Video

Transcript

so what is the most powerful adaptogen

well what is an adaptogen an adaptogen

is something that helps you cope with

stress it helps you stabilize something

called homeostasis so it’s your body’s

adjusting to the environment so if you

stood up really fast right and you get

dizzy that’s not adjusting to your

environment your body should be able to

quickly

shift your blood pressure and shift the

blood up into your brain so you don’t

pass out or let’s say you run up the

stairs right your body should adapt to

that and you shouldn’t go unconscious so

if there’s a problem in your ability to

adapt to stress

then an adaptogen can help you but most

adaptogens focus on increasing your

resistance

to

stress

and the most powerful adaptogen that i

know is ashwagandha ashwagandha does a

lot but in this video we’re going to

primarily focus on

how it can help someone with stress it’s

been around for a couple years like 3

000 years many different cultures

have used ashwagandha for

all sorts of things

but primarily most people use it to cope

with stress the main chemical compound

in ashwagandha that is responsible for

this stress adaptation

is with analytes and with analytes is

kind of like a a category of 300

different similar compounds so what

happens when you take ashwagandha

is you start

feeling

calm you feel like you can cope better

and i’m going to talk about why number

one it helps to modulate or control

something called the hpa

axis this communication between the

hypothalamus pituitary and your adrenals

okay so

let’s say you experience stress right so

stress is received by the body

and the hypothalamus is like the owner

of the football team that sends the

message to the coach which then sends

the message to the quarterback to give

the play out to get everyone on the same

page

so in other words these hormonal

communications

are all about

getting the body ready or adapting to a

stress response and then once the

hormone does its job adapting the body

to stress

then a signal is sent back turning off

this mechanism and this is the problem

with chronic stress that message never

comes back to turn things off and so we

have this chronic elevation

of

cortisol

now what’s really cool about ashwagandha

is it can help to turn off cortisol and

another hormone called dhea now when i

talk about turn off i’m not talking

about completely i’m talking about

reducing it to a certain amount and so

ashwagandha in various studies i think

there’s like roughly about 41 different

studies just on

stress alone but there’s a lot of other

studies on a lot of different aspects of

what it can do

but in this one study which i’m going to

put down below it can help reduce

cortisol and dhea

now the thing about cortisol cortisol

does not

cause you to be stressed out sometimes

people say boy my cortisol is too high

it’s stressing me out or my adrenals are

overactive and stressing me out no

it’s the stress that’s causing the

adrenals to

pump out more cortisol cortisol is there

just to adapt your body to stress it’s

doing its job and the problem is if

you’re under sustained stress it’s just

not very healthy to have your body in

this state so let’s just take a peek at

what cortisol

does okay this is just some of the

things that it will do

number one i already mentioned this um

it responds to stress

it doesn’t cause stress it’s just

adapting your body to a stress state so

the first thing it’s going to do it’s

going to increase your blood sugars okay

this is called the flight or fight mode

it’s a stress mode like if there is a

lion chasing you

you can either fight them or run away

so it’s quick energy it’s increase or

mobilize your blood sugars the problem

with chronic stress is that sugar then

will trigger insulin

and convert to belly fat and a lot of

other problems like high triglycerides

high cholesterol and also it can burn

out the pancreas and even cause diabetes

if there’s

enough of this cortisol being pumped out

the other thing that cortisol will do

it’ll turn off certain

things in our body that are not

necessarily related to

this present time threat okay

so it temporarily turns off your immune

system so it just shuts the thing down

this is why

people take prednisone for example which

is a synthetic cortisol

for anything inflammation autoimmune

diseases

allergies

poison ivy

skin problems

lung infections etc etc so the immune

system is temporarily put on pause okay

the other thing that cortisol will do

is it decreases the sensitivity to

insulin now this is not a good thing we

want insulin very very sensitive so it

can regulate your blood sugars so if it

makes insulin

less sensitive it actually creates

insulin resistance what your body’s

trying to do it’s trying to prevent

tissues from using glucose so it’s

trying to conserve and use that

glucose for energy now it also will

increase sodium and water retention this

is why when people are stressed they’re

just like a fluid-filled

sac especially in their ankles

at the same time it increases potassium

excretion

so your body is getting rid of potassium

and retaining

sodium this is why

when you’re under stress for a period of

time

you become even more potassium depleted

and you hold on more sodium so this is

just another reason why potassium is so

important during a stress state so but

what do people do when they’re stressed

they eat salty crunchy carbs right like

potato chips or other chips things like

that what are they doing you’re

increasing more blood sugar and more

salt retention when cortisol goes up we

also get a spike in gastric acid

so you may find that your stomach has

like acid reflux or just heartburn and

if stress goes on long enough

that can irritate and create

inflammation in your stomach and that’s

called gastritis

this is one of the reasons why stress

can actually create an ulcer and

actually damage in your stomach but not

just in your stomach it can also damage

the brain

so chronic stress can actually cause

some major damage to your hippocampus so

then you start losing memory and the

ability to learn and your cognitive

function

all right let’s go back to this

right here

so ashwagandha

can

lower

cortisol to a certain degree as well as

dhea what is dhea it’s kind of a

precursor

for cortisol and other hormones so this

is elevated during stress and guess what

ashwagandha actually can help lower this

which is a good indication

that your body is less stressed if you

have a lesser amount of dhea

that’s still within the normal range and

you have a lesser amount of cortisol so

based on this study which is a

double-blinded placebo test

they found

lower am cortisol so lower cortisol in

the morning there is also lower dhea in

the morning there is a slight increase

in testosterone because

stress does shut down testosterone so

the fact that it raised was is a good

thing also ashwagandha increased

endurance okay so you can go longer when

you exercise it increases strength okay

because one of the things that

stress does is it makes you weak and

ashwagandha is really good for someone

that feels weak after stress

like let’s say for example you had some

immune infection and you’re trying to

recover from that because when you feel

really weak ashwagandha is a really good

thing to increase the strength or let’s

say you’ve been under a lot of stress

for many days and you’re not sleeping

that well ashwagandha can help raise

your strength so you at least don’t feel

weak and ashwagandha showed significant

improvements in emotions so ashwagandha

has a tendency to bring you up so you’re

not stuck in this stress state now if

you wanted a really good ashwagandha

product i did put a link down below in

the description check it out now since

we’re on the topic of stress you have to

see

this video on stress it is very very

important i put it up right here check

it out