The Art of Healing

Mind, Body, and Adrenals: A Holistic Approach

• Charlyce Davis MD Reiki Practitioner

Share episode

Questions? Comments? Send a message to Art of Healing Podcast

Your adrenal glands may be small, but they're running more of your life than you realize. Feeling exhausted despite sleeping enough? Crashing after your morning coffee? Waking up hours before your alarm? These tiny walnut-sized organs sitting atop your kidneys might be sending you important messages about your stress levels.


Learn more about your Adrenal Glands with this free resource:

Chakras and Hormones


Dr. Charlyce takes us on a fascinating journey through the endocrine system, explaining how these mighty glands produce hormones that regulate everything from your morning energy to your stress response. We learn how the brain's command centers—the hypothalamus and pituitary gland—constantly monitor your environment and psychological state, sending signals to your adrenals that trigger the release of cortisol and adrenaline. While these hormones are essential for survival and motivation, our modern always-on lifestyle keeps them pumping without the recovery periods our bodies desperately need.

Through personal examples and practical science, Dr. Charlyce shares how functional medicine approaches adrenal health differently than conventional medicine. She reveals how home testing helped identify her own imbalanced cortisol patterns and melatonin deficiency, leading to personalized solutions that didn't involve medication. You'll discover specific strategies for supporting your adrenals—from nutrient-dense eating schedules and appropriate sodium intake to balancing exercise with recovery and incorporating grounding practices that activate your parasympathetic nervous system.

Whether you're dealing with unexplained fatigue, sleep disruptions, or simply want to optimize your energy and stress resilience, this episode offers actionable insights into working with—rather than against—your body's natural hormonal rhythms. Take a moment to rate this episode and connect with Dr. Charlyce on social media to continue the conversation about your adrenal health journey.

Welcome to the Art of Healing Podcast community.  This podcast is devoted to helping you find what works on your journey to health and wellness.  This podcast is devoted to providing information on many healing modalities.  Learn more about:

  • Reiki
  • Functional Medicine
  • Meditation
  • Energy Healing

and more!

Learn more about Dr. Charlyce here. 

Never miss an episode of Art of Healing Podcast...the podcast devoted to helping you heal your mind, body and spirit.

Sign up for my weekly newsletter, and never miss an episode along with other great content:

Art of Healing Podcast

Stay in touch socially here:
Healing Arts Links

Learn more about me and my offerings here:
Healing Arts Health and Wellness

Speaker 1:

All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me for today's Art of Healing podcast. I'm Dr Charlize and if this is my first time to meet you, very nice to meet you, and of course, we've met before. Welcome back. I love to do these kind of live episodes because it gives us a chance to connect and to chat and talk. We're going to start off today's episode with a deep dive on the adrenal glands and then we'll move into grounding our energy, which we'll do a little bit later, and then, hopefully, our guest, dr Noorji Han, will be able to jump on and share with us some of her wisdom on raising kids mindfully in turbulent times. If you are listening to this episode after we've taped it on the podcast app you're listening to, I would love it if you could leave me a rating and, of course, feel free to send me a message on your podcast app. It should have that option. If you Google at Dr Charlize, you should be able to find me on social media as well as my website. So we'll get started and let's talk about our adrenal glands. So our adrenal glands are very important to understanding our stress response, understanding how our body operates from moment to moment, and our adrenal glands can not only well, of course, govern the way our body works, but can really teach us about how we might be moving through the world. So with this talk I wanted to discuss what they are, where they are, and then a few simple steps we can do to protect our adrenal glands and as we go along. If you all have any questions oh, thank you, kimberly feel free to chime in in the chat and then, once we close, we'll have a few minutes to talk. If you do have questions you'd like to ask me directly.

Speaker 1:

The adrenal glands are part of what's called our endocrine system, so this is our system of hormones, and hormones are chemical messengers within the body. So a hormone's role is to be created by one part of the body to influence something else. The adrenal glands are small glands that sit on the top of your kidneys, so, of course, the kidneys are located towards the mid back, all the way to your back. Sometimes we might feel our kidneys if they're really badly infected or if you have a kidney stone. Although that graphic there is depicting the glands to be very large, in real life they're actually very small. We get a set of two, but they're actually very small in real life and within these teeny, tiny little glands it's actually multiple complex layers that are incredibly powerful, especially to be the relative size that they are. But there's an inner part, the inner cortex, and then there's an outer cortex, and the importance of that is that each layer of the adrenal glands actually does something different. So the way that our adrenal glands work is they are resting there on the top of your kidneys.

