All About Adrenals: An Interview with Dr. Daniel Chong

Posted on | February 10, 2010 | 5 Comments

Chongbrochurefrontmap_pdf - Adobe ReaderThis week we have the great honor of hearing from my amazing Naturopathic Physician here in Portland, Dr. Daniel Chong.  Dr. Chong practices medicine using a foundational, nutritional approach and recommends a diet in line with the Weston A. Price Foundation and utilizes dietary protocols in helping patients heal from a variety of ailments.  Today I’ve asked Dr. Chong to answer a series of questions on an often-ignored, but crucial part of the body called the adrenal glands.  Read on to see how adrenal health may be the underlying cause to many chronic disorders. Also, coming up later on this week I’ll be sharing Part 1 of Celeste’s Story, a personal journey of a mother of two young childen whose life changed overnight as a result of her adrenal health. Now, here’s Dr. Chong:

1) What exactly are the adrenals, and why are they so important?

 Well, that is a potentially very long answer, so I’ll try to give the cliff notes version.  The adrenal glands are endocrine (hormone-related) organs that sit on top of the kidneys.  They are crucial to optimal daily function for a variety of reasons.  For one thing they help you respond and adapt to stress.  They also help you regulate your body’s fluid levels and blood sugar levels to a certain extent. 

 2) How do the adrenals become fatigued?

Going back to the idea that the adrenals help you respond to stress is important to remember when answering this question.  The key thing to remember is that our bodies were built to respond to infrequent amounts of extreme stress for short periods of time (think big hairy animal with sharp teeth chasing you until you climb a tree or reach your cave).  What the typical modern day human deals with, however, is frequent amounts of mild to extreme stress for long periods of time (think trying to get three kids to school on time, fighting rush hour traffic, your boss yelling at you, fighting rush hour traffic, trying to get three kids fed and into bed on time, then fighting with your spouse, day after day after day).  In other words, what we do these days and how we live is not what we were designed for.  A system that was built to handle short, intense bursts, will eventually burn out if asked to do things it’s not meant to do.  Another example would be imagining an Olympic sprinting champion trying to run a marathon.  It’s simply not what he or she is trained for.  If we then consider additional things that also stress the adrenals, like sugar consumption and the ups and downs in blood sugar that causes, chronic infections, and chronic pain to name a few, and how common these things are in our population, you can quickly see a recipe for adrenal fatigue, if not disaster.

 3) Why hasn’t my MD ever addressed the health of my adrenals?

 MDS are taught to identify and treat disease or pathology.  While such skills are obviously extremely important and beneficial they are not the best skills to employ in all situations.  Typically people with adrenal fatigue, or what I like to call “functional adrenal stress” do not have an outright disease process going on in their bodies, or at least not yet.  In situations like these, there is usually no sign of a true disease going on, as it might be investigated and seen via blood tests, cat scans and MRIS, etc.  Does that mean there is nothing going on?  Absolutely not.  There’s just nothing bad enough going on yet to cause the types of changes in your physiology that would show up with standard medical diagnostic testing.  There are certainly ways to assess and investigate functional adrenal stress, but MDS simply aren’t trained to do that.  If an MD doesn’t know how to look for something he or she will likely not be willing to pay it any attention. 

 4) What are the symptoms of adrenal fatigue?

Well, there are actually known to be various stages of adrenal stress, the last few would be what you would start calling adrenal fatigue.  Usually in these stages, you might see one or more of the following:

  • Easy or normal time falling asleep, but difficulty staying asleep. 
  • Hypoglycemic tendencies
  • Fatigue upon rising, even if you did get what you thought was a full night’s sleep
  • Frequent urination
  • Constipation
  • Feeling light-headed, especially after rising quickly from a seated or lying position to standing
  • Significant fatigue after exercising

 5) As a doctor with a very broad clientele, approximately what percentage of your patients deals with weak adrenals?

 I’d say about 60% of my patients have adrenal stress as a component of what they are dealing with, if not the main thing wrong with them.

 6) What role does diet play in the health of the adrenals?

No one will get over significant adrenal fatigue without appropriate, specific diet changes as part of their treatment plan.

 7) Are there lab tests that my doctor can order for me, if I don’t have access to a wonderful naturopath like you that can give me a good indication of the health of my adrenals?

Well, in my experience the best tests available so far are saliva tests.  They provide a better glimpse into adrenal function, as they only show what the levels of free or usable hormones are in the system.  They can also be measured multiple times in a day, which is much harder to do with blood, giving a better overall picture.  However, most MDs will not order these tests, as they are not considered standard.  Instead they order blood tests.   Blood tests are better for ruling out disease or pathology involving the adrenals, which again is obviously important, but they are not as good at detecting small changes.  I believe there is at least one lab out there through which you can order your own adrenal saliva test and not need a doctor’s consent.  In my experience, using a person’s symptom picture along with various types of in-office physical exams is almost if not just as valuable as any lab test.  

  8) What books or resources do you recommend for getting started on Adrenal Recovery?

I know there are some good ones out there, but I typically don’t recommend any as, to be honest, I don’t think they cover everything.  There are a lot of opinions out there in this field and I won’t refer someone to a resource unless I’m sure it’s 100% accurate.  Most of the time, if we identify the underlying causes to a person’s adrenal issues, it is not that difficult of a condition to improve upon.  I would say again that dietary and lifestyle changes are the most important factor for many adrenal fatigue cases.  In looking at things from that perspective, the resource I’d recommend most to people is not actually an “adrenal book” per say.  It’s just the best book I’ve seen on how to live a healthy life.  It’s called the primal blueprint, by Mark Sisson.

 9) What are your top 5 “things you can do right now” for your adrenals?

  1. Sleep (7-9 hours a night)
  2. Stop eating refined sugar and white flour
  3. Eat protein at every meal and eat three meals a day (at least until your adrenals are recovered)
  4. Drink enough pure water (filtered vs. tap or bottled) to keep your urine light yellow except for when you first wake up in the morning
  5. Eat sea salt regularly

If you are in the Portland area and would like to see Dr. Chong to assess your own adrenal health, please visit Dr. Chong’s website: SeekHealth.net.  If you are outside of Portland and want help finding a holistic practitioner, check out my post here.

Here are some (automatically generated) related posts:

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Category: Nutritional Healing, tips
Tags: >

Comments

5 Responses to “All About Adrenals: An Interview with Dr. Daniel Chong”

  1. Joan Viers
    February 10th, 2010 @ 12:46 pm

    good article, I already see Dr. Chong.

  2. Howard P
    February 10th, 2010 @ 6:09 pm

    Great article! What do you think of Dr. James Wilson? I’ve read his book and have to say it’s one of the best resources on adrenal fatigue. Thanks!

  3. carrie
    February 11th, 2010 @ 3:44 am

    @Howard,

    Yes, I have read Dr. James Wilson’s book and I think it’s pretty good! It’s such a user-friendly resource, a must-read for anyone suffering from adrenal fatigue!

    Thanks for the comment!

    Carrie

  4. Tinnitus Adrenals « Tinnitus Retraining Therapy
    March 23rd, 2010 @ 2:33 am

    [...] All About Adrenals: An Interview with Dr. Daniel Chong : Organic & Thrifty [...]

  5. Nutritional Therapy: The Key to Healthy Motherhood : Organic & Thrifty
    July 7th, 2010 @ 1:26 am

    [...] and nutritonal healing for gut and digestive issues.  I started to look into the whole notion of Adrenal Fatigue and the benefits of theraputic diets such as the GAPS diet for digestive healing.  In short, I [...]

Leave a Reply





Anti-Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree