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Sep 6, 2017

How to Promote Adrenal Stress Testing In Your Practice

by Dr. Dan Kalish

The Big Five Symptoms and How They Relate to the Adrenal Glands - Saliva Index Test

There are two basic techniques you can use to promote the adrenal stress testing in your practice. One is to put out one-liners such as these examples below as you work with patients and ask them what their current health concerns are. Another easy to use technique is to use the various questionnaires that go with each module of this class. You can memorize a few of your favorite questions from each questionnaire and ask them of each patient on a given day. You’ll be surprised by the conversations you get started and how easily this leads to them wanting to do an adrenal test.
  1. Weight gain Adrenal hormones and body fat one liner scripts:
    • Cortisol, the main adrenal hormone, is a “glucocorticosteroid.” In other words, one of cortisol’s major functions is to work with insulin to keep your blood sugar stable.
    • If cortisol is out of balance your body will store body fat rather than burn fat for fuel easily.
    • When your cortisol is out of balance you have what we call a “damaged metabolism” meaning your normal fat burning mechanism is broken.
    • If you skip a meal, eat too many carbs, eat sweets or over eat, your cortisol will be out of balance and you’ll damage your metabolism.
    • We can test and correct your cortisol and fix your broken metabolism with an adrenal stress profile #201 from Biohealth.
  2. Fatigue Adrenal hormones and fatigue one liner scripts:
    • The most common cause for fatigue is adrenal exhaustion or adrenal burnout. This means that because of some long-term period of stress, your cortisol levels became depleted. Even if the stress was in the past you could still be suffering from exhausted adrenal glands now.
    • If you are under stress now from one of three areas your adrenal glands could be burned out. The three main sources of stress are emotional, dietary and pain/inflammatory. A lot of my patients have all three.
    • Emotional stress like the death of someone you are close to, or work or financial related stress can add up and deplete your adrenal glands, causing fatigue.
    • Long-term pain depletes cortisol and causes fatigue and adrenal burn out.
    • Having a second or third child is often a significant source of stress for women and can be a time when the adrenal glands burn out and fatigue starts.
    • If you have long term fatigue we can test and correct your cortisol levels with an adrenal stress test and bring your energy levels back to normal with a lab based supplement program.
  3. Depression Adrenal hormones and depression one liner scripts:
    • When the adrenal hormones cortisol and DHEA are depleted or low, we become depressed from the physical exhaustion that takes place.
    • Up and down moods throughout the day as well as irritability often reflect unstable cortisol levels.
    • People feel what we call “wired and tired” from adrenal exhaustion -they can get amped up and even anxious but at the same time have burned out and down moments throughout the day as the cortisol levels bounce up and down.
    • With a salivary adrenal stress test we can measure these hormones and correct any imbalance to create more energy, more stable moods and a general sense of well being that many of us have lost as we struggle with the impact of chronic stress.
  4. Female Hormonal Imbalance
    • Cortisol, the main adrenal hormone, is made from progesterone, so every molecule of cortisol you produce when you are under stress depletes your progesterone levels.
    • The more stress you are under the more female hormone imbalances will occur as your progesterone levels drop.
    • PMS symptoms like cramping, sweet cravings, mood swings and irritability will respond really well to a lab based adrenal hormone program. As we normalize cortisol levels, progesterone levels will improve.
    • Progesterone is the pro-gestational hormone, it keeps the uterine lining intact through the second half of the menstrual cycle
    • Peri-menopausal and menopausal symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, memory problems and mood swings are caused by a drop in estrogen.
    • Estrogen is made from DHEA, one of the major adrenal hormones, so the more exhausted the adrenal glands become the more low estrogen symptoms women develop.
    • If we test and correct your cortisol and DHEA levels with an adrenal stress test your female hormone related symptoms will improve significantly. For many patients they go away completely.
  5. GI Problems
    • The immune cells that line our digestive tract are regulated by cortisol, so if your cortisol is out of balance you become prone to develop digestive symptoms like bloating, heartburn, constipation or diarrhea.
    • The more stress we are under the more out of range our cortisol becomes, and as our cortisol is depleted the digestive system starts to react poorly to foods and we run the risk of picking up pathogens like candida, a fungal organism.
    • Most people are familiar with ulcers being exacerbated by stress. This is a good example of the connection between cortisol, stress and digestive functioning.
    • If we can start an anti-inflammatory diet and cut out gluten, then test and correct your cortisol levels we can start to get your digestive system on the road to healing.
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Dr. Dan Kalish

Dr. Dan Kalish

Founder of the Kalish Institute
Dan Kalish, DC, IFMCP, is founder of the Kalish Institute, an online practice implementation training program dedicated to building Integrative and Functional Medicine practices through clinical and business courses.