Talking Adrenal Fatigue and Circadian Rhythm with Dr. Joel Rosen

Talking Adrenal Fatigue and Circadian Rhythm with Dr. Joel Rosen

After realizing he was suffering from adrenal fatigue and finding a serious lack of practical, understandable, and legitimate information out there, Dr. Joel Rosen found his way to recovery and decided to help others who were suffering the same fate. In today’s show, he shares how a dysregulated circadian rhythm can contribute to so many of the symptoms most everyone is suffering from today from fatigue to brain fog, insomnia, impatience, stress, and more, with the root cause being adrenal fatigue. Taking direction on an ailment from someone who has been there, especially with something like adrenal fatigue can be so supportive. Considering that mainstream medicine doesn’t even recognize it as a legitimate diagnosis, makes it harder to find practitioners who can support you in this little known, but very common energy problem known as adrenal fatigue. Dr. Joel Rosen runs a private practice in Florida focused around adrenal fatigue recovery, and is known not only as a functional medicine and health expert, but he’s also a data tracker as well.  He knows the importance of tracking the data to see what is working, and using that data to course correct when things are ‘off’.  You can find Dr. Joel Rosen on Instagram, YouTube, his Podcast The Truth About Adrenal Fatigue, and his website. Join Dave Korsunsky, Founder of Heads Up Health as he sits down with Dr. Joel Rosen and talks all things adrenal fatigue related in today’s episode. Listen in iTunes! This podcast is brought to you by Heads Up Health, a web app designed to help you centrally track all of your vital health data. Instantly synchronize your medical records, connect your favorite health devices and apps and use your data to optimize your health! Click on the button below to start your free 30-day trial. Or, read on for more information about our latest podcast episode!

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In this podcast you’ll learn:

  • About Dr. Joel Rosen’s own experience with adrenal fatigue and how he was introduced to the term adrenal fatigue that would change the course of his professional career [3:40]
  • How saliva testing can reveal how your cortisol rhythm can get backward affecting sleep and energy production [5:10]
  • About the HPA – Axis and what it is [6:35]
  • That adrenal fatigue is not accepted by mainstream medicine as a legitimate diagnosis, which is why you may not have heard of it before [7:00]
  • What the ACTH Test shows and how its not useful in diagnosing adrenal fatigue which is different than adrenal failure [7:40]
  • The difference between a broken adrenal system vs. a broken energy production system [9:00]
  • How the body’s system of priorities change as the adrenal response lessens [10:30]
  • The HPA Axis is the brain’s perception of the stress which is actually called the A-HPA Axis. The Amygdala -> Hypothalamus -> pituitary -> Adrenals and the negative feedback loop which tells the system to turn on and off as needed, and how with repeated stress, the system breaks down in it’s functioning [11:00]
  • About the thermostat analogy of the adrenals negative feedback loop functioning [12:02]
  • How finding the underlying issues that are stressing your body are key to recoveries, such as gut imbalances, and underlying infections, lifestyle changes, blood sugar regulation, spiritual support, nutrition [13:15]
  • Hans Selye in the 1960s identified the initial triad of things that happen to the adrenals as [15:00]
    • The adrenals hypertrophy or get bigger
    • Thymus gland gets smaller
    • Erosive ulcers/linings
  • How supporting spirituality can be a limiting factor when you’ve addressed the other pieces, and prevent healing. Healing adrenal fatigue is not a quick fix [16:00]
  • That it comes down to perception and you need awareness of that. “I am in control of that most important voice at the highest level” has to be your mindset to overcome it [18:10]
  • That high levels of cortisol for long periods of time messes up your front part of your brain affecting focus, concentration, sequential planning, moral behaviors, etc.[20:02]
  • A simple thing to help lower stress is starting a gratitude list daily [21:10]
  • Some of the simple things you can do to help a broken stress system are to reset your circadian rhythm by living with nature by waking with the sun and limit light exposure after dark [21:40]
  • About Dave’s routine for winding down at the end of the day to lower his own cortisol levels and maintaining the natural circadian rhythms that he starts an hour before bed [22:30]
  • How to reset your sleep by eating within a 12-hour window, finishing meals well before bedtime, meditating, getting light during the day, limiting light after dark, use your technology to track and make tweaks that are specific to you to find out what works for you [24:20]
  • What tests Dr. Joel Rosen suggests testing for gut problems to support adrenal fatigue, and how the Secretory IgA test can be an indicator for more testing in a saliva panel [27:50]
  • That low cholesterol is a red flag for an absorption issue. Low protein, albumin, globulin, BUN, chloride, enzymes, are all indications of protein absorption issues secondary to microbes [29:00]
  • GI MAP for DNA mapping can show more than some of the older GI tests, which may miss imbalances picked up in the GI MAP [30:00]
  • Start testing your blood sugar surrounding your meals to see if that could be affecting your adrenals [31:20]
  • Sleep tracking can also help you to realize what is actually happening in your body, and you can make changes in your lifestyle and get feedback on how well changes are working for you [31:47]
  • HRV measures your sympathetic response system.  The higher the heart rate variability the better your ability to adapt to stress [32:20]
  • Regarding meditation and why the goal is not just for your mind to go blank, but to shift into a rest and digest state [34:30]
  • That if you focus too hard on the data tracking it can be counteractive, so track but don’t obsess [36:30]
  • How your readiness score with the Oura ring or other tracking devices is really relative to you and your normal, and understanding how to interpret the data is really important to keep cortisol levels normal [37:50]

