How to Beat Adrenal Fatigue Naturally

Here is the transcript for the video-Overcoming Adrenal Fatigue Naturally.

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Doctor Osborne:	Hi, everybody. This is Doctor Osborne. Welcome to Live Web Wellness University on a Friday afternoon. I’m happy to be with you today and take on your questions.
	Today’s topic we’re going to be talking about is adrenal burn out. Might have heard these terms. Adrenal burn, adrenal failure, adrenal fatigue. We’re going to be taking all your questions regarding that, but before we get started what I’d like you to do if you haven’t already, go ahead and hit “Like” or “Love” in the Facebook comment section. Share this with somebody who you love, so that we can get as many people on here listening to this information. If you haven’t already, go ahead and go to DrPeterOsborne.com or glutenfreesociety.org and sign up for our updates and our free newsletter so that we can continue to give you wonderful, great information.
	Let’s do a little bit of housekeeping. Those of you who hear my voice coming in loud and clear, just hit “Yes”, type in “Yes” in your comments box there. Just make sure that my speakers are coming in loud and clear to you. Nothing would be worse than to do an entire hour today, talking to myself, so go ahead and chime in for me before we get started, before I start diving into the day’s topic, which is again adrenal burnout, fatigue, failure. There are a lot of different names out there for it.
	Excellent, everybody’s coming in. I’m coming in loud and clear. We’ve got lots of folks on today. Maria’s saying, “Hello from Mexico. Already changing my life with the no grain diet.” Thanks for coming with us and chiming in with us today, Maria. I’m super happy that my book is helping you find some solutions in your health and in your life. Thanks for letting me know that. That’s wonderful to hear.
	Susan is chiming in, “Hello from … ” I guess you say that Wenatchee, Washington. I hope I didn’t mangle that too bad. Hello, Susan. Nice to have you joining us.
	Elvera is chiming in as well. “Thanks, Doctor Osborne. I’m finally healing from my secondary adrenal insufficiency. My endo has been treating me with steroids and I’m almost off them, but it’s been a long journey. My body’s finally making an adequate amount of cortisol in the morning after years of it only being 0.4 in the morning.” That’s fantastic to hear, Elvera. Thanks for joining us today.
	I’m excited to talk about this topic. Bev is chiming in, wish she could be here. Bev, we’ll have this replay up for you here soon, so don’t worry about missing today. We’re going to have that for you.
	Let’s get into the bulk of the conversation today. Again, we’re going to be talking about adrenal burnout, adrenal failure, adrenal fatigue. It comes by many names, depends on who you talk to. Now, historically, adrenal failure or adrenal burnout was somewhat discovered by a man by the name of Hans Selye is what we call the Stress Theory. He’s the, kind of the father of the Stress Theory of Disease. He was observing African animals, particularly zebras and their responses to stress. A lot of what we know about the adrenal glands and a lot about what we know about stress response comes from the great work of Hans Selye. I wouldn’t want to have this conversation without bringing his name up. For those of you who want to go and learn more about this, you could type Hans, H-A-N-S, Selye, S-E-L-Y-E. You can type his name in and you can find and read some of the work that he did on the adrenal glands and on the stress response.
	Let’s talk about what exactly does adrenal burnout mean. Adrenal burnout, adrenal fatigue, adrenal failure. Again, they’re different terminologies, but they also basically mean the same thing. I’m going to give you an analogy to work with here because with the adrenal glands, we talk about burnout. What does that mean? All organs in our body have a particular, let’s say reserve or a gas tank, if you will. They can only do so much. If we abuse them, they will only last and adapt and help us to the next the extent of our abuse of them.
	One of the perfect examples of this … I’m going to talk about adrenals, but I’m going to talk about diabetes as an analogy because most of you probably know what diabetes is. You’ve probably heard of diabetes. What happens with diabetes is a person basically and I’m not talking about type I diabetes or diabetes insipidus. I’m talking about type II adult onset diabetes, the kind that’s lifestyle induced. With most people with type II diabetes what happens is they neglect themselves, right? They eat too much sugar. They eat too many carbohydrates. They don’t exercise. They have a very sedentary lifestyle. They don’t get adequate sunshine. They don’t get adequate sleep. They do all these things, all these behaviors that contribute to over time an elevation in their blood sugar.
	Then what happens before diabetes, this is all what happens before diabetes sets in, is their blood sugar is erratic. They go through stages of hyper and hypo, meaning too much and then too little blood sugar. Then what happens is the pancreas, which is the organ that helps to regulate blood sugar through the production of a hormone called insulin, the pancreas produces insulin to try to regulate or compensate for that hyper, too much blood sugar. The pancreas produces more insulin. This is in the initial five to ten to 15 years of the person abusing themselves. The pancreas responds by making more insulin to compensate for the person’s bad behavior.
	Over that period of time, the more the person has bad behavior, the less organ reserve the pancreas has to continue to produce the insulin. Over time, the pancreas gets tired. It can’t keep up with the demand and so the insulin levels can actually, initially they’re very high, but over time they start to drop. When they start to drop, blood sugar starts to rise and it takes about, for most people, it can take about 20 years for diabetes to be diagnosed. That’s because the pancreas is such a remarkable organ and it has the capacity to basically keep up, to protect you and to adapt to your bad behavior.
	Well, just like the pancreas can do that adaptation, the adrenal glands can do that adaptation too. What we have … remember, let’s talk about what the adrenal glands are for, first of all. They’re the two little, walnut-shaped organs on the top of either kidney. You’ve got two adrenal glands on the top of your kidneys. They have a couple of main functions. One is the outside or part of the adrenal gland produces some hormones. One of the hormones regulates … well, how do I want to put this? Part of your adrenal gland produces cortisol. Cortisol is the hormone that helps to, basically it helps to control inflammation and it helps to mobilize blood sugar. It helps to mobilize fat.
	Cortisol is one of those hormones that when we’re low energy and we need to mobilize more energy, we make more cortisol to do that, but we can also make cortisol to help us battle inflammation. That’s one of the hormones that is important for adrenal production or output.
	One of the other hormones that’s very important are the catecholamines. Now these are, you’ve probably heard of these, adrenaline and noradrenaline. These hormones are made by the adrenal glands as well. That’s why they’re called adrenal glands. Adrenaline, adrenal glands. Some people call these epinephrine or norepinephrine. It’s the same thing. Adrenaline is the same thing as epinephrine. Noradrenaline is the same thing as norepinephrine, but okay, so it just depends on which side of the pond you’re on, if you’re in the UK or if you’re in the US. Here in the US, we call it adrenaline and noradrenaline.
	The adrenal glands, again, make those two hormones and those hormones are responsible for the fight or flight component. Now fight or flight has to do with, if you don’t remember your high school biology, the flight or flight system is we make adrenaline when our body perceives a threat or a danger. Think of it like this. If somebody comes up behind you, scares you or is going to rob you, your body kicks on the adrenaline and goes into flight or flight mode. What happens is all the blood supply is shunted away from your gut. It’s shunted to your brain and to your muscles, so you can think, see and escape or fight back. The body’s really smart at that quick emergency threat adaptation and that’s what adrenaline helps us to do. That’s why that’s called fight or flight. Your body’s getting prepared to either flight or to flight, run away.
	Then the adrenal glands also produce something called mineral corticoids, like aldosterone. These are hormones that help regulate blood pressure, regulate mineral balance or electrolyte balance. There’s a lot of different important functions for the adrenal gland, so when you hear the term adrenal burnout or adrenal fatigue or adrenal failure, this process can occur with any of these different types of hormones that the adrenal is pumping out.
