates a hormones in response to stress or life threatening situations.  The hormones released during this response is adrenaline, corticotrophin releasing hormone (CRH), and cortisol.  Elevated levels of adrenaline and CRH cause a decreased appetite.  This result is usually temporary.  Cortisol on the other hand is there to support and replenish our body after the stressors have gone.  This elevated level of cortisol remains for a long period of time and tends to increase appetite.  For most people, increased appetite means increase in weight gain!

 Weight Loss – Stress A Tyrannosaurs Rex  or a Late Electric Bill?

This response from the neuroendocrine system is doing what it is supposed to do but it was not designed for the 21st century stressors.  The increase in hormones was intended for life threatening situations such as, a tyrannosaurs rex trying to eat your entire family as it was in the time of cavemen.  The calories or stored food in the body we would have used to fight off the tyrannosaurs rex in the beginning of time is not being expended in modern day.  Now “we” mope around and fuss and dwell on our stressors and anger.  Eating has become our stress reliever.  At this point or neuroendocrine system is confused and has not received the necessary signals to know if we fought off that tyrannosaurs rex or not.  This causes us to feel hungry because the hormones are still being released to restore calories lost and our depleted food stores.

AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center team and Dr. Dalal Akoury reminds us that – Weight Loss  a ndStress – Cortisol and the Adrenals – are all connected

Cortisol is actually made in the Adrenal Cortex.  It controls the strength of our immune system, normalizes blood sugar, and regulates blood pressure.  This production is due to adrenal cortical stimulating hormone (ACTH) produced in the pituitary gland.  If the adrenals are producing to much of the cortisol, the motions for increased susceptibility to infections and cancer will occur, along with weight gain around the belly area and your immune system can be compromised.  Opposite of that, if too little cortisol is produced chronic fatigue can occur and so can exhaustion.  An overactive immune system could develop as could autoimmune disease.

Dr. Dalal Akoury founder of AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center describes the Weight and  Stress connection – Let’s Correct That Cortisol Level!!

 Weight Loss and Stress the Missing Link

Stress reduction is an essential part of all efforts to normalize cortisol. Stress is the stimuli that caused the cortisol levels to get out of hand to begin with. Each individual should explore and find the stress reduction techniques that work best for themselves. Meditation, physical activities, attitude changes, just to name a few are good paths to explore. Without stress reduction, therapeutic and support measures will ultimately fail.

Get plenty of rest.  Rest must be handled as a scheduled and straight forward strategy, choice, and course of action. That may sound obvious but how well do you really schedule your rest?  Otherwise it gets lost and forgotten in the high strung pace of life.

A low glycemic diet is also important. Sugar handling stress increases cortisol levels. Elevated cortisol, then disturbs the sugar handling situation, contributing towards the development of high insulin levels and possibly diabetes. Diet alone without stress reduction will not help you lose weight because weight loss and stress are connected.

Understanding Weight Loss and Stress

Nutritional supplementation is highly recommended in restoring normal cortisol levels. We suggest a Integrative Therapeutic Cortisol Manager.  Our product will support a healthy sleeping habit without using habit forming ingredients.  Due to the more normal sleeping pattern, the stressors associated with the unhealthy sleeping pattern will disappear.  Phosphatidylserine is the main active ingredient in our Integrative Therapeutic Cortisol Manager and is believed to facilitate the repair of the cortisol receptors in the hypothalamus. It is believed that the cortisol receptors get damaged by high cortisol levels reducing the ability of the hypothalamus to sense and correct high cortisone levels. Because Phosphatidylserine helps repair the feedback control apparatus, it is useful in correcting both high and low cortisol levels.

Another nutritional supplement that is necessary are adaptogen herbs.  Adaptogens are an entire category of herbs that assist the body in coping with stress by restoring hypothalamic cortisol receptor sensitivity.  A combination of these adaptogens are all researched for their effects on increasing stamina, mental alertness and work performance.

The AWAREmed Health and Wellness Resource Center team and it’s founder Dr. Dalal Akoury  describe that Weight gain is caused by  Stress and Having Healthy SEX will help weight loss

The adrenals are a big deal in many people’s sex lives. People usually feel sexier on vacation when the stress level is down. They can relax and also make up their sleep deficit. Many couples complain that they are just too tired to be interested in sex. A great rule for rebuilding the adrenals is “rest is best.” I can guarantee that if one spouse is feeling fearful and anxious, he or she is definitely not feeling very sexy. Remember Weight loss and stress are closely linked.

All of the adrenal hormones, and all the sex hormones for that matter, are steroids. Steroids are made from cholesterol. You need good sources of cholesterol. Forget the margarine and only eat butter. Keep up a good protein intake, which will also provide good sources of cholesterol.  Remember, healthy sex equals healthy adrenals!

Understanding Weight Loss and Stress!

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