References

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Learn more about LEVL, a clinical-grade ketone breath meter, which measures your level of fat-burning and ketosis through a simple breath. Find out more at HeadsUpHealth.com/LEVL. You can learn more about the Oura ring, a state of the art ring that can track sleep cycle analysis, activity, and recovery at HeadsUpHealth.com/Oura. Learn more about Keto-Mojo, a highly accurate and affordable device for testing blood sugar and blood ketones. Check it out at HeadsUpHealth.com/Ketomojo. All of these amazing products are integrated with Heads Up Health. They all allow you to quantify your health in novel and powerful ways. Thank you to our partners!

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Whittling Down Waist Size Using the Glucose Ketone Index with Keto-Mojo and Heads Up Health

Whittling Down Waist Size Using the Glucose Ketone Index with Keto-Mojo and Heads Up Health

The real power in using Heads Up Health with Keto-Mojo is being able to track and correlate biomarkers you care about, such as the GKI (Glucose Ketone Index) with other major health metrics, like body measurements.

The leader in consumer software for personal health data analytics, Heads Up Health allows you to see your progress over weeks, month, years — all in one place. When used together with Keto-Mojo, the leader in affordable, accurate blood glucose and ketone testing meters, they’re a powerful force for helping you get into ketosis, maintain keto-adaptation, and see the big picture of your metabolic health and body composition.

For example, our Social Media Manager, and avid Heads Up Health user, Lily Chien-Davis, correlated her GKI with her waist circumference measurements, whittling down her waist size while staying keto-adapted.

In the graph above, Lily shares how she used Keto-Mojo to track her glucose and ketones over the past 12 months, uploading those results to Heads Up Health where we automatically calculate the glucose-ketone index (GKI), a powerful biomarker for tracking your metabolic health. 

The graph speaks for itself as Lily slashed over five inches off her waist circumference!

Lily first discovered the glucose ketones index as a biomarker when her husband was diagnosed with cancer in 2014. They used a therapeutic ketogenic diet as an adjunct to conventional treatment, consulting with Miriam Kalamian [1] and following the advice of cancer researcher, author [2] and inventor of the GKI, Thomas N Seyfried and his advice to keep the glucose ketone index low, “tracking the ratio of blood glucose to ketones as a single value”, in an effort to blast the tumors near her husband’s aorta. [3]

As they both carefully monitored his glucose ketone index and watched his tumors rapidly shrink, she began eating keto too, surprised, as someone diagnosed with pre-diabetes, to watch her own HbA1c go down, from 5.9% to 5.2%. In 2016, she discovered Heads Up Health while listening to keto podcasts (i.e., Jimmy Moore, Ketovangelist, 2 Keto Dudes). Both she and her husband immediately signed up, excited to track their glucose, ketones, and GKI alongside their medical records and body composition data, such as weight and waist size.

Since then, Lily has never looked back.

Instead of using a scale to track her weight every day, which can be maddening because weight loss is never linear, she tracks her GKI alongside her waist circumference and weight once a month using our measurements feature. In the beginning she also tracked her macros, but now relies solely on eating an intuitive keto-paleo and sometimes carnivore diet, preferring to track her GKI regularly, using the graphing feature in Heads Up Health’s Analyzer to reflect on her progress, helping her stay motivated.

Here’s Lily’s before/after photos and you can see how great she looks. Most importantly, she FEELS awesome, both mentally and physically.

“Tracking with Keto-Mojo and Heads Up Health helped me to stay in ketosis and keto-adapted for over a year, giving me accountability and motivation to keep keto-ing on. Although I’m not completely where I’d like to be just yet, I’m free of all prescription meds, happier and healthier than I’ve ever been. My husband is now almost 4 years in remission and we recently sold our house to move into, travel and worldschool our kid in a RV, a dream we hatched up during long days of chemo infusions. People say keto is restrictive, that it’s a fad diet, but because I’ve used it for mental and physical health, it’s just a way of life for me now. The rest — feeling younger, more energy to actually want to exercise, mental clarity, and better body composition — is just icing on the cake!” – Lily Chien-Davis

It takes a lot of courage to share this information so please give Lily a shout-out on Instagram (@hellbentonbliss). We love you Lily!

Ready to get started? Enter your first set of baseline measurements, get yourself into nutritional ketosis and track your success!

We’ve included a little video tutorial below to help you get started.

Questions? Hit us up!

Keto on!

Dave Korsunsky | Founder

VIDEO: Gimme that Mojo! Tracking the GKI and Your Waist Circumference

[1] Miriam Kalamian

[2] Cancer as a Metabolic Disease by Thomas N. Seyfried, PhD

[2] The glucose ketone index calculator: a simple tool to monitor therapeutic efficacy for metabolic management of brain cancer