	What typically happens … Let’s kind of walk through a typical scenario of what a person might experience as their adrenal glands are initially adapting to their bad behaviors because just like diabetes is a disease of poor behavior, adrenal burnout is a disease of lifestyle as well, meaning when the adrenal glands go, it’s because of a lifestyle that is overburdened or overstressed. There are a number of different types of stresses or stressors that we’re exposed to, but the three common stressors … Those of you who know the concept of the triangle of health, which I talk about in my book No Grain, No Pain, I also talk about it on DrPeterOsborne.com, but it’s that triangle and there are three environmental stimulation areas and these three areas in our environment that we can control that basically can be forms of stress.
	We can have physical forms of stress, meaning one form of physical stress is not enough exercise. One form of physical stress is too much exercise. Those are examples of physical, actual physical stress. We can have emotional stress. You get in a fight with somebody you love. You have a job you hate. You go to work everyday and you’re miserable. You lose a loved one or you become depressed because something in your life isn’t going well. These are emotional stressors, things that we think about happening. Then we also have what are called biochemical stresses.
	Now biochemical stresses are stresses that occur as a result of what we put in. That can be food. That can be what food provides in the forms of vitamins, minerals and nutrients. It could be pollutants, what we breathe in or what we eat in, whether we’re eating garbage food, if we eat a bunch of processed food additives, etc. it could be food, things that come in food. Caffeine, for example, is a stimulant and drug and you can get it from caffeine, you can get it from coffee, you can get it from other things. Again, those are chemical inputs that can lead to or can tend to cause different types of stresses on the body.
	Now, let’s be clear about stress. Stress is not evil. Stress is not bad. Stress is very important. It’s kind of like this. Inflammation’s not evil. Inflammation is necessary for the body to normally function. Well, stress is necessary too. If you didn’t have stress, you wouldn’t wake up in the morning. Your brain would just stay asleep and you’d be in a comma. It’s the stress that actually helps us go through life and live our lives, so keep that in mind because stress is important.
	What happens with adrenal failure or adrenal burnout, now let’s start with adrenal fatigue because that’s what happens first. The adrenal glands just kind of get tired because they’re under so much stress. They’ve been trying to adapt and respond to that stress, whether that stress was chemical, physical or emotional. The adrenal glands are adapting by producing more of the stress hormones in response to that exposure to stress. Well, some stress hormones have an impact or an effect.
	Let’s say we start producing too much adrenaline. Well, what are the symptoms of producing too much adrenaline? One of the symptoms is jitteriness, shakiness. There’s an easy test you can actually do for yourself is just hold your hand out and hold it as steady as you can. What you’re looking for is you’re looking to see whether your hand is shaking. Now, some of you may, if you drink or eat caffeine-based foods, you might find that it causes your fingers to twitch or that you get jittery. That’s because caffeine stimulates the adrenaline from your adrenal glands. Well, if you’re in chronic state of stress or you’re over stimulating your stress response, that in and of itself can make you shaky, so if you hold your hand up and you can’t keep it nice and steady, nice and still that can be one of those things, one of those symptoms of an adrenal gland that’s being overly utilized or being over worked.
	If you’ve ever been in a situation where you were super nervous, maybe you got pulled over, a police officer was going to give you a ticket for speeding and it made you super nervous, so you were shaking. That’s your fight or flight. That’s your adrenaline being produced. Basically it’s super charging your muscles and it’s getting you ready to escape or run or to take action. Again, we have physical, chemical and emotional stressors. The more stress we’re under, the adrenal glands respond by producing hormones. Again, adrenaline will cause kind of a nervous energy. Think of it as a wired and tired energy. If you feel like you’re wired all the time, but you can’t go to sleep, that’s too much adrenaline in your life.
	One of the other things that can happen is you’ll over produce cortisol. Now, cortisol, as a hormone, is necessary to help to fight inflammation. When I say fight inflammation, I said before inflammation is normal, but too much inflammation is not. If you’ve got things in your life that are over contributing to inflammation, one of the concepts I talked about in No Grain, No Pain was grain-flammation. Grain consumption leading to chemical inflammation on the body causing the adrenal glands to over produce cortisol, at least initially. Cortisol’s just trying to put the fire out. It’s just trying to put out the chronic hyper-excited inflammation.
	In the process of doing that, cortisol is telling the liver to release fats and to release sugar, so blood sugar goes up and fats start getting released to burn so that you can burn energy and burn fuel. Then what happens is you get higher fat content in your blood, higher sugar content in your blood. That tells your pancreas to turn on and have to produce more insulin to try to get that sugar back out of your blood, into your cell to make energy and you end up with weight gain. This is one of the common things that starts to happen first.
	Now, that excessive sugar and that excessive fat actually will be restored as fat. This is one of the reasons why hyper cortisol excretion will lead to weight gain. Then one of the other things too much cortisol excretion will cause is water retention. If you’ve ever been given a steroid, like a corticosteroid or a prednisone and a lot of you listening who struggle with chronic autoimmune pain, you’ve probably been given low dose cortisol.
	You’ve probably been given some type of corticosteroid. You may even have had a doctor inject you in a joint with a corticosteroid or give you a, what’s called a measure all dose pack. It comes by many names. What happens is the longer you’re using those medications, you’re basically using them to suppress the inflammation and you’re not actually finding why the inflammation is there. That’s where the problem comes in because the drug does a great job of suppressing symptoms, but it causes muscle loss, it causes weight gain. What happens to your metabolism when you gain weight and lose muscle? Remember muscle sets your metabolic rates, so the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism, meaning the more energy you burn when you’re sitting still. The less muscle you have, the slower your metabolism, meaning that the less energy you burn while sitting still.
	What happens to people who have chronic inflammation? Initially their adrenal glands pump out tons of cortisol to battle that chronic inflammation. In that process of five, ten, 15 years, as they’re making, over producing cortisol, they’re creating … Remember cortisol is what we call a catabolic hormone. It breaks muscle tissue down over time. When you break down your muscle, you become less muscular, which makes your metabolism slow down, which means you store more fat.
	Now, when you shrink your muscle through over cortisol and having too much cortisol, that muscle starts to shrink. Those muscles shorten. They get tighter. What happens to muscles when they’re tighter around the joints? They compress the joints and that can lead to joint pain because the joints are now being compressed. You get this muscle shrinkage, joint compression. The joint compression then subsequently causes pain in the join. Now, you become sedentary. Think about this vicious cycle that can be created when you have a source of inflammation that your body’s just trying to adapt to by producing more cortisol to fight it. If you don’t deal with the underlying origin of the inflammation, your body will continue to try to adapt for you by punching out more and more cortisol.
	When your adrenal glands start to get tired again, i.e. adrenal fatigue, those symptoms start to set in. That’s why people with adrenal fatigue start to gain weight. They start to lose their muscle. They start to become super, super tired. They become exercise intolerant. What does that mean? That means if they try to exercise, it wipes them out for two or three days. If they try to exercise, their muscles get so sore, they can’t recover well the next day, so they’re off in bed and they’re calling in sick at work and they just can’t function. That’s adrenal fatigue. It’s when your body is so under stress for such a long period of time that you can’t match that stress with adrenal hormones and now your body has started to break down as a result of years of too much stress. Now your body is not responding to that adrenal output. This is why what ends up happening then and when the organ starts to fail, when the adrenal glands start to fail or burn out, your cortisol levels go down. They just start to plummet, whereas initially they went way up.
