Adrenal Glands are a powerhouse of Hormones
Hi, I’m Dr. Chad Larson. I’m going to add a new type of segment to the channel and I’ll be doing product reviews. And today I have a product that I think is pretty timely for our current general state of health. It’s about adrenal gland support. The adrenal glands sit right above the kidneys and they’re just a powerhouse of hormones. They make a variety of hormones, but two that I’m going to focus on today are stress hormones, DHEA and especially cortisol.
Cortisol the “stress hormone”
Cortisol is one of the adrenal gland hormones that we want to have in a certain balance. We don’t want it too low. We don’t want it too high. And as I’m evaluating patients lately, I believe that the whole COVID era and all of the policies have led to lots of stress. There’s been life stress and immune system stress and global stress, and I think people are really feeling it and a lot of them are walking around with a certain degree of fatigue. And while there are many reasons why they might have fatigue, adrenal insufficiency, sometimes called adrenal fatigue, might be one of them.
SR-Adrenal
So I want to show you a product and, like I said, I’ll be doing more of these product reviews. This one is a little bit self-serving because I formulated this product myself many years ago, but it’s been a very helpful product. I’ve prescribed it for many of my patients over the years. I formulated it because there wasn’t a product with quite the right combination of ingredients that I wanted for cases of chronic fatigue or chronic adrenal hormone insufficiency. I wanted to support them from a variety of angles. So I just want to go over those different things and why I chose these particular ingredients.
First of all, this is the product. We can roll over the image to see what it says on the label:
- Enhances mental and physical stamina
- Contains proven adaptogens for stress resistance (I’ll explain more about that in just a moment)
- Provides key cofactors for synthesis and utilization of adrenal hormones
Vitamin cofactors that help support the adrenal glands
Those things are key because what we want to do is increase our resistance to stress and support our mental and physical stamina. And these are the ingredients in SR- Adrenal. At the top we have vitamin C. There’s vitamin B-6, and this is a particular type of vitamin B-6, pyridoxal-5-phosphate. This is a pre-activated form of B-6, so it gets into the system and it’s ready to be used right away. Biotin. Pantothenic acid. This is an activated form of vitamin B-5. And then some good absorbable forms of zinc and copper. These are cofactors. We start out with certain building blocks for our adrenal hormone production, but each link in the chain requires a different cofactor to kind of move along the production of these adrenal gland hormones. And that’s why those particular micronutrients were chosen. They’re cofactors to help support adrenal hormone production.
Adrenal Tissue Extract
Then we have a few other things. We’ve got adrenal tissue extract which helps to give us a very robust sort of building block for our adrenal gland hormones. It also provides some constituents that our body can utilize right away to support our energy systems and help to make our body and adrenal hormones more balanced. These are really important components, especially in individuals who have overactive adrenals. For a variety of reasons, the adrenals can get kind of burned out and they’ll no longer have the proper building blocks and cofactors for normal adrenal cortisol production. Eventually it can plummet over time and that’s often when people start to experience fatigue, chronic pain, and inflammation. Cortisol really influences things like immune system regulation, blood sugar glucose regulation, inflammation, energy. The adrenal glands are small glands, but they’re just a packed powerhouse.
Adaptogens
And then I think some of the best things in this formula are the adaptogens: eleuthero senticosus, rhodiola rosea, panax ginseng, ashwagandha. These are very, very well scientifically studied adaptogens. An adaptogen is a type of herb, a botanical, that helps to regulate our stress systems. If our adrenals are under-functioning, it can help to bring them up to normal balance. If our adrenal glands and adrenal hormones are over-functioning, it can help to bring them down into balance. So they’re quite balancing and regulating in that regard. And these have been tested in all kinds of situations. They’ll have a subject group and a control group. And the subject group which is getting the therapy, maybe one of these botanicals like Rhodiola, will be put through a certain stressful situation. Then they compare them to the control group that is not receiving the therapy, and we see that the ability to withstand the stressors goes up significantly when we have these adaptogens in our system. So they’ve been studied for a very, very long period of time. They go back hundreds and hundreds of years in human medicinal use, so they’ve got a really good track record.
Dosage
The typical dose for most people is two capsules twice a day. The way that cortisol works is that it starts out high in the morning and it slowly tapers off as the day goes on. So that’s typically how I recommend taking this adrenal support product, two in the morning and then two around let’s call it lunchtime. That schedule supports the part of the day when the adrenal hormones are most robust.
So that’s SR-A adrenal. I would have you consider whether these sorts of things are pertinent to you. If you feel like your mental and physical stamina and your ability to withstand stress seem like they’re going down over time, this can be a product to really help you in that regard. Have a look at it. See if it fits with what’s going on with you, or whether it’s something you want to share and kind of explain to a friend or family member. That can be helpful as well.
-Dr. Chad Larson
I’ll keep doing product reviews
These reviews won’t always be of my own products. I’ve formulated only a handful of products, and I’ll cover them as well as other products. Most of the products that I’ll review have been expertly formulated by other formulators, but this particular one does seem to be timely, and it’s something that in my clinical practice I’m having to prescribe more in certain situations. So, I hope that was helpful. I will keep reading the studies and bringing you the information. Until then, keep it real.
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What Do You Think?
Comment below to share what you think about chronic fatigue, hormone insufficiency, and if it could be your adrenals. And if you like what Dr. Larson has to say, we’d love it if you could give us a share on social media!
