Thyroid - Part 2
The Stress/Cortisol Connection
Your stress reaction, adrenals, and thyroid are intimately connected. In this part, you will see how chronic stress over time can depress your thyroid, which can become a diagnosis of hypothyroid.
Here’s the problem - chronic stress, high cortisol, and/or adrenal fatigue are rarely diagnosed. There aren’t any reliable tests through your GP (but can be diagnosed through a Naturopathic Doctor or Functional Medicine Doctor). This means, for many, a hypothyroid diagnosis is the first moment that the repercussions of chronic stress make themselves known.
For others, you may have years of high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and/or high cholesterol, which can also be signs of chronic stress.
But, mostly, you just feel pretty darn exhausted, overwhelmed, and fried.
I’m going to take you through the reasons why your adrenals and thyroid are so connected, but if you’d like the short version, here it is:
Your adrenals manage your fight/flight/freeze reaction, which can save your life anytime you’re in a dangerous situation.
Your thyroid manages everything else – all of the body systems needed to keep you healthy, happy, and healed when you’re not in danger.
To make sure your adrenals always get what they need to keep you alive, the body prioritizes its hormones. And they do this quite ingeniously. Both your adrenals and thyroid share the same hormone pre-cursors. Your body always gives the pre-cursors to your adrenals first, once they’ve got what they need then your thyroid gets a turn at making hormones.
Over time, this hormone priority to your adrenals can show up on blood work as low levels of thyroid hormone and a diagnosis of hypothyroidism.
That’s it in a nutshell :). And now for the longer, more in-depth version:
The full adrenal/thyroid story
We now know there’s a strong connection in the body between our immune system, nervous system, and endocrine (hormonal) systems. Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) is a relatively new field of research and they have proven that there’s a connection between our stress and emotions with our immunity, mood, cognitive function, and hormones.
This field of research (finally!) reconnected our brain/head to the rest of our body’s function, something that was missing in western medicine until the 1980s. Frankly, it’s still an undervalued connection in medicine, but at least it’s being studied!
PNI researchers study the HPA axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis). This is a chain of nerves and hormones that keep your body in balance (homeostasis) and decide if we’re in fight/flight or rest/repair mode.
Stress is supposed to be a short-lived response. Think about animals in the wild, they use up a lot of resources to run away from a predator, but once they’re safe they quickly go back to eating or resting. Humans are unique, we can worry. We can trigger a stress response even when the environment is perfectly safe.
Our big, smart brains can’t seem to turn off the stress, and our current life demands don’t help the situation. We live in a time when rest is seen as “lazy” and being stressed out is a sign of being a productive member of society. This isn’t true, but it’s a deep-seated belief in our society.
So, for us humans, we tend to be in the stressed state more often than we’re relaxed, which is the opposite of what the HPA system was created to do. Oftentimes, the stressed state feels so normal that we don’t even notice it.
For me, I didn’t realize I was stressed out all of the time until I was in my mid-30s, and it was years before I developed techniques to rewire my brain to a calmer state. It was then that I really saw how much I lived inside a stress-triggered state constantly. (I’ll share ways to re-wire your brain at the end of this section :).
This is what happens when we’re under stress:
Every time stress is triggered in your body; your body does a few things to keep you alive.
It increases:
Your focus and concentration, makes you hyper-aware
Your blood sugar so you have plenty of energy to run or fight
Your insulin levels so your cells can use the glucose in your blood
Inflammation so your body can heal wounds
Your cholesterol levels so you don’t bleed out if you get injured
To save energy, so you have the resources to save your life, your HPA axis reduces:
Your digestion – that food you’ve eaten has to wait it out until you’re relaxed, causing many digestive symptoms
Your reproduction – your fertility and sexuality use a lot of energy, energy that needs to be used to keep you alive
Your metabolism – it dials it down so you can conserve energy, it also requests that some of that energy gets stored for later (usually around your waist)
This means that the high cortisol energy burst that’s triggered by stress also causes digestive issues, hormonal imbalances (PMS, perimenopausal symptoms), low libido, and extra weight around the waist.
This is why we can’t talk about thyroid issues without talking about stress. The stress state dials down thyroid function and causes many of the hypothyroid and digestive systems many are dealing with today.
But, it’s not just life stress that can trigger the HPA axis to pull us over to the stress state.
Other things that put us into a stress state:
Emotional stress, childhood trauma, unprocessed emotions
Food triggers/food sensitivities
Gut bacteria imbalances
Toxic overload (overloaded liver)
We’re going to look at many of these in Part 3 & 4. If you feel that emotional stress is keeping you in a stressed state, you’re not alone and there’s help. Talk therapy, EMDR, biofeedback, hypnosis, and so many other techniques can help you quiet your stress triggers and bring some awareness to them. Many of these techniques have helped me immensely.
The world in 2021
At the time I’m writing this (April 2021), we’re 13 months into a global pandemic, smack dab inside a third wave (I’m in Canada), and collectively, we’re really feeling it.
I’ve been seeing a lot of low energy, adrenal fatigue, and overwhelm/exhaustion over the last few months. If you’re feeling this way, you’re not alone. And, your body can recover.
Giving yourself time and space to relax, rest, and repair can help your body enormously.
How to wire your brain for relaxation
I honestly feel that right now, choosing to relax is a political act. It’s deeply anti-capitalist and against the belief that your worth is determined by what you accomplish…and it’s so so so so very nourishing.
And, you don’t have to be “good” at relaxing to feel the benefit. When I first started meditating, I was a TERRIBLE meditator (frankly, I still am). My brain would spin and spin and I could easily spend the first 15 mins thinking about this or that before I even noticed those thoughts.
But, that didn’t matter. The act of noticing I was thinking and going back to my breath was all I needed to do. I started to feel a noticeable change in my day-to-day stress level within a month or two, and I was just meditating 2 days a week.
It’s all about the practice of relaxing, of finding calm. All of the benefits are in the practice. And research has found that your body benefits from your very first experience!
Here are some ways to practice finding that calm state:
Create space to relax – add it to your to-do list if necessary. Grab a favourite novel to escape in and enjoy :)
Keep your blood sugar balanced so you don’t inadvertently trigger extra cortisol to fix a crash.
Meditation – This literally rewires your brain so you can find calm. If you struggle, try using guided meditations (Headspace, Chopra Centre, Calm, etc). 15 mins is a sweet spot, but start with 5 mins if that feels more comfortable to you
Hang out with some tree friends – study after study has found that hanging out with trees (or even just looking at them) can quickly bring us into a relaxed state.
Explore your stress/emotional load – bring some awareness to how you feel each day and be curious about what triggers stress.
Learn to say no – Saying yes to something you don’t want to do can be a big cause of stress and overwhelm.
I’m working on this one myself and I find that it takes practice and kindness toward myself when my inner people pleaser says yes before I have a chance to see if I actually want to do it. But, I can already see a big difference in my overall stress level with just a few kind no thank-yous :)
Keep this in mind – every single minute you spend in the relaxed state is giving your thyroid lots of love. Don’t worry if you only have a couple of minutes a day, use the time you’ve got and your body will respond.
And maybe, if you have a couple of free minutes, get some tree love ❤️
Got any questions or comments? Comment below, jump to our private Facebook Group, or the Ask Lisa page :)