	Remember what I said. When they go way up, it causes you to gain fat, lose muscle, compress your joints, have joint pain, become more sedentary, gain more fat, lose more muscle. That’s this vicious cycle or pattern. Then you become exercise intolerant. Then you get to this point where you can no longer produce your own cortisol effectively or efficiently. Now you develop chronic pain, muscle pain, joint pain, arthritis. Okay. Then you go to the doctor. The doctor says, “Well, let’s put you on a low dose steroid, corticosteroid” and you feel wonderful. You feel wonderful because where you weren’t making any steroid before, now you’ve got this artificial exogenous steroid coming in and you feel almost like you’re you again.
	That works for a short period of time. Most people get a few months out of that before the doctor has to go back and increase the dose. Then the doctor increases maybe from two and a half to five milligrams. That works for only a short period of time before they’ve got to go and increase the dose again. Then the more they have to increase the dose, most people can kind of come up and get around to 15 to 20 milligrams of their daily dose. This is dangerous. This is super dangerous. Even at five a day is dangerous long-term and here’s why. Long-term corticosteroid use causes muscle atrophy. Remember that you’re still in that vicious cycle. Just because your own adrenal glands aren’t working, doesn’t mean that taking the hormone is fixing the problem. It’s actually creating more and more of the weight gain, more and more of the water retention, more and more of the muscle loss and it’s creating, recreating and feeding this vicious cycle.
	Also important to understand that long-term use of steroids creates some very, very big nutritional problems. One of them is calcium deficiency. Long-term use of steroids can actually create bone loss, osteoporosis, initially osteopenia, but it can lead to bone loss. If you’re already one of those people who have actually been diagnosed with an osteopenia or an osteoporosis and you’ve got a doctor wanting to pump you full of steroids for long periods of time, this is actually contraindication. Shame on that doctor for not telling you that, if that’s the case. This is a contraindication. No doctor should try to do that to you knowing that about your history. You shouldn’t be a candidate for corticosteroid usage. You have bone loss already, but remember long-term corticosteroid use causes bone loss. It causes calcium deficiency, magnesium deficiency, vitamin D deficiency and vitamin C deficiency. These nutrients are super, super critical.
	Why? Why are they so critical? Well, what does calcium do? Obviously calcium is important for bone mineralization, but what else does calcium do? Calcium is an electrolyte. As an electrolyte, it helps your nerves talk to your other nerves. It helps your nerves talk to your muscles. It helps your nerves talk to your organs. If you don’t have calcium, if you’ve ever heard the term “calcium channel”, there are certain drugs designed to block calcium channels just because calcium channels help run the electrical properties or conductivity properties of your nervous system. When you start to run low on calcium, you can start to develop, initially what happens is agitation. You get irritable. People get brain fog and they get irritability because their nerves aren’t, they’re not synapsing very well because they don’t have calcium for that synapsing to occur.
	The second thing that can happen is depression. People get very, very depressed. Depression right now is a major, major, major problem in the US, actually in all industrialized countries around the world. Depression is one of the top diseases. It’s one of the top medicated diseases, but calcium deficiency can cause depression. Calcium deficiency can also cause muscle twitching, muscle spasms. If it’s bad enough, it will cause the feet and the calves to cramp up really, really bad, especially at night time. If you’re ever lying in your bed and your feet are just starting to ball up and you’re getting these painful cramps, the likelihood that you have a calcium issue is very, very high. Often times, taking a cal-mag, a calcium mixed with magnesium, is very, very helpful in that type of situation, especially if you’re one who’s been suffering with long-term adrenal burnout, a long-term adrenal failure.
	The cramping of the calcium deficiency can set in, but one of the other functions of calcium and very few people talk about this function, so take notes on this one, one of the functions of calcium is it’s called a secondary messenger function. What does that mean? When your hormones are in your bloodstream, they don’t just magically do stuff. They actually first have to attach to your cell walls and deliver that message to your DNA, so that your DNA then knows what to do. The hormones tell your DNA to make proteins or to do certain things.
	When a hormone comes and docks onto your cell membrane wall, it has to deliver its message to the DNA. Well, calcium is a secondary messenger. What that means is calcium is the delivery boy for the hormone. If the calcium, if you don’t have that calcium, the hormone will dock to the cell, but it can’t talk to the DNA because it doesn’t have a messenger boy to deliver the message. That’s why we call it a secondary messenger. Calcium’s a secondary messenger and it works for virtually all of your hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, serotonin, adrenaline, noradrenaline. All these different hormones when they bind to your cell, they use calcium as that secondary messaging system to deliver the message to the DNA, so that your hormones can actually function.
	This is why a lot of times the doctors will measure the hormone levels of a patient and the hormone levels are normal, but they still act like they have a hormone deficiency problem. The patient’s symptoms still match that of hormone deficiency. It’s because they don’t have calcium. That is one of the reasons why, not the only reason why, but that’s a very, very common reason why we might see that. Those are all just functions of calcium. If you’re taking long-term steroids, you’re actually suppressing calcium, you’re actually creating a deficiency of calcium.
	Now I said before, one of the other problems associated with long-term steroid use is vitamin D deficiency. Now vitamin D is technically it’s not even a vitamin. It’s a pro-hormone. It actually creates a hormone that regulates immune function. Vitamin D deficiency is directly linked as causative agent, meaning not an associative agent, meaning it’s not associated with certain diseases, it deficiency causes certain diseases. Vitamin D deficiency, we know, causes autoimmune disease. Vitamin D deficiency causes 19 different types of terminal cancers. Vitamin D deficiency causes calcium deficiency. Vitamin D deficiency causes hyperparathyroid diseases. There are a number of different diseases that we know vitamin D deficiency actually causes.
	We don’t want to take a drug long-term that’s going to create a vitamin D deficiency in our life because then the secondary problems that come along with that, with vitamin D deficiency can start to muddle the waters. In essence, if you originally had this set of symptoms, but then you took a drug and your symptoms went away, but the drug created a deficiency that caused a new set of symptoms and now you think it’s these new set of symptoms are similar to the old set of symptoms, you think your disease is coming back, so the doctor just increases the drug. Then again, you get stuck in these vicious, vicious cyclic pathways that you want to try to avoid.
	I also said that corticosteroids can cause a magnesium deficiency. Now, magnesium is responsible for more than 300 chemical reactions inside your body. Some of these reactions are required or some of these functions of magnesium are important for thyroid function. For the thyroid to work, you need magnesium. You also need magnesium to break down sugar. This is why magnesium deficiencies [run to 00:26:02] high blood sugar and problems associated with high blood sugar. When we’re breaking down sugar, there are about 16 different biochemical steps in that process. Eight of those steps require magnesium. Magnesium is also necessary as an electrolyte. It helps your nerves. Just like with calcium, magnesium helps your nerves work appropriately. Magnesium’s a natural muscle relaxer. It’s a natural calming agent.
	Magnesium plays a role, if you’ve ever done a 23 and Me genetic test, there’s a particular gene that gets analyzed on that test called COM, M as in man, COMT, T as in Tom, COMT. That stands for catecholamethyltransferase. It’s a gene that is responsible for metabolizing catecholamines. Now that’s adrenaline and noradrenaline are two of the main catecholamines. Acetylcholine as well is a neurotransmitter and estrogen requires that gene and magnesium to be properly metabolized. If you don’t have adequate magnesium, you can actually have a hard time getting rid of certain types of toxic estrogen metabolites and these toxic metabolites increase the risk for certain kinds of cancer, breast cancer, uterine cancer, cervical cancer, etc.
	Again, going back to what’s causing this magnesium deficiency in the first place, it’s the over-consumption of medication that is a steroid designed to replace the steroid that your body is no longer capable of making on its own. Again, you get into a very, very dangerous and a very, very slippery position when you have an adrenal initial burnout or a fatigue that leads to a burnout and then eventually a failure that now you’re being put on a medication to overcome, but the medication never overcomes the actual reason why the adrenal burnout occurred. Now the medication is creating a litany of nutritional side effects that can keep you from ever getting better.