Speaker 1:

They're taking signals from multiple sources, but primarily they're going to take a signal from glands within the brain. So there are two glands in the brain that sample the bloodstream, respond to other chemical messengers and then will send a governing signal to the rest of the glands in your body. In this case it's going to be what's called the hypothalamus, which is a very small gland deep within the brain. In real life, if we get something like an MRI, it is possible to image the hypothalamus, but the imaging of it. It's just very small. The pituitary gland which is beneath it also sits very deep within the brain. It's actually located way behind the eyes, which can be imaged on something like an MRI or CT. These two glands will integrate signals from the brain that are a combination of sensory signals from the ears, from the eyes, and then sort of an integration of a large volume of data from the cortex of the brain. And this is kind of where that whole stress response comes in, because as this signals kind of weaned down to the hypothalamus and pituitary gland, it's kind of has to be shortened and refined to tell those glands how to communicate to other glands in the body. But once that signal is made sense of electrically and gets to those glands, and those glands will release hormones that will then go to the adrenal glands where the adrenal glands will interpret and then we'll start to calibrate how they produce hormones that govern your blood pressure, hormones that govern how much salt your body is going to hang on to, or, if your body is going to release salt through your urine, is going to govern how much of the hormones cortisol and cortisone you're going to make. Although those are going to go in somewhat of a cycle. If the stress signal coming from the brain then to the hypothalamus and the pituitary glands is indicating that your body's in stress and illness and injury and accident or something like that, that signal to the adrenal glands will be heavily altered so that, if need be, the stress hormones will be produced in larger quantities to help the body survive. Produced in larger quantities to help the body survive.

Speaker 1:

Then there's also a part of the adrenal glands that we use sometimes. We do like to use it if we're about to exercise or if we have something exciting. But that fight or flight and that's the part of our adrenal glands that we don't want to use too much. That makes the adrenaline. So it makes epinephrine, noradrenaline or norepinephrine, and those are very potent, very powerful hormones that change the body's physiology very rapidly. So when they're released so if we're startled, for instance, like something shocks us or scares us, they will make our pupils dilate, they will make our sweat glands come on. These hormones are responsible for redirecting blood flow away from our digestive tract into our limbs to prepare us to move quickly or to fight. The fight or flight response sometimes is good. We do want that, particularly if we are exercising. It's actually a good thing, but we don't want the fight or flight all the time because that puts way too much stress on us. So this graph here is showing what a normal what we think a normal cortisol pattern looks like. So in those adrenal glands we're actually making a lot of hormones and I'm going to pull up a little graph of some of my own here in a second.

Speaker 1:

But cortisol is the one that people will frequently ask about when you see your doctor. It's actually one that can be checked with a blood draw, and now we have some even more convenient ways that can be checked, even with home testing, where you can actually do a home test and check your own cortisol. Cortisol is the hormone that our body uses to help wake us up in the morning. It helps get our bodies moving in the morning and then throughout the day it helps us. Cortisol is really great for raising the blood sugar, because there's times that we actually need more sugar or glucose in our blood, and then also cortisol helps us to basically function better when we need to be more awake.

Speaker 1:

Normally this graph doesn't quite capture it because our cortisol over a 24-hour period while you're sleeping, your adrenal glands actually start the process of raising your cortisol levels earlier than you wake up. So around three or four in the morning your adrenal glands get a signal from your brain to start to wake you up and will gently start to raise the cortisol levels until they should peak, hopefully about the time you're going to wake up and the purpose of that is, with those cortisol levels being higher, that makes more sugar available in your bloodstream. That helps wake up your brain, because your brain needs that fuel to wake up. Then also that cortisol is going to help raise your pulse. So your heart should beat a little faster, should raise your blood pressure a little bit, and that's to help you go from laying down and sleeping all night to being upright. So when you first sit up in the morning and then, of course, when you get up and start your day, so we want to have a surge of it a little bit, but then we kind of want that to go down. So as we go throughout our day the cortisol starts to go down, which we need because we get later in the day. We need another set of hormones to start to kick in to help our bodies digest food, help us relax and then prepare us to go to sleep, because we're diurnal creatures.

