The Connection Between Our Adrenal Glands & Blood Sugar

With chronic stress, your adrenal glands will suffer. However, it is typically one of the strongest organs to allow dysfunction to happen to it before giving up. When your body is out of balance, your adrenals will do all that it can to support it and bring it back into harmony. The adrenals produce many hormones that helps to regulate your bodily functions. One of those hormones is cortisol. Cortisol can be released in higher levels by your adrenal glands when your body perceives the presence of a stressor. High levels of cortisol for long periods of time is not healthy. Eventually, your adrenal glands will become compromised and you’ll experience what’s called Adrenal fatigue. Symptoms of adrenal fatigue can include low blood pressure, allergies, exhaustion, low immune system, weight gain and so much more. 

Did you know that cortisol also helps to regulate secretory IgA in your intestinal tract? Secretory IgA is your defense mechanism of your immune system in your gut. This means that cortisol has a crucial part in controlling the immune system in your gut. Therefore, when we’re stressed, our immune response in our gut is affected. The balance of good bacteria decreases giving way for the bad bacteria to grow. This can begin the cascade towards food intolerance. Please stay tuned to learn more about food allergies and food intolerance in our upcoming blog.

Cortisol secretion follows our natural circadian rhythm. Cortisol begins to rise at about 6 AM and peaks at about 8 AM. Throughout the day, our cortisol levels will fluctuate and begin to taper at night time with its lowest levels occurring when we’re asleep. When we go throughout the day without eating for long periods of time, our body will release more cortisol and adrenaline to continue our body’s normal functions. Knowing this piece of information will help us better understand when we should eat to support our adrenals. 
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In general: eat larger meals earlier in the day & eat smaller and lighter meals during the evening.

• Eat breakfast between 8 AM -10 AM. Eating closer to 8 AM would be more ideal. This will help to restore blood sugars levels lost during night time. Many times, we’ll skip breakfast and not realizing the effect this has on our adrenal glands. 
• Eat a healthy snack around 9 AM, if you had an earlier breakfast.
• Eat lunch between 11 AM – 12 PM. Eating lunch before noon will be beneficial because your body quickly uses up any nutrition we’ve provided it. 
• Eat a snack between 2-3 PM. This will help to reset cortisol dip around 3-4 PM. Notice that it is typically around 3-4 PM when we start to feel like we need a nap, to grab coffee or tea and/or eat more carbs.
• Eat dinner between 5-6 PM. Eating a lighter meal during the evening will further help our body by allowing it to digest less yet provide it with some nutrients to maintain your blood sugar before it drops even more as the night goes on. 
• Eat a snack that’s higher in protein and fiber about 1 hour before your sleep. Again, this will help maintain your blood sugar throughout the night. Some people will have sleep disturbances throughout the night and may not understand why. Sometimes, this wakening is due to our blood sugar dipping. To prevent blood sugar dips, we need time our meals and snacks appropriately.