	Now the last nutrient I mentioned because I think it’s important because it plays a huge role in adrenal production, adrenal hormone production, remember I said that vitamin C deficiency was also caused by long-term steroid use. Why is that important? Well, vitamin C … I like to look at vitamin C as human duct tape. It can do virtually anything. It’s an antioxidant, helps build collagen. It’s necessary for collagen cross-links. It helps detoxify heavy metals. You need vitamin C to make and produce certain hormones, like adrenaline and noradrenaline and some of the other hormones that are important for neurological function. Without vitamin C, all of those things kind of start to falter.
	Now vitamin C is necessary. Why would we not want to cause a vitamin C deficiency? Because the only way the adrenal glands can make a recovery is if you have adequate vitamin C coming in the diet. Vitamin C deficiency can contribute to adrenal fatigue. It’s actually one of the things that happens in patients that have scurvy. Scurvy is like late stage vitamin C deficiency. What happens is people go crazy. They can no longer make cortisol. They can no longer make their adrenaline and they go crazy. They actually start to internally hemorrhage because vitamin C is necessary for that to form the strong elastic collagen around their blood vessels, so their blood vessels start to break open and you get this big mess.
	You get this big mess with scurvy, but what happens before scurvy? Scurvy is late stage, end stage vitamin C deficiency. What happens before that? In part, adrenal burnout. You’ve got to have vitamin C to produce cortisol. There’s a reaction called hydroxylation reaction that vitamin C drives. Vitamin C drives this hydroxylation reaction, so that your adrenal glands can produce cortisol. Without vitamin C, your adrenal glands can not make cortisol, so we’ve got to have adequate vitamin C coming in. Now, where do you get vitamin C in your diet? Most people get it from, there’s actually a theory on why we … Let me back up a minute.
	We get vitamin C in our diet from vividly colored fruits and vegetables. If it’s really, really shiny and really stark with color, like your oranges, your yellows, your blues, your purples, your reds. Think tomato, think peppers, think blueberries, think cherries. These are like your really, really dark, vivid colored fruits or vegetables. These things are extremely rich in vitamin C. There’s a theory going around that we believe that humans actually developed our ability to see in color because of our need for vitamin C. Humans are one of the few species that can’t endogenously synthesize vitamin C from glucose. Most species can actually make vitamin C from sugar. We can’t. We’re one that can’t. We actually have to obtain it from the diet. The theory, this is just FYI kind of, Uncle John Bathroom Reader type information. Take it for what it is, but the theory is that we developed our ability to see in color as a result of our need for vitamin C because we didn’t have the ability to synthesize it internally from glucose.
	Anyway, one of the problems with vitamin C in foods today is that a lot of the foods don’t contain as much vitamin C as they should. It’s actually been studied. Some studies show that today’s orange doesn’t have anywhere near the content of vitamin C that an orange from 30 or 40 years ago has. I think a lot of that has to do with over-farming, over-utilization of the soil. I think a lot of it has to do with pesticide use. Again, one of the few supplements that I take on a regular basis, I take a multivitamin, I take a fish oil and I always take vitamin C because we just have a really hard time getting enough of it in the diet.
	I actually use … Well, you’ve got to be careful with vitamin C supplements on that note. I know I’ve talked about this before in prior live Q&A’s, but most vitamin C’s that are produced are actually produced as corn. You want to find a non-corn derived source of vitamin C. I use something called Detox C, which is non-GMO. It’s actually derived from organic Wild African potato and it’s an excellent source of vitamin C, if you’re trying to find a good supplemental of vitamin C and it comes in both a powder and a pill form. I personally like the powder, especially during cold and flu season because you can mix it up, stir it up in water and you can chug it down. You can get ten grams in a day. Instead of swallowing ten pills, you can get some really, really good powder form.
	Anyway, those are the nutrients linked to taking exogenous cortisol. Those are the nutritional deficiencies that you have to be concerned with, I’d say, and especially again that vitamin C because you can not make cortisol. You can not produce adrenal hormone without vitamin C. It’s kind of an ironic situation or a paradoxical situation that people get into. They become dependent on the drug and they become dependent on more and more doses, higher doses of the drug to keep the same effect over time until the drugs just stop working.
	By the time the drugs stop working, that’s usually when I find them in my office and they’re in complete and total adrenal burnout where they can’t exercise, they can barely get out of bed. They’re so tired and they’re so fatigued and they’re swollen and they can’t figure out why they keep gaining weight even though they’re not eating. Those are all pretty hallmark signs of that adrenal burnout situation.
	Now, there’s another vitamin I want to talk about as it’s important for the adrenal hormone output and that is vitamin B5. Now, this vitamin was discovered by a famous biochemist. His name was Roger Williams. He’s actually one of my favorite scientists of all time, one of the most brilliant, brilliant men to ever live in the biochemistry realm. He won for a Nobel Prize for discovering vitamin B5, also known as pantothenic acid, also known as the anti-graying factor or the anti-stress factor. Those are just nicknames for vitamin B5. The reason why anti-graying factor, his original studies were done in mice with brown fur. What he found is when he did not feed these mice adequate vitamin B5, their coats would start to gray prematurely. They would start to go from brown to gray. When he restored their vitamin B5 levels, their coats would regain their color, so this is where the name anti-graying factor came from.
	Now, we’ll see this. You probably this that somebody goes through tremendous stress and they start to turn gray. Their hair starts to gray prematurely. Well, vitamin B5 deficiency is one of the reasons that can happen. Very, very important to understand that if you’ve been under tons of stress, vitamin B5 supplementation might be a very, very good idea to help you support that stress and to help support your adrenal glands production and function. Vitamin B5 is very, very essential for the production of something called acetyl CoA, which is a precursor to acetylcholine, which is one of the primary neurotransmitters produced by the adrenal glands. Again, if you don’t have enough of that hormone, then your body, your ability for your nervous system to communicate to the rest of your body is vastly, vastly hindered and that’s where a lot of those problems can start to set in.
	Vitamin B5, aka the anti-graying, aka the anti-stress factor, aka pantothenic acid, very, very crucial nutrient for adrenal gland function. That’s why a lot of adrenal supplements that you see out there will contain pantothenic acid. A lot of them will contain vitamin C and zinc and vitamin A because all of these nutrients are important for appropriate adrenal gland function and hormone output.
	Okay. That’s kind of a general ten thousand foot overview of the adrenal glands. I’m going to start taking a few questions now. I’ve got one question coming in. “What is …” Good question. “What’s a good food source for vitamin B5?” Let’s break that down. Vitamin B5, pantothenic acid, right? Well, what is the root of pantothenic acid? The root word is pantos. Pantos is a Greek word and that means everywhere. Okay. The thing about vitamin B5 is that it’s found in all foods. It’s found in pretty much anything that you want to eat. However, the problem is that usually there’s a deficiency per se. The problem usually is a stress toxicity. It’s not so much a B5 deficiency. It’s a stress toxicity that over-utilizes B5, so that then the diet can’t provide enough B5 to overcome the stress toxicity.
	The best way to overcome a B5 deficit, you’ve got to supplement, in my opinion and in my experience in the clinic, but the other way is you’ve got to isolate and identify the source of stress toxicity and you have to remove it. Well, go through and we’ll talk about some of the stress toxicities here in a moment, but I want to get to some of these questions as well.
