My dear friend Don and I laughed harder than we had in weeks while we were driving together recently. Don was telling me how tired he’s been feeling lately; that when he wakes up in the morning, he feels about 80% as tired as when he laid down to go to sleep! I shook my head. We were stopped at a light behind a heavily bumper stickered car. Don said, “They should make a bumper sticker that says, ‘I wonder if Jesus was this tired too’.” And we laughed, even though we realized something was seriously wrong.
The Symptoms
A few months later, I was on the phone with a girlfriend, and she was telling me about her symptoms of adrenal fatigue. It was a bit scary when I realized that Don had been waking up feeling tired, I’d been getting tired around 1PM and needed either a nap or caffeine or sugar to make it through the rest of the day, and we both had been experiencing pounding hearts when lying down to nap or sleep. The other symptoms of adrenal fatigue are; loss of head hair, feeling rundown or overwhelmed, craving salty and sweet snacks, feeling more awake and energetic after 6PM than you do all day, slow to start in the morning, gastric ulcers, afternoon headaches, feeling full or bloated, blurred vision, unstable behavior, becoming shaky or light-headed if meals are missed or delayed, cannot stay asleep or cannot fall asleep, and dizziness when moving from sitting to standing or lying to standing.
I’ve had some symptoms of liver congestion recently, so I re-read the liver/gallbladder chapter of my favorite book, Healing With Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford. And, lo and behold, I discovered that I’ve been way too liberal with both red meats and saturated fats, for way too long.
For years now, I’ve been gleefully mounding heaping tablespoons of ghee and virgin coconut oil into my skillet, because I’m now eating a low glycemic, whole food diet. So, my metabolism has switched from burning sugars for energy to burning fats for energy, which is actually the way the human body is designed to run. I’ve been loving the flavors of using these whole, unrefined, saturated fats in my cooking, also because it’s now well known that the trans fats from not only hydrogenated oils, but also from the heating of refined vegetable oils (canola, corn, soybean, “vegetable” oils, etc.), which are used in most processed and restaurant foods, are what clog our arteries, especiallyin conjunction with too much saturated fat in the diet. You see, healthy indigenous people often eat as much as a 40% fat diet, with plenty of good saturated fats (and tons of vegetables), but they don’t eat cookies, crackers and chips. So, I’ve been likening myself to an indigenous Chumash woman in my diet, but I’ve stopped in my tracks with this fat-fest, after reading that too much saturated fat is really difficult for the liver & kidneys to process. Hmmm… (more…)
