Hi Reader,
As fall begins, I talked about the importance of following the seasons and letting your body rest as the season changes.
But the question I get asked as a nutritional therapy practitioner is,
how do I know if my fatigue is seasonal or something I can change?
Well, it would depend on the health of your adrenal glands.
Your adrenal glands are two small glands that sit on top of your kidneys.
And they have a pretty important job.
They produce hormones involved in things like your stress response, blood pressure, blood sugar and helping your body respond when it needs to take action.
Think about that for a second.
Every time your body thinks it needs to respond to stress, this system gets involved.
And stress isn't just:
"I'm really busy at work."
Your body can experience stress from poor sleep.
Not eating enough.
Blood sugar swings.
Illness.
Inflammation.
Overtraining.
Emotional stress.
Or simply spending years feeling like you have to be ON all the time.
Your body doesn't necessarily care whether you're running from a bear or running late for your kid's practice.
It still has to respond.
And that's where I start getting curious when someone tells me she's exhausted.
Could your stress response be part of the problem?
Maybe you used to be able to do ALL the things.
Work.
Kids.
Exercise.
Dinner.
Laundry.
Another project.
No problem.
But lately?
Everything feels harder.
You still get it done, because that's what you do.
But you're relying on coffee to get going.
You hit a wall in the afternoon.
You feel completely drained after a stressful day.
You don't bounce back from workouts like you used to.
You finally sit down at night exhausted...
but somehow your brain is still wide awake.
That's when I want to know more.
Not because those symptoms automatically mean there's something wrong with your adrenal glands.
But because they make me curious about how your body is handling the amount of stress you're asking it to carry.
And that's something I pay attention to when I look at your minerals.
This is where sodium and magnesium get interesting
When I review a Mineral Test, I don't just look at whether you have "enough magnesium."
I want to see the bigger picture.
I look at your sodium.
I look at your magnesium.
I look at their relationship to one another.
And then I compare those patterns with what you're actually experiencing.
Are you exhausted?
Do you need caffeine to function?
Are you under a tremendous amount of stress?
Do you struggle to recover?
Are you sleeping but still waking up tired?
That's where the clues start to become useful.
A Mineral Test isn't going to diagnose an adrenal condition, I'm not a doctor.
But it can give me nutritional information that helps me ask better questions about stress, energy and whether your body has the raw materials it needs to keep doing everything you're asking it to do.
And sometimes that's the question we haven't been asking.
Because maybe you don't need to become better at managing your low energy.
Maybe we need to start asking why your energy is low in the first place.
So here's my question for you:
Have you built your life around the amount of energy you have?
Think about it this week.
How many decisions are you making based on whether you'll have enough energy?
How much coffee are you using to create energy that isn't naturally there?
How often do you push yourself past your limit and then need time to recover?
How long has this felt normal?
If you're reading those questions thinking...
"Um. A lot."
I'd want to look deeper.
My Mineral Test looks at 28 minerals and important mineral ratios and gives us another piece of information to put alongside your symptoms, diet, stress and lifestyle.
Then I help you narrow it down to the areas I'd focus on first.
Because slowing down sometimes is normal.
Winter is coming.
Nature is changing its rhythm.
But constantly feeling like your battery only charges to 40% is different.
And if that's you, maybe it's time to find out what your body has been trying to tell you.
xo,