	Okay. Let’s see here. I don’t know if this is a question or not. Kimberly is staying all grains eliminated. “If I eat rice, it’s only wild rice from my health food store.” Okay. Well, that’s an excellent first step. Caution on wild rice. It is an acceptable food, but it’s very hard to digest, so my advice for those of you who are using wild rice in your diet as a rice substitute is make sure you cook it down really long, a lot longer than regular rice and make it softer and easier for your digestive tract to kind of wrap around and get a hold of.
	“What is the name again of the vitamin C you like?” It’s called Detox C. It looks like somebody else on this feed has posted a link to it. You can find it on glutenfreesociety.org. Those of you … there’s a sale going on right now. There’s a 20% off sale on glutenfreesociety.org store, if you use the … Let me give you the code for that. You’ve got to use the promo code July4. If you use that in a coupon code box, just July4, no space, you’ll save 20% on your order. Make sure you take advantage of that if you’re going to go there and pick it up.
	Okay. What is or what are my thoughts about whole, good vitamin C versus ascorbic acid? I’m not quite sure I understand your question. I’m going to assume that I … There’s a biological spectrum of vitamin C agents, meaning there’s ascorbic acid, which is considered to be the pure, synthesized form or derived form of the active vitamin C ingredient, but then you also have other kind of vitamin C type compounds that are also found in fresh fruits and vegetables, usually accompanying vitamin C. I like them all, but when I want to get pure, high dose vitamin C nothing, in my opinion and in my experience, works better than pure, high dose vitamin C as ascorbate. It’s extremely, extremely helpful. Think of it as adrenal food. It basically feeds the adrenal glands and helps them nurse back to recovery. You’re not going to do that with some of these other types of products with mixed vitamin C-based compounds. You’re just not going to hit the dose that you need to really get it.
	Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t also use those other compounds, but as far as the clinic and my experience in dealing with very, very chronically sick people, pure ascorbic works better. Good question.
	Let’s see here. I don’t know if this is a question or not. “Sophie, the doctors around here are clueless regarding celiac disease. My own primary doesn’t know the first thing about it. Getting help is very hard. My diet is clean. No milk, soy, limited sugar.” Okay. Not a question. Sorry. I went off on a rabbit hole there. Just interaction.
	Let’s see here. Joe’s just chiming in, “I have Doctor Osborne’s No Grain, No Pain. Great book.” Thanks, Joe. Thanks for the props on that. I appreciate your compliment.
	Okay. Going back to, this was probably the preemptive question or at least thought process. ” Can’t get a doctor to listen. Have celiac disease, hypothyroidism and chronic pain syndrome. I am chronically tired. I take magnesium, but it doesn’t seem to help.” Kimberly, with all those things going on, let’s just walk you through a scenario. With celiac disease, probably what’s happened is your gut has been damaged. Your gut has been potentially even scarred, scarred to the point where you’ve developed malabsorption of vitamins and minerals, which have led to a contributing to other kinds of disease conditions.
	The first thing that you absolutely, in my opinion, should do is go completely grain free if you’re not already. I mean completely grain free, no corn, no rice, no sorghum, no millet, no oat, no buckwheat, no amaranth, no quinoa, no triticale, no teff, no wheat, barley or rye. No grain whatsoever. Read No Grain, No Pain, if you haven’t already. Number two, you need to get with a doctor who will listen because if you’ve got a doctor who’s not listening, then they’re not a doctor.
	Remember what the definition of doctor is. Look at the Latin definition. Doctor means teacher. Okay. A teacher is somebody who listens. A teacher doesn’t just dictate. A teacher listens because the way a teacher continues to learn, a teacher is a perpetual student. Right? Doctor equals teacher equals student. You can’t separate the three because the best students never quit learning. If a doctor’s not listening, they’re not learning. They’re not getting feedback from you. If they’re not getting feedback, then they’re trained technicians who are just telling you, “Do this. Do that. Do that. Don’t question me and go on.” That’s not doctoring. That’s being a technician. You need to find somebody who’s willing to listen.
	I would get a hold of a good functional medicine doctor, who will look at your vitamin and mineral status, to check your nutritional status would be a priority. To also look for additional food allergies would be a priority and to actually rule out infection would be a priority because if you’ve got hypothyroidism, especially if it’s a form of autoimmune hypothyroidism, like Hashimoto’s, then now you’re talking about ruling those other things out because you’re not going to stop the disease in its tracks if you don’t look at doing those things. Magnesium is not going to solve that problem. A lot of people think magnesium is like a miracle cure and it can be a really, really helpful supplement. Don’t get me wrong. It can be a very helpful supplement, but it isn’t going to cure disease unless the disease is a magnesium deficiency disease. Most diseases are not magnesium deficiency diseases. They are being contributed to in part by magnesium deficiency, but that’s only one piece of the equation and there are usually multiple pieces of the equation that have to be taken into account. Okay.
	I’ll answer this from Sophie. “Do you have advice to eradicate for life chronic Epstein-Barr virus?” Yeah, I do. The reason I’m going to answer this question because it’s not really … it falls under the topic of adrenal fatigue and here’s why. Because chronic, viral loads, a chronic, viral load will cause a chronic stress, chemical stress, which will cause adrenal fatigue. One of the best ways is high, high doses of vitamin C, up to ten grams a day, long-term, up to ten grams a day. Some people go visit doctors and they actually have the vitamin C IVed into them. In addition to that, there’s an amino acid called lysine, L-Y-S-I-N-E. L-lysine is very, very helpful at inhibiting viral replication. Combining vitamin C, combining lysine can both be very, very helpful in supporting your body’s ability to get rid of or to help combat Epstein-Barr virus. Actually have a supplement formulation called Virid, V-I-R-I-D, Virid. It has a combination of different things that are helpful for supporting your body’s immune system to have a healthier response against beating up on viruses including Epstein-Barr virus. Virid is what I would suggest.
	With chronic, you know again, five to ten grams of vitamin C a day, depending on your size and height and then I would take as much as six to ten of these Virids a day and do that. That would be if you were in my office, that’s kind of a protocol I would start you with, if I were just guessing. Now, I would never just guess, if you were in my office. If you were in my office, I’d actually do some pretty advanced testing on you. I’d get a baseline for your titers and I would be looking at some other things as well. Hopefully that’s a helpful place for you to start.
	Okay. Let’s see here. Oh, Sophie, I’m glad I answered your question. Welcome from Paris. That’s wonderful that we’re reaching people over in the European nations. Another question coming in, “How would a person check for nutritional status?” This is a great question. There’s not one test to do this. This is actually a battery of different tests. We would use a process called lymphocyte proliferation testing to measure a number of nutrients. We would look at packed red blood cells for certain nutrients. We would look … From some nutrients, we’d be looking at urine output testing. For other nutrients, we would be looking at certain markers or parameters in the blood.
	There are a variety of different tests. That’s why when I said, “Get with a good functional medicine doctor to do this.” It’s not like a go to this place, one stop shop, here’s the test. There are a variety of different tests that need to be looked at. Then somebody who’s qualified and trained in functional medicine should be able to help with that much more accurately. I know that’s not a direct, exact answer, but it’s probably one of the better answers that I could give for that.
	Sally’s asking, “Where can I get Virid?” Glutenfreesociety.org, O-R-G. If you go to the shop, you should be able to find it there. If you can’t find it there, just email Gluten Free Society and they can provide that for you.