Speaker 1:

So stress and the adrenal glands and I mentioned before that some of our stress is good, we actually want to have that stress. So what we call stress, which is essentially our body senses something's not right, something's not good, we don't like it. We have a response, which is from the HPA axis which we talked about, which is that gland in the brain, the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, which is also in the brain, that will trigger a release of cortisol and adrenaline from those adrenal glands and then correspondingly, those glands will affect pretty much every part of the body. So it affects the heart rate, the pulse, the blood pressure. Blood sugars go up, because glucose is a good way to get the body moving, activated. The brain needs it, the muscles can use glucose quickly to move and to have action and then hopefully we should have a time after that that we recover. So if it's a good stress, so you decide I'm going to the gym, I'll pump an iron, we're going to work out, so that stress will trigger your HPA axis, you'll get all those same hormones. But if you were going to work out and this was intentional, then after your workout you'll hydrate, you'll do some stretches, you'll get some water and then hopefully you'll have some time where you can actually have a little bit of a rest and that's where the adrenal glands will recover and also in that rest period, especially if you're exercising, the muscles will do the recovery, get more blood flow will allow the liver and the kidneys to get toxins out of you from exercising.

Speaker 1:

But if we get into stress and we are getting all that same cycle but then we don't really get a rest and recovery. So maybe we know, maybe we're taking care of a sick relative or we ourselves are sick, or we're under financial stress, it's time to do taxes and it's like, oh, all that stress. If we're in that and we're not really getting a breakup from it because, as we all know, psychological stress can be devastating because our brains will just keep driving it and keeping it going we can still get that same hormonal cascade but we're not getting a break. You actually keep doing it and keep doing it until you finally run into a time when the adrenal glands don't respond appropriately. They're not doing what they need to do. Respond appropriately, they're not doing what they need to do.

Speaker 1:

So I mentioned earlier that one of the great things about modern medicine, especially in functional medicine, is we can conduct some of our own hormonal testing at home, and there's actually even a couple companies where you can do this without a doctor's order. So this test I'm showing you here is one that I did on myself about three or four years ago and I'm probably going to do another test here pretty soon. So this is one of those hormonal spans that you can check and this is with collecting your own saliva and your own urine spans that you can check, and this is with collecting your own saliva and your own urine so handy. And from this chart what we can see is what's happening with my HPA axis. So that's my representation my hypothalamus, my pituitary gland, the pineal gland, which I didn't mention, but also a small gland that sits in the brain. And what I liked about this graph I included it was because it shows that relationship between those glands in the brain and then getting down to the adrenal glands. From this chart you can see that at the time that I did this, the amount of melatonin that I was making was actually low.

Speaker 1:

What was going on with me, which I was aware of, was that I was waking up extremely early. I was waking up three to four hours earlier than I desired, and once I got this test, I recognized immediately that the amount of melatonin that would probably be more optimal for me sleeping better was awfully low. What that meant for me was making a change in some of my habits, coming off of digital screens much earlier, making sure to unplug from the TV or unplug from anything that I perceived to be activating much earlier in my day, because at this time I would fall asleep great. But then I was waking up and then also including foods throughout my day that contained melatonin. Oddly enough, what ended up working for me was not that contained melatonin. Oddly enough, what ended up working for me was not actually taking melatonin. It was making those changes because I would take melatonin and I'd actually feel very tired, but I wouldn't actually sleep better Then from my adrenal glands.

Speaker 1:

What I found out at this point in my life was that it actually looks like my cortisol levels were kind of wonky when I did this home test and doing this home test if you're interested, you can reach out to me and I can walk you through, like what it looks like. But I did kind of mess up on my own hormone test so I missed the testing. But what I did discover with my pattern was that my cortisol levels were kind of low, which led to this combination of falling asleep easily because I was exhausted, because I was developing a little bit of adrenal fatigue, but then waking up super early. So that's because my melatonin wasn't quite enough to influence a healthy sleep response. End result was, you know, unhealthy sleep patterns. And so you know, adapting to that for me meant at that point in my life things that I did not perceive were stressful were actually stressful. So I was not perceiving it cognitively the way my body was telling me. So really cool test, really easy to do on your own or do with some guidance. One of my favorites.

