Nineteen-year-old Jenny Harrington, known to her friends as ‘Scout,’ lives with eight other co-eds in a house near the beach close to the university they attend. She has lived there now for three summer months, and while the party animals play in the surf every day, Scout has yet to go to the beach once. To the other girls in her house Scout is a phantom who comes and goes with rarely a sighting.
Scout is in the early stages of success, which of course begins with ambition. At fifteen, she got her first job at a hot dog stand in the local mall. She was quickly promoted to assistant manager and was transferred to another store closer to her college. In her freshman year, Scout took classes each quarter in addition to working a forty-hour week, sleeping no more than five hours a night.
Highly ambitious people tend to love the adrenaline rush, risk-taking, and rising to challenges. At nineteen years old, Scout’s duties at work include interviewing, hiring, and training and firing employees as well as approving pay rises, promotions, and demotions, ordering stock, repairing and maintaining the store, and riding herd on her crew’s morale. She often works overtime, without pay, to accomplish her tasks. ‘Being a new manager, I get the nervous jitters when I have to face a new challenge like talking to the CEO or payroll people or employees,’ Scout said. ‘Every once in a while, I’m not sure if I know exactly how to handle things, but every time I’m successful I’m so excited. It’s what keeps me thinking I’m going in the right direction.’ Financially, Scout is on her own. She attends college on a full scholarship, has recently bought a new car, and covers all of her own expenses.
Scout’s story may provoke fond memories of the way it used to be for you. You used to be idealistic and ambitious too. Unfortunately, as people progress along in life, they often become more and more successful but less able to enjoy the fruits of their labours. You have it all, but you feel too tired or too overscheduled to enjoy what you have earned. It is just not as much fun as it used to be. You may wonder how it happened. You may feel that there is nothing that you can do about it now; that it is too late. There is actually plenty that you can do about it. You can feel better, look better, sleep more soundly, and so much more.
Before I discuss how that can happen, let’s flash forward from where Scout is to twenty-five years later so you can understand how you progressed to where you are today.
Fifty-two-year-old Rachel Kantor is a petite blond who has been caught in the adrenaline rush lifestyle for many years. At one time, she had over one hundred people working for her in her commercial re4al estate research and consulting firm, which she described as a ‘competitive, deadline business.’ She tightly choreographed the work because it ‘all had to come together brilliantly with no mistakes and exactly at the right time.’ Rachel, who describes herself as a ‘deadline person,’ did not recognise or care about the intense stress she was under. She ran on empty, preferring the high she got from hunger to the ‘full, sleepy feeling’ she got from eating. ‘There’s an adrenaline thing going on when you are not eating and you are working hard and feeling edgy,’ she said. ‘I love being on the edge with that feeling of everything being sharp. It’s almost like taking uppers and having a high.’ Indeed, the adrenaline rush is very much like the high you get from drugs, and it just so happens that the adrenaline rush is the high that seduces many people.
Stress hormones such as adrenaline are secreted from your adrenal glands to prepare the body for acute and chronic physical and emotional stress. Most of us have heard of the adrenal glands, but very few people understand how they function and why they are important. Your two adrenal glands are triangular-shaped organs weighing less than five grams each that rest one above each kidney. These glands – about the size of two or three kidney beans each – secrete adrenaline and other stress hormones that influence nearly every bodily function.
The release of adrenaline is roughly proportional to the intensity of a situation. In other words, the amount of stress hormones that are secreted, and at what intervals, is determined by the degree of ‘danger’ perceived by the brain. Encountering a great white shark while on holiday would elicit a larger and longer adrenaline response than going to a surprise birthday party in your honour. The adrenaline response occurs in the time it takes to snap your fingers.
The neo-cortex of the brain supposedly differentiates humans from all other animals. It’s where memory, speaking, and other intellectual functions, including processing stimuli from your world, take place. The neo-cortex initially registers any given experience. Beneath the neo-cortex is the limbic system, which is sometime referred to as the emotional brain. The limbic system translates sensory input into emotion. Instantaneously, the sympathetic mode of your autonomic nervous system reacts, causing the rapid release of adrenaline, the fight-or-flight hormone from your adrenal medulla – the inner portion of your adrenal glands.1
The adrenaline response can also be secreted without an emotional trigger. You could be in a serious car accident and be unconscious, and your adrenals would be pumping adrenaline like crazy in an attempt to manage your blood pressure and to otherwise stabilise your body in a life-threatening situation.
Although fear and danger are the greatest motivators of the adrenaline response, all of your excitatory experiences result in what Rachel referred to as a rush. In other words, experiences that are stimulating, such as getting an unexpected bonus at work, result in this high. Non-stimulating experiences, such as vegging out in front of the TV or ironing, generally do not. The sensation of the adrenaline rush is caused by the release of three factors into your system at the same time: one, energy from sugar stored in your liver and muscles; two, the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine; three, internally created opiates called endorphins. With the release of these three factors you suddenly feel energised, fully alert, and euphoric.
