In this segment of Functional Medicine Back to Basics Dr. Rutherford discusses the adrenals and their roll in chronic conditions.

Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

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I several points that I really want to hit, because when I first got into this, I got into it in a different way than a lot of people get into alternative medicine. And I wasn’t brought up on the. If you can’t fix the adrenals, you can’t fix anything much from, and in fact I had a I had a doctor one day.

I was sitting here in my doctors quarters and he he was just going into functional medicine and he he was coming over here to see. If we had some extra equipment, we could help him with and, and he looked in the door, it said doc I’m.

Going into functional metastasis can’t fix anything. If you don’t fix the adrenals, and I went like oh yeah that’s. True, it’s kind of not true. We already have a presentation online from several years ago on, I think it’s called the adrenals or the wrong target.

I mean if I would, if I would edit that I would probably say they aren’t, always the initial target and meaning that my experience with the adrenal glands prior to the then, where have been any functional medicine doctor that you went to well, There was no functional medicine, then any alternative doctor or alternative medical doctor that you went into two things they always did.

They always gave you something for your thyroid and they always gave you something for your adrenals. Either they gave you a cortisol boost for your adrenals. They give you a shot for your adrenals. They gave you a supplement support.

They gave you something for your adrenals because duh everybody ‘ S stressed out right. So it’s. The adrenals you can’t fix anything because the adrenals do a lot of things. The adrenals are the they really are given their dubai, being called stress, glands, because then it makes everybody think that it’s, all about emotional stress, and certainly it’s about emotional stress that can be about.

Eventually, it can be about mental stress, it can be about unhealthy relationships. All of those things can create stress hormones that will or situations where your pituitary glands time your adrenal to put out stress hormones, but it’s, but there’s.

So many things that affect the adrenals and so, for example, you you can have food sensitivities. If you have food sensitivities, let me let me step back on this. So what happens when they? How do how the adrenals get activated? Basically, something happens where you either hit the fear center of your brain.

We’ll, go with the mental stress first, that hits the fear center of your brain, so that is called the amygdala. So your frontal lobe here goes there’s. Danger I don’t like this. I don’t like that person.

I’m, not happy with this situation, and and – and it tells this part of your brain called the amygdala to that and that’s. The fear center, your brain, that we need energy. We need energy because I’m, going into kind of a little fight flight response here or a big fight flight response, and then that amygdala tells the party a part of your midbrain.

Your brain stem. Where your fight/flight response neurons are, your sympathetic nervous system is what it’s called to tell your adrenals be to start putting out stress hormones, and then they puts out the stress hormones of it puts out aldosterone, which raises your blood pressure, puts out Glucocorticoids cortisol cortisol has a tremendous effect on your blood sugar.

When you’re, a fight flight, you want blood sugar going to your certain parts of your brain, your big muscles in your legs. You want you want going to the big muscles in your and your butt and your thighs and your hand strings everywhere, that you need to fight or flee.

Okay, yeah it puts out it puts out up a nephron. It puts out hormones that will that will cause your lungs to cause you to start breathing dilate. Your bronchioles so puts out a number of things. It’s at that point.

It literally shuts down your sex hormones and a lot of people. Aren’t aware that their adrenal glands during their productive years or their secondary second sex glands, and for those of you who are female once you have stopped your your productive years and you’ve morphed over into menopause.

The baton has now been handed over to the adrenal glands as your primary sex glands, and you cannot make stress, hormones and sex hormones at the same time, and you can maybe see where that’s going okay, so the adrenal glands are highly underappreciated.

Okay, if you get stressed and and and and then – and they put out all these all these hormones and and and and so one of the hormones being cortisol when that goes up, that stress hormone will also mobilize sugar from your liver.

Okay, you have your store sugar and your liver, mainly for when you’re asleep, so that you can drip it out and keep your brain functioning, because your brain needs blood sugar and when that cortisol spikes up your blood sugar spikes up and eventually It’ll sensitize, your your your receptor sites, to where you end up developing high blood sugar from stress okay.

Now most people know that most people know that the adrenal glands or stress glands, and they wear you out, but almost almost everything forget the other hormones for now. Almost everything in your in your physiology, almost anything that happens to your system that creates an inflammatory response.

Is going to stress your adrenal glands, so stressing just stresses and just emotional stress it’s like if you’re. If you’re talking in the science world, you know, if you’re talking in the world of engineering there’s.

You know they talk about the world of stresses on on beams as they’re building. Buildings here think of stress as like, like that it’s like if you have a bad intestinal problem. If you have leaky gut our air and and and and you start to develop inflammation in your intestines, that’s, going to raise cortisol that is going to and that’s, going to raise your blood, sugar and and that’s going to put a lot of stress on your system.

If you have a viral or a bacterial infection, and your immune system excuse me, and your immune system is trying desperately to get that. Maybe so we’re working. Usually there’s, a little inflammatory response with it.

First gonna have stress on your dream: glands, because that’s. Gon na raise cortisol inflammation raises cortisol. Cortisol then does its thing: okay, which in which which creates more inflammation and it and and it messes up your blood sugar.

If you have food sensitivities and – and we already talked about blood sugar, bio – you’re gonna hear me mention blood sugar – a number of times here, because blood sugar tracks with your adrenal glands.

So if your adrenal glands are initially activated and and you’re excited and your stress – you’re, putting out blood sugar. If you do that for long enough, we’re going to talk about that, then what happens? Is your adrenal glands are going to go to in what people like to call adrenal fatigue.

Adrenal exhaustion I’ve, heard all kinds of names for it, but that takes a while to happen. It could take 20 years for that to happen, and when that happens, then your blood sugar drops, because you can’t put out cortisol and it’s.

Gon na be hard for you to get your blood sugar up. If you have low blood sugar and low blood sugar is a big big problem, you can look at ours. You can look at our presentation on low blood sugar so back to the things that can cause that everything you can.

You can have food. You can have food since activities, you’re gonna have food sensitivities, and these food sensitives will create an inflammatory response, and next thing you know your blood. Sugar is all over the place, because your adrenal glands have been stressed.

They’re, putting out cortisol, your cortisol is flying up and down and and and I could go on – you cut your left – toe cut your left toe it’s. Stress on your adrenal. Glands pain is stress on your adrenal glands.

Those of you are in chronic pain. Those are your fibromyalgia patients, peripheral neuropathy patients, people who are worried because they have a problem. This is now back to the mental stress, so so the adrenal glands they take a lot of hits.

Is why the reason your blood pressure goes up is because the adrenal glands put out aldosterone that works with with with some chemicals, in your kidneys and, and that throws your blood pressure off. They should call the adrenal gland glands the homeostasis glands, and they and and and sometimes they should be, the first target and many times they shouldn’t be the first target, depending on how you’re.

Going about this. I have a lot of people that come in here and they’ve, been to alternative government medical doctors. I have nothing against alternative medical doctors just for they’re just so you know.

So you know I refer to alt