energy and Inflammation
1. What are the best and worst foods for energy and inflammation?
Adrenal Dysfunction and Energy
Lack of energy is multifactorial, related to adrenal dysfunction and is attributed to persistent stress from these main areas: emotional, physical and psychosocial stress, exposure to toxins, insufficient sleep, poor diet, medications and persistent immune activation.
The Gut and The Endocrine System
All of the factors listed above, stress our adrenals by overworking them and over time they become exhausted causing low adrenal function and low energy. Our adrenals are directly related to the health of your immune system in the gut. The gut ensures that your adrenal glands are getting the proper nutrients, it ensures the flow of proper hormones and hormone production, and provides the body with the ability to produce energy. Therefore, our gut bacteria (flora) can be considered to be an active endocrine organ.
Hormones and Metabolism
Hormones are rulers of our metabolism and your metabolism produces energy. When our guts are not functioning properly our immune system is affected, so is our energy. Toxicity in the gut can cause low thyroid function resulting in low energy levels and poor sleep. Low thyroid function is also found to be present in many people with chronic illnesses. All of this stems from a leaky gut and our stomachs ability to digest and absorb nutrients affecting every part of our endocrine system.
What to Address
High stomach acid / low stomach pH is essential for proper digestion and absorption of nutrients further down in the gut. This is the first area to address when wanting to improve energy production and improve inflammation. Consuming animal protein or fermented foods in the first several bites of a meal helps to get the process started due to their high acidity.