The adrenaline response dates back tens of thousands of years to when the fight-or-flight response meant the difference between a prehistoric human’s life or death. This survival reaction was appropriate thousands of years ago because it was a response to dramatic danger – like being chased by a wild animal that was intent on eating you. Today, this adrenaline response is rarely appropriate, but is hardwired into us. Whether you get out of the bed and stumble over your cat in the middle of the night, become engaged to be married, close a major deal at work, or hear your chequebook bouncing, you will experience some degree of the same adrenaline-related reaction as did our ancestors in the wild.
We live in exciting times. Opportunity is exploding exponentially. We are like kids in a candy store, not wanting to miss out on a waking moment. A highly ambitious, successful forty-three-year-old physician/entrepreneur explained his philosophy by quoting the old adage: ‘I would rather crash and burn than rust away.’ A thirty-year-old restauranteur has spent three years developing a new dining concept – a feat that has required many twenty-hour days and virtually no weekends off. ‘I don’t want my headstone to be blank,’ he explained. ‘I want my life to be a good story and that is really the driving factor. I want to feel that I have accomplished something.’ Both of these people, while working crazy hours and putting themselves under a lot of stress, feel that the effort has been worth it – and that is has been fun. In our competitive dog-eat-dog society the adrenaline rush has become too much a part of daily life. As in these two examples above, most people would not consider slowing down. It is bad enough that the stress of daily life regularly induces high levels of adrenaline in our bodies, which may be fun but is not healthy in the long run. What makes this problem more insidious is that we like this high a lot. The pleasure of the adrenaline response is habit-forming.
When I went through medical school I encountered a famous textbook study that illustrated this phenomenon. Researchers implanted electrodes in the brains of rats and taught them to stimulate their own brains’ pleasure centre by either pressing one metal bar for food or another for direct electrical stimulation to their pleasure centre. The rats enjoyed the electrical self-stimulation so much that, when given the choice of food or electrostimulation of their pleasure centres, they went for the buzz. The rats eventually died of starvation, but they died happy.
The difference between rats with electrodes implanted in their brains and you and me is that the output of adrenaline from the adrenal medulla is limited. When you persist in driving yourself, the constant demand you place on your adrenals will eventually cause them to fatigue. As your adrenals wear out, they will become increasingly less able to produce as much adrenaline in response to stimuli.
Imagine the following scenario. A citrus rancher named Simon Legree hires two pickers to harvest his orange crop. Throughout the first week the pickers continually harvest and bring Legree many bushels of oranges. The next week Legree is excited by his yield and decides that the pickers should keep on picking all night instead of having dinner and going to bed. So the next week the pickers pick all day and all night without rest or food. That week, they return with a smaller yield. Legree bellows at them that they must continue picking. By the end of the third week, the pickers’ yield is yet smaller. Legree is panicked now because he needs those oranges, and he begins to berate and terrorise the pickers until they finally limp back to work. Exhausted and starving, they can only pick a few oranges a day. As the weeks go on, the pickers become so depleted and haggard that they cannot even reach up and pick one orange.
This is a metaphor for what happens to your adrenal glands when you get caught in the adrenaline rush lifestyle and do not allow your adrenal glands to rest and repair. When you reflected on Scout’s story you may have though about how much energy you used to have, how good you once looked and felt, and how soundly you used to sleep. It was because your adrenals were healthy and fully functioning back then. Although losing total adrenal function is rare, adrenal exhaustion – what you are probably suffering from to some degree now – is extremely common.2 Adrenal fatigue affects all the interconnected systems of the body and creates a biological domino effect that causes fatigue, cravings, weight gain, mood swings, and many of the health problems people are grappling with today.
For those who love the lifestyle of the constant adrenaline rush, there is one more downside. When your adrenals tire and reduce their output of adrenaline, you will need more competition, more risk, more danger, and more stimuli – more of the edge to get your adrenaline buzz. Paul Revere and the Raiders once sang: ‘Kicks just keep getting harder and harder to find.’ Although you may place even greater demands on yourself to get the same response, eventually there is no more adrenal reserve. If you do not take measures to correct the situation, you may hit bottom emotionally and physically.
Ten years ago, at age forty-five, Rachel saw her business go into a decline and crash. ‘My husband and I lost everything that means anything in L.A. Before this happened, we had a maid that came in every day and a live-in nanny for our daughter. I never saw the inside of my kitchen and I never did the laundry. I created a lifestyle in which I did not have to do the things that I thought were unnecessary for me to do and suddenly I was it. I spent two years schlepping around the house in my sweats, depressed and doing laundry. Consulting jobs would only come in once in a while, so I could make some money, but I was devastated. I felt like a total failure and I didn’t know how to get myself out of the basement.’
It is not uncommon for the course of people’s lives to correspond with fluctuations in their health. As Rachel persisted in squeezing the life out of her adrenals, and her adrenal reserve decreased, it is likely that her ability to keep her business afloat also diminished. It is typical of someone who loves the adrenaline rush to maintain a level of denial about what they are doing to themselves as their inner world begins to collapse. All of a sudden there is no fuel to maintain the same level of intensity or to handle adversity. As Rachel ran out of juice, so did the whole organisation she was running.