	Let’s see here. Another question. I like this question. “What about being tired from exercise and taking Biomatrix Support Adrenals? It’s a great product for me. I will take a cal-mag for leg cramp pain.” Being tired from exercise, are you just tired because you’re over exercising? It’s hard to answer that question in a sense, but if you are actually in state of adrenal fatigue, exercise might be something you want to reconsider or at least the aggressiveness of the exercise. There are stages or kind of what we take patients through in the clinic is we say, “Okay, look. I don’t want you doing CrossFit training or high intensity interval training yet.” We might start with something a little bit easier to tolerate, like even just general walking. Then we might graduate them to a vibration platform doing whole body vibration therapy because it’s low impact and it doesn’t tend to cause the severe exhaustion. It’s just one level that we can kind of move somebody up the chain.
	Then we might start doing some kind of modified and low time limit, high intensity interval training. Instead of doing ten minutes of high intensity, we might start them out with two minutes of high intensity just to start again pumping the lymphatic system, starting to stimulate the body to produce certain hormones that will help in the anabolic process of muscle growth. Then going through that, one of the things to use for recovery, one of the best things to use for recovery, I’ll say again, vitamin B5, vitamin C are excellent for recovery. Again, you can use adrenal support formulas that contain glandulars, like adrenal glandular products. There are a number of different products that are out there. I actually, I use one called Ultra Adrenal. It’s my favorite formulation because it has a battery of different adrenal nutrients in it to support adrenal function, but that isn’t going to solve a pure adrenal fatigue. Again, going back to the premise of this conversation, you’ve got to go backwards. You’ve got to reverse engineer why it’s there in the first place.
	If you’re talking just about simple exercise like what do you do to recover from exercise and you don’t have adrenal fatigue, boy, we can go off on some really wonderful ergogenic aids that can be used. L-glutamine, four to five grams after an exercise regiment for recovery. Branch chain amino acids work remarkably well. Quercetin works extremely well for recovery and reduction in muscle soreness. Any kind of supplements that are nerve activators, NRF activators, that would be things like broccoli extract or DIM. These are great agents. Vitamin C’s great for recovery. A good antioxidant blend that might contain something like green tea catechins would be great for recovery. If you’re trying to recover from exercise faster and get less sore, those are great aids to use in that process. Good question.
	“How much lysine?” Depends. Depends on the viral load, depends on how heavy it is. I probably would go in and use at least 1,000 milligrams and depending on response, again, it would depend on response. I might go upwards of two to three grams of lysine in a day. You’ve got to be careful with using too much lysine. That’s something that you start getting up into the higher doses, you want to monitor it because using too much lysine can actually contribute to the deficiency of other amino acids. You don’t want to get into that kind of problem either. If you’re going it alone and not under the supervision of a doc, I wouldn’t go higher than 1,000, 1,500 milligrams in a day of L-lysine without having somebody kind of properly monitor that. Good question.
	Let’s see here. Another one. Can I recommend a good, I guess, gluten free cookbook, emphasis on reduction of inflammation of hands. Have sclero. I’m going to assume that’s scleroderma and Raynaud’s. James, do you have No Grain, No Pain? 31 recipes and they’re my favorite recipes, so they’re actually really great recipes. I was just talking to somebody about this earlier. The German version of the cookbook, the recipes, they actually made all the recipes and took professional pictures of the recipes and published them in the book in the German version of the book. Those are some of the best recipes out there that are and they’re, most of them, about 90% of the recipes in that book, for those of you who read it, are phase two, meaning they’re phase two approved. In phase two that’s the aggressive place where we’re really going after all of the foods that can contribute to the autoimmune inflammatory conditions like the sclerodermas and the lupus and the rheumatoid arthritis and the dermatomyositis and ankylosing spondylitis and the others, the psoriatic arthritis, etc. There’s 31 recipes in that, if you don’t have it already.
	Other cookbooks that might emphasize that … you can look. There’s some AIP cookbooks. AIP stands for Autoimmune Paleo. Those are, there’s some really good cookbooks that are AIP approved, that have really great recipes for that as well, so I would just use that in a search term and I’m certain you could probably find some good things there. We have some listed on our website at glutenfreesociety.org under the shop section. There’s some cookbooks listed there as well that you can tap into that would be approved. Always a good question. Resources are always in demand in terms of recipes.
	Okay. I have hypothyroidism. I am gluten free, however I still eat jasmine rice and some oatmeal. What are your thoughts on this?” Lisa, you are not gluten free. Welcome to the group and let’s just dive in and give you a great education on this. You aren’t gluten free if you’re eating jasmine rice and oatmeal. You are still eating gluten. Now, let’s define what that means. The traditional definition of gluten is that it’s the alpha gluten found only in wheat, barley and rye, meaning those three grains are traditionally what we would consider to be gluten free, but all grains contain glutens. Remember, gluten is not a singular term. It’s a plural term. There are more than a thousand forms of gluten we’ve discovered. Some of them are in oatmeal and some of them are in rice. For many people with gluten sensitivity issues, they continue to have issues because they’re being told to only avoid wheat, barley and rye and they’re being told, “Yes, go eat the rice. Go eat the oatmeal. Go eat the corn.” In that sense, they’re still struggling to try to find answers because they’re not true gluten free.
	Remember the word true gluten free, Lisa, because that is going to save you a lot of trouble and a lot of illness in your future. You’ve got to get, if you’re gluten sensitive and you’re trying to be on a gluten free diet, you’ve got to do it all the way. There can’t be this mixed bag. You will never fully recover from that autoimmunity, if you’re not off of all of those grains. Hopefully that’s helpful for you. If, again, you haven’t read No Grain, No Pain, go pick up a copy because I talk about all the science behind that and go into the details and even list the references for you to go follow up on if you’re the kind of nerd like me. I like to have the references and I like to know.
	Okay. I’m going to get back to some of what I wanted to cover before we wrap it up today. In adrenal recovery, what are some of the strategies? I’m going to leave you guys with some strategies on actual recovery because many of you are suffering with an adrenal process or an adrenal failure or fatigue. What is it that we can do? Number one on the list, you absolutely must sleep. You have to sleep. If you are one of those I go to bed at midnight types of people, you will never, ever recover doing that. You’ve got to get in bed and your bed time needs to be as close as possible to when the sun sets over the horizon.
	Bed time should be as close to sunset as possible. Waking up in the morning should be done without the use of an alarm clock. You don’t want a blaring sound stimulating your adrenaline to wake you up when your adrenal glands are burnt out. That’s only going to contribute to more of a problem. Ideally you wake up with the sun, so if you’ve got windows in your bedroom, let the sun naturally wake you up in the morning. If that’s not an option for you, there are sun alarm clocks that you can purchase that mimic a sunrise, so they actually come on and they start with real dim light and they get brighter and brighter and brighter until they get bright to the point where that light hits your optic nerve. It turns on the part of your brain called the reticular activating system that turns on your cortisol to start the day. Sleep is critical and you have to balance your circadian rhythm, so your exposure to light-dark. Number one is you’ve got to get morning light exposure is very important.
	Now, if you live above 27 North latitude, meaning if you’re in one of the northern climates where either you have shorter days, so you have less sunlight and especially the higher you go, like around Washington or Oregon or even going up even further north, Canada, Alaska, one of the things you should buy is a sun lamp that mimics sunshine. You want to get one with a 10,000 or higher LUX power, light illumination power, LUX, 10,000 LUX or more. Sit in front of that thing in the morning time and get about 20 minutes a day of exposure to the natural light. Again, this is one of those things you can use in the middle of winter when you have minimal exposure to sun. It’s going to help your body kind of stay on track, meaning it helps your circadian rhythm stay on track. I’ve had patients that lived in northern climates and they could never make a recovery until they actually followed through with that advice. Another words, they followed through with getting a sun lamp and actually implementing and using it.