Speaker 1:

So as far as keeping your adrenal glands healthy, one of my favorite topics, because when you see your doctor you probably will not talk about your adrenal glands, but they're important, even though they're small and they're the size of like walnuts and they're not getting your attention most of the time. We want to protect them. So things that we can do is, when possible, we want to have eating schedule that supports us. So we don't necessarily want to skip meals, in particular if you're noticing feeling tired, feel run down, not waking up very easily in the mornings. So just making sure that you know if we need to adapt our schedule such as you know if you feel better when you eat breakfast, maybe making sure to take it with you to work if your day starts early.

Speaker 1:

Making sure that we consume foods that are dense in nutrients and vitamins. So of course, in our fast paced, busy world this can be hard to do. But when you're shopping, essentially if it has a label, you want to check the label and make sure you see some vitamins and you see some minerals listed. If you check the label of that food and you're not seeing any, then that's probably a processed food that's getting more into the ultra processed realm that we want to avoid. Whole foods are best whenever we can include them. Our fruits and vegetables, when they look the closest, as they came from, when they were picked or when they were harvested, those are the best.

Speaker 1:

Sodium is tricky because the catch-all phrase that we've heard for many years is related more to people that have cardiovascular disease, such as high blood pressure. But it turns out some of us do better if we have some sodium in our diet that we don't want to restrict too much because we'll feel tired, might even have our blood pressures run too low. So, of course, knowing where your blood pressure is, knowing where your pulse is, for individuals who are living with long COVID long COVID that's led to POTS disease you may have heard of that long COVID that's led to POTS disease. You may have heard of that. Those individuals actually can really improve their quality of life if they start including sodium in their diets. The general advice is to put it on your food rather than just consuming a high sodium food that's ultra processed.

Speaker 1:

And then stimulants. So stimulants can be great like caffeine, actually can protect the brain some. But you should probably start taking some note of how you respond. So if you notice that you have a stimulant like caffeine and then within a couple of hours you're very, very tired, it might be that your adrenal glands or something like mine were back a few years ago, that they're depleted, and when you're hammering them with stimulants, they've just got nothing else to give you. So things like adaptogenic herbs, adaptogenic coffees, like the mushroom coffees which are becoming a lot more available in many stores, or you might even want to make a switch to herbal teas, especially if you're noticing that you're more prone to the anxiety way of being.

Speaker 1:

And then exercise. So I mentioned earlier that exercise helps our genital glands. So the key with exercise is moderation, like with everything. So 150 minutes a week is a great goal. That's what I stick to, because some days I won't get to exercise as much. So it might be 10 minutes here, then an hour there, but hopefully you can spread it out evenly, having some strength training. So strength training is great because you can do shorter sessions less frequently and that gives your muscles a challenge and the adrenal glands just the right amount of bump, without too much.

Speaker 1:

And then we want to balance it out with something where we can calm those. So with mind-body practices, which we'll practice here in a few minutes, and that's like yoga, tai chi and grounding that we'll practice together, and with exercise we want to have some kind of recovery period, because if we do too much, oddly enough, we can put strain on those adrenal glands and make them not feel so good. So grounding, simple exercises where we want to match our energy to Earth's energy, and it's a number of ways we can do that and we'll actually be talking about that here in a few minutes. We can do that and we'll actually be talking about that here in a few minutes. But grounding is a great way to connect with your body and start to get a sense of your adrenal glands and their health.

Speaker 1:

Right before we started I actually took myself outside and did a little bit of grounding with a tree in my yard. I just stood there and decided I was going to make some natural vitamin D in the sun, because we actually had sun. We'd had bad weather here and in my area, so soaked up a little sun, soaked up a little grounding energy just to keep my adrenal glands from going haywire before we got started. So this brings us to the conclusion of our adrenal glands.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Dr. Charlyce

Host