It is also not uncommon to fall into a depression while withdrawing from years of intensely pleasurable adrenaline responses. When you place undue demands on your adrenals for an extended period of time, the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine also declines. At the same time, your brain’s dopamine receptors become desensitised to stimulation. Now matter how much you stimulate these receptors, they are too dulled to fully respond. In her business, Rachel had needed increasing challenge, excitement, and risk to keep her on the edge. When her highly charged life came to a halt, she padded around the house in sweats with exhausted adrenals and depleted dopamine and sank into a bleak depression.
You may relate to patients who come in to see me and say, ‘I just don’t know what to do. I have tried everything and nothing seems to work. I’ve been well all of my life. How come I’m so exhausted? I’m getting sick all the time. I have no energy. I constantly crave sugar and caffeine. I don’t understand it.’ What people do not realise is that they can progress through the stages of adrenal burnout and not realise what is happening inside their bodies until they start to feel ill.
When Rachel came to see me, I explained my program of Ten Simple Solutions, which would restore her adrenal function and possibly make her feel better than she had ever felt in her life.
Simple Solution 1: Eat, Eat, Eat, All Day Long
Simple Solution 2: Exercise Less
Simple Solution 3: Calm Your Central Nervous System
Simple Solution 4: Pay Off Your Sleep Debt
Simple Solution 5: Let Go of Your Favourite Poison
Simple Solution 6: Supplement a Tired Food Chain
Simple Solution 7: Oxygenate Your Body
Simple Solution 8: Learn about Hidden Toxins
Simple Solution 9: Have Fun Every Day
Simple Solution 10: Cultivate SELF-fulfilment
Because these solutions are so simple, it was easy for Rachel to begin to make changes, one step at a time. Within a month she began to look and feel better. She was excited about starting over. ‘I was running on empty,’ Rachel admitted. ‘After I went to see Dr. Hanley I finally had the knowledge to help me get my body back together. I learned how to eat well and what vitamins and herbs to take. I began to build my resources back. Suddenly I got offered a job and I had to get dressed and leave the house – and I was physically prepared to go out into the world again. Now I look in the mirror and I can see that I look younger. I got back my health and my life.’ Like Rachel, here is what you can look forward to when you follow the simple solutions:
Lose Weight
Increase your metabolism
Burn away fat around your middle
Develop your ideal body composition
Lose cellulite
Gain power and control over your life
Quit habits such as nicotine, sugar, caffeine, and other stimulants
Feel calm and at peace
Have more patience
Stop being controlled by temper tantrums and emotional meltdowns
Feel more creative and productive
Have the emotional reserve to handle life’s issues
Feel more pleasure
Gain a renewed sense of satisfaction in life
Feel optimistic and positive about life and yourself
Have the energy to enjoy your family again
Remember what makes life worth living
Be more likely to accomplish your dreams and goals
Have the energy to enjoy the fruits of your success
Have more self-confidence
Enjoy better relationships
Be able to relax and stop sweating the small stuff
Sleep deeply and restfully every night
End insomnia
Instead of dragging around exhausted, have energy to burn
Stop nightmares and have pleasant dreams
Stop trekking to the bathroom all night long
Stop and even reverse accelerated ageing
Improve concentration and mental clarity
Gain better short-term memory
Have thicker and shinier hair
Develop softer and smoother skin
Watch wrinkles disappear
Grow stronger nails
End dark circles under your eyes
Restore emotional stability
Feel safer and more secure
Get off your emotional rollercoaster
End cravings
Feel happy and well adjusted
Stop obsessing, worrying, and feeling anxious
Feel the thrill of being healthy
Develop an increased sex drive
Increase fertility (for women)
Improve testosterone and sperm count
Have less aches and pains, fewer doctor visits
Rely less on prescription and over-the-counter drugs
Restore and improve immunity
Reduce occurrence of flu, cold and bronchitis
Have fewer allergies
Take fewer sick days
Diminish herpes outbreaks
Be on your way to freedom from arthritis
Prevent disease and early death
Reduce risk for cancer, heart disease, stroke, osteoporosis, and neurological disorders – all of which are consequences of the adrenaline rush lifestyle
Reduce the tendency to develop osteoporosis
Live longer with better quality of life
Perhaps some of these benefits sound too good to be true, but I have seen the results thousands of times. All it takes are a few small changes.
1. Hans Selye, internationally acknowledged as the father of the stress field, coined the term ‘fight-or-flight.’ After publishing the first scientific paper to identify and define ‘stress’ in 1936, Selye wrote over seventeen hundred scholarly papers as well as thirty-nine books on the subject.
The adrenal medulla synthesises, stores, and releases epinephrine and norepinephrine. For simplicity’s sake, I will refer to these two hormones as adrenaline.
2. An example of total adrenal failure is Addison’s disease, a rare condition in which the adrenal glands fail to secrete stress hormones. Addison’s is caused by the progressive destruction of the adrenal gland due to an infectious disease or from trauma such as a car accident, gunshot, or knife wound. It is possible to burn your adrenals out to this point, but it is not likely. People with Addison’s disease must take adrenal hormone supplements prescribed by a physician. The advice in this book is not intended as a substitute for the treatment by your doctor.