	Sleep is critical. The time frame that you need to be asleep, where you can maximize your healing is the hours between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. and preferably longer on both ends. Ideally, if you’re adrenal fatigued, you should be getting more than eight hours of sleep, but you should at least as a minimum get that ten to two window because that’s when your recovery, that’s when your hormone recovery is going to be happening. Very, very critical, very, very important, so sleep.
	Number two, you’ve got to watch blood sugar. Don’t eat foods that will spike blood sugar. If you’re eating foods that spike blood sugar, you’re going to be stimulating cortisol output. If your adrenal glands are already tired and they don’t have any cortisol to produce, it’s like beating a horse that’s already tired. If you’re whipping a tired horse, it’s not going to go any faster. It’s just going to have a heart attack and die on you. Don’t do that to your adrenal glands when they’re burned out. You’ve got to let them rest. If you feed them sugar, they are going to never make a recovery, so you’ve got to have smooth, controlled blood sugar, so that you’re not getting these radical spikes. You’ve got to eat foods that are going to basically help you keep a stabilized blood sugar.
	Some people goes as far and I’ve seen it be effective as kind of going, taking their carbohydrate under 40 grams a day for a while, not permanently. We talked a little bit about last week, we talked about fats and ketogenic diets, so I won’t belabor that point, but this can be very, very helpful process for some people in recovery from an adrenal fatigue.
	Then we have other strategies and other things that need to be done. Exercise only to tolerance. Do not overdo it. If you find yourself wiped out after exercise, but guilty for not exercising so you keep exercising anyway, you’re never going to make a recovery. You’ve got to strategically introduce exercise only to your ability to tolerate it and not more.
	Other things that you want to be looking at is what is your environmental stress? Who are you hanging out with that you shouldn’t be hanging out with? Another words, evaluate your relationships and evaluate who you spend your time with because if you’re spending your time with the people I call soul suckers, they take, take, take, take, take and have nothing to give and they leave you high and dry and drained, that’s not going to work for recovery. You’ve got to figure out a way to escape those kinds of people and find a socially supportive environment to recover in. Very, very critical part of recovery and I see it for a lot of people, I see that as being one of the last bastions to their recovery is just finding that social support system where they can make a recovery.
	Now, some strategies, kind of some technical strategies that I want to talk about and cover, number one, evaluating nutritional status. Now, I know I mentioned this earlier, but I find that if it’s one of the most important things that you can do. Now, if you don’t have a functional medicine doctor that you’re working with, just some supplemental strategies to support your adrenal glands. One, a good adrenal formula. I use Ultra Adrenal. It’s a solid formula.
	Two, consider higher doses of vitamin B fiber, pantothenic acid, 250 to 500 milligrams daily. Number three, five grams minimum of ascorbate, vitamin C daily. Number four, you want to make sure that you have some type of adrenal adaptogens in your adrenal formula and there are a number of different kinds of adrenal adaptogens, meaning these are just basically herbs that help support the recovery of fatigued adrenal insufficiency. There are a number of different ones, eleuthero, ginseng are examples of adrenal adaptogens. Okay. Make sure that formula … I mentioned Ultra Adrenal. That’s why I like it. It has those adaptogens, but it also has glandulars in it as well.
	Another strategy that you can implement to help with adrenal recovery that I find is extremely, extremely important is monitoring your adrenal output. Again, getting with this form would require getting with a doctor who’s going to measure a circadian hormone pattern of your cortisol. Generally speaking, this is a saliva test where you collect samples of saliva at four different times of the day. We get back cortisol readings of the salivary cortisol levels so that we can identify where you’re at. Then from there we can actually monitor whether or not what you’re doing is working, so getting a baseline that you can monitor every three or four months to see whether or not the implementation, the changes in what you’re approaching are creating a change and a recovery in those glands, in those glands.
	The other thing is anti-inflammatories. Anti-inflammatories, I mean natural anti-inflammatories, so eating an anti-inflammatory diet, meaning a no grain diet. Follow the phase two protocol in No Grain, No Pain. That would put you on the highest level or the best type of anti-inflammatory diet, but then also there are certain supplements in addition to the ones I’ve already mentioned that might be very, very helpful in controlling and modulating the inflammatory process. One of them is omega-3 fatty acids. We talked again a little last week about this, but for adrenal fatigue, three to four grams of omega-3 fatty acids is often times what is required to rebalance the omega-3/omega-6 ratio. That also means eating lower quantities of omega-6 in the diet. You don’t want to go overboard on nuts, like almonds because they’re going to be higher in omega-6.
	A lot of people going on the grain free diet, they smother everything in almond flour. They almond milk this and they’re getting high levels of omega-6 through the excessive nut and that will throw off the 3/6 balance and increase the inflammatory cascade and put more stress and pressure on the adrenal glands. You want to get enough omega-3 to kind of shift that balance back in the other direction. That balance can be measured as well. The omega-3/6 ratio can be measured in blood testing and then again having a good doctor work with you in that way can be helpful.
	Another thing that can be extremely helpful supplementally is turmeric. Turmeric is a very, very potent, well probably one of the most potent anti-inflammatories, natural anti-inflammatories. You want to get a good, solid turmeric with high bioavailability. There are a number of formulas. What I use is something called Ultra Turmeric and it’s got bioperine, which is a pepper that helps improve its absorption. I also have another version that’s pepper free because a lot of people are reactive to peppers. This is an emulsified version of turmeric. It’s liposomal, so it goes right in. A couple of grams is kind of a baseline dose. Two grams a day of high dose, concentrated turmeric and you want to make sure that it’s concentrated to contain 95% curcuminoids, otherwise you’re not really going to get much from it. You’re not going to be much anti-inflammatory help or benefit from it. Those are just, again, some strategies that you can use.
	Again, we’ll back up kind of ten thousand foot overview. You’ve got to sleep. You’ve got to make sure that your exercise is only done to tolerance. You’ve got to eliminate toxic people from your environment or toxic circumstances as much as you can from your environment. You’ve got to get on an anti-inflammatory diet. You’ve got to support your body’s ability to recover from chronic inflammation and there’s, again, the supplement strategies that I lined out are very, they’re helpful in doing that. That’s the ten thousand foot overview of what you can do.
	I’m going to take a last couple minutes here to answer the last few questions. Question coming in, “Is turmeric bad for people with kidney stones?” That’s a big question, Lilly. No. The simple answer’s no, but the more complex answer is what kind of kidney stone. There are different kinds and so it depends on if you’ve ever passed a kidney stone and captured the stone and taken it to the doctor where they could actually do an analysis of the stone. There are different kinds of stones. There’s magnesium struvite stones. There’s calcium oxalate stones, etc.
	Certain stones can be associated with certain things in the diet. For example, high oxalate diets can contribute to kidney stone formation. Low vitamin D deficiency can contribute to kidney stone formation. Hyperparathyroidism or a history of that can contribute to kidney stone formation, but turmeric not so much. Again, it all still could depend on the type of stone that you have. Good question.
	Okay. My thoughts about supplementing with DHEA. DHEA, for those of you who don’t know, DHEA stands for dehydroepiadrosterone. It is an anabolic hormone precursor to cortisol and testosterone. Some people are very, very deficient, especially we’ll see this in men or women really who are chronically inflamed. We’ll see, again, this is kind of part of a later stage. Think of adrenal failure as coming in stages. We have an initial kind of phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four stages of adrenal failure. DHEA generally starts to slump in phase two. We start to see the DHEA reserves start to drop.
