Kelsey Kinney: In terms of the maca, I have had some people that I’ve had on maca just for help with things like what you’re describing here, so I can say that it is useful, and it can be useful just for general adrenal fatigue-type issues as well. Like if somebody has lower cortisol, you know that might be something to think about too, but it’s not something I’ve used a ton. You may want to ask Chris or Amy about that as well to see if that’s something they use more often.
Then, so it sounds like, let’s see this person says, high free cortisol and low metabolized cortisol. Interesting. So with that kind of pattern, I’m trying to think. Because they’re probably going to feel, well with the high free cortisol, you can feel like very tired or overstressed. So you do need to—I’m glad you did the DUTCH test because sometimes people will say like, “Oh I feel like I have high cortisol” or “I feel like I have low cortisol” even though in reality if you actually looked at their testing, they would have high cortisol. Those symptoms can be a little bit misleading for people because oftentimes, especially with free cortisol whether it is high or low, people can kind of have the same sort of symptoms, which is very confusing for them because they can feel super tired even though they have really high cortisol.
I think that’s a good thing you tested, that’s really, really important. As for let’s see, because whether the maca would help with that, I’m actually not sure it would be a great idea with the high free cortisol. Yeah, I’m not sure I would do that with the high free cortisol, low metabolized cortisol. I don’t know for sure, but I think that could potentially make things worse. I would really focus on getting the cortisol stuff under control. So rather than, at least that’s what I do, if somebody’s got sex hormone issues but also has adrenal issues, one of the first things that I do is just focus on the adrenal side of things. Get that under control because a lot of times that, in and of itself, really helps the sex hormone side of things because you need to have a properly functioning HPA axis to have good sex hormone production.
If somebody’s got super high metabolized cortisol or free cortisol in this case, if somebody’s got either way really, if they are tending more towards metabolized or more towards free, that indicates obviously that they’re not doing great overall with their HPA axis. So that’s where I would focus your attention on first. Not to say that you can’t do other things, of course, to help increase testosterone and things like that, but I really like to focus most of my attention on the adrenal side of things first because that can go a long way toward helping resolve sex hormone issues.
Then you can recommend lifestyle habits too that are going to help with things like low testosterone, so weight lifting for example or just like strength training in general is going to really help build up testosterone. Now, of course, you want to kind of think about that with their adrenal issues at the same time. If they, first of all, can’t exercise, like they’re just feeling too wiped out and tired, obviously you need to keep that in mind. Or if you’re worried that they might go too far with it, like do too much, you need to really be clear with them about how much is appropriate, how many times a week, what intensity, all those kinds of things. But weight lifting can really be helpful for low testosterone, so it’s a great option. When it comes to exercise for adrenal fatigue, I think weightlifting is actually a really good option as well.
With my clients, I definitely see that people tend to do better with strength training than cardio-type of exercise. You may want to switch them if they’re already doing some degree of exercise, but it’s more on the cardio side of things. Just encourage them to go towards the strength training side, and that’s going to help not only to sort of give their HPA axis a little bit of a break. Because I just feel like the cardio stuff can be very, very intense and can be more of a stressor sometimes than the strength training, but also, of course, strength training is going to help with the low testosterone as well.