	Am I a fan of supplementing with DHEA? Yeah, sometimes I am. Sometimes especially the chronically, chronically sick, we get that DHEA supplementation in there for a little while to help with the recovery, but I’m not a fan of doing it indefinitely, long-term forever. I feel very strongly that … A lot of doctors disagree with me on this and I’ll just share what I think, which is this. When you’re using hormones, DHEA is a form of hormone. When you’re using hormones without asking the fundamental question of where do those hormones come from and where are those hormones made by the body, then you’re not really solving the underlying origin of why the problem is there in the first place.
	Remember, solving the problem goes back to the origin. We want to go back to the origin of where the problem came from, not medicate the problem or not supplement the problem with something that masks symptoms without solving the origin. It always boils back down to the origin. That’s why the name of my clinic is Origins Healthcare because we’re always seeking the origin of the problem. I’m not opposed to DHEA supplementation. I am opposed to DHEA supplementation without monitoring and without seeking that origin. Great question.
	“Is cream of rice gluten free?” Well, Joe, if you’re talking about cream of rice, like from Campbell’s soup or something like that, no. The answer is no. I’d say if you’re talking about cream of rice, like the cereal, like the cereal that you add hot water to, it’s not gluten free. It’s traditional gluten free, meaning it’s free of wheat, barley and rye, but rice has a gluten called oryzenin, which that’s the name of the gluten in rice, which by volume, rice is the lowest of all the grains, has the lowest quantity of gluten protein. However, it still has that oryzenin in it and it’s known to be one of the most, we’ll say, inflammatory to the colon, meaning a lot of the studies on rice gluten and rice show that it causes colitis.
	There’s actually a name for this. It’s called FPIES, F-P-I-E-S, which is an acronym for food protein induced enterocolitis. It creates a kind of a chronic inflammation of the colon, which can create problems with malnutrition, malabsorption, among other things. One of the other problems though with rice, even if we’re not talking about gluten in general is that rice typically is either high in cadmium, arsenic or lead, depending on where it’s grown. Those toxic heavy metals can also be a source of a trigger for autoimmune processes. I don’t recommend rice at all, including cream of rice. Good question.
	Again, Joe, I think you asked another one earlier. Go get a copy of No Grain, No Pain and read it and follow phase one and phase two. You’ll find a huge, huge benefit if you do that.
	Okay. Looks like I’m about out of … Oh, wait. We’ve got … I hate to leave any stragglers here. Linda is asking, “I’m type I diabetic, hypothyroid and vitiligo. I had Hashimoto’s. I have cut gluten, but occasionally eat corn tortillas and quinoa. Are you saying I need to cut them all. I do have your book. Currently reading and modeling it.” Thanks, Linda. Thanks for buying the book and thanks for reading it and thanks for your kind words. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.
	Let’s understand this. Type I diabetes is autoimmune. If the hypothyroidism that you have is Hashimoto’s, that’s autoimmune. Vitiligo is autoimmune, so you already have a diagnosis of three forms of autoimmune disease. There are only four known causes for autoimmune disease. Those four causes, one is food. The other is nutritional deficiency. Another is chemical toxicity and another is infection. If you have any of those four things that are going on, you’ll never really truly solve this autoimmune puzzle. If you’re eating occasional corn, remember that every time you do that, it’s going to create an inflammatory cascade in your body for up to two months. Even if you’re eating it once every month, you’re creating and perpetuating that inflammation every time you put it in your mouth. That is, yes, you’re right. That is exactly what I’m saying is cut those foods out. No food tastes as good as it feels to be healthy. I can promise you that. Okay. Good questions.
	Joe is asking, “Is sarcoidosis affected by gluten?” Absolutely, it is. I’ve seen a number of cases of sarcoidosis do extremely well following the No Grain, No Pain protocol. That’s what you’ve been diagnosed with, what have you got to lose? Going grain free isn’t going to hurt you, but it could very, very well change your life. Sarcoidosis can be very, very dangerous. It can damage the kidneys and shut them down long-term, so don’t wait on it. Get to work on it.
	“Where can I purchase No Grain, No Pain?” Kimberly, best place to buy it is NoGrainNoPainBook.com. Why do I say that’s the best place to buy it? If you go to that website, what you’ll see is there’s a place where there will be some links where you can go buy it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Books a Million or some other places, but when you come back to that website, if you put in your receipt number, we’re going to send you a free leaky gut guide and we’re going to send you a bunch of resources that help you use the book. If you buy it just from, just say if you go to Amazon and you don’t come to NoGrainNoPain and put in your receipt, you won’t get those free resources. I just want to make sure if you buy it, you get those free resources with it. That’s the best place to buy it.
	Okay. “Hi, Doctor O.” Eileen. Hi, Eileen. “Joining late. Can you tell me if Natural Calm is safe to take daily for regularity?” Look, I like to ask a bigger question with regularity. Why are we not regular? Not that it’s not safe, but bigger question being why wouldn’t we be regular on a daily basis, so that would be the bigger thing to figure out. Simple things, most people know these things, but make sure you’re drinking enough water. Make sure you’re getting enough vegetable and dietary fibers. Make sure that you’re exercising. Probably one of the biggest things where people really struggle is they don’t exercise. Exercise is a tremendous benefit on regularity and bowel movements.
	One of the reasons why is the nerves that travel through your bowel and stimulate your bowel, those nerves actually, you circulate fluid around those nerves when you walk because the motion of your sacrum, it moves like a figure eight. It moves like a figure eight and it tugs on the sacral nerves in the cauda equina, which comes off the base of your spinal cord. It helps to stimulate those nerves as they travel to your intestines and help for the normal function of bowel flow and peristalsis. Also, it stimulates vagal nerve stimulation. The exercise can stimulate vagal nerve stimulation, which is also important for bowel nerve functionalities. Hopefully those things are helpful for you.
	Okay. Last question. “Regarding sleep, what’s the best suggestion for someone with terrible Lyme insomnia? I’ve tried all I know and lie awake for five plus hours.” There’s not a best one thing, Sally. You’ve got to get with a doctor. You’ve got to get with somebody who understands this stuff. If you’ve got Lyme and you’ve had it chronically and you haven’t been able to get rid of it, then you’re not doing it right. There’s something you’re not doing right within that protocol that you’re following. Get with a doc. Get some help. Get some functional medicine guidance. It’s going to put you in the right direction because there’s no product that I can give you. There’s no recommendation I can give you that’s going to get you sleep.
	There’s the standard stuff. There’s valerian and chamomile and melatonin and deanine and GABA. There’s all this different herbals that will help kind of relax the mind, but they’re not going to solve an insomnia if you’ve got a Lyme or a Lyme co-infection like MARCoNS, multiple antibiotic resistant coagulace negative staph, which is producing a chemical process that’s causing your melanocytes, stimulating hormone to drop. You’ll never sleep properly. You’ll never have fundamental correction of that if those types of things are going on and you haven’t discovered them yet. You’ve got to get with somebody you can work with who has a great understanding of those processes and figure out, again, the origin of why you can’t sleep.
	Okay. That’s the last question. Boy, we had a great day. What I want to do is wish you all a happy Fourth of July and hopefully you get out there and you stay safe, but have a great time. Don’t use the holiday as an excuse to destroy yourself with food. Celebrate with fireworks, not with fireworks internally. If you haven’t already, I’m going to encourage you to go to our Facebook page, hit the “like” button. I’m going to encourage you to go to DrPeterOsborne.com. Sign up for the free newsletter there and go to glutenfreesociety.org. Sign up for the newsletter there. If you have a copy of No Grain, No Pain, thank you for your support and if you don’t have one, I will urge you to go get a copy. Start reading it. Join our support community on Facebook, so that you can get the help that you need in recovery from chronic pain. This is Doctor Osborne with Web Wellness University. Have a wonderful Fourth of July weekend. We’ll see you next week.