3 Adaptogenic Herbs to Reduce Stress and Cortisol

3 Adaptogenic Herbs to Reduce Stress and Cortisol

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thank you [Music] a lot of people when they think of the herb ginseng think of this mystical tonic Elixir that will help you live forever but in reality it's just one of a large host of herbs that also really really effectively treats stress so in this video I thought I would share some commonly used herbs we use to treat stress and cortisol hey guys I'm Dr Alex Hein author of the health book master of the day and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine now before we jump in there's two very important links right below this video the first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually V telemedicine you can reach out to my practice and contact us to find a spot to learn more and in addition I've put together a free guide which is four daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine so those are the links right below the video so before we jump into this idea of treating stress and cortisol we have to keep in mind that stress has existed since the dawn of time right humans were had much more precarious lives historically than ever before young people dying of infectious diseases getting attacked by animals Etc getting attacked by warring tribes and that is significantly Less in the modern day but my point is simply that cortisol did not exist right humans were not aware of stress hormones 2000 years ago besides the effects that they had in their body and so Chinese medicine is well equipped to treat these symptoms without even being aware of this concept this hormone that we call cortisol the first thing in Chinese medicine is that we are always treating a pattern we don't treat cortisol right we don't treat necessarily even the stress response we treat the pattern and the pattern can be stressed from many different causes for example I was seeing a patient about a month ago and the main cause of his stress his pattern was he was feeling stressed feeling anxious had an elevated heart rate over 110 beats per minute and was frequently having heart palpitations and insomnia now that was a clear clinical pattern in Chinese medicine that is easily treatable with compounded formulas and I wasn't testing his cortisol levels right I wasn't doing a salivary cortisol test like very often if you go to a functional doctor or a naturopath but I was able to successfully resolve 95 of those symptoms without even testing his stress hormones for example so we treat the pattern not for example cortisol now one herb that has been very very well studied has been ginseng or wrenchen now the ginsenosides inside ginseng have been studied quite a lot so a 2019 review collected current research focused on panics ginseng's mechanism of action specifically actually as an antidepressant so they found that primarily it was working on the HPA axis now in this particular summary they noted that mice receiving a ginsenicide extract from this root not only had improved sleep but had lower cortisol levels in their blood serum so in their bloodstream it had a measurable effect in terms of specifically cortisol now another herb that is extremely commonly used is licorice root or glyceriza now gansal is used in almost every single formula in traditional Chinese medicine it's said to basically be something that binds or harmonizes the formula or it tempers the effects of other herbs so for example you're using an herb like ginger ginger is spicy and can be very drying you can combine it with honey fried licorice to still have the effect of the ginger but not for example dry out the mucous membranes too much or dry out your skin too much so it's often paired within our formulas now gansal licorice has been well studied and one 2010 study used gansal in anxious rats so they wanted to see the effect it had on stress now basically they would put these rats through a maze to basically induce a stress response right they would stress out these rats and then give them an intervention or not and then see the effect now in particular the rats in the licorice group had an increase in an enzyme called chat and it's responsible for the synthesis of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine now acetylcholine in this case was essential for triggering voluntary movements so in this case utilizing the gansal on these rats had actually altered the expression of certain enzymes that were involved in stress now there's also a very famous formula called kaisinsan or smile powder now it's a 2000 year old formula for depression and for anxiety now again in an equally disturbing study they exposed rats to Chronic random stress basically producing clinical depression right the symptoms of depression they administered this formula and then they basically assessed the depression related symptoms through a series of tests now the study found that first of all this formula kaisinsan alleviated these depression-like symptoms also one of the ways that it did it was by altering gut microbiota and they found that by altering the microbiome they could actually alter the symptoms and really the expression of the stress now there are two primary ways that the altered gut microbiota the microbiome had basically made the rats less prone to stress the first was that the actual altered microbiome included a decrease in inflammatory cytokines and an increase in certain proteins that were related to the blood-brain barrier so very interesting formula it's four herbs and it's could be literally translated as smile powder for uh depression basically it's a historical herbal formula so some interesting uses of several herbs the last two in that formula were younger and shatrang pool and very historically useful herbs for psychomotional problems mental health anxiety and depression and conditions like that so that's what I have you for today guys if you want to check out more on this you can check out the companion article Below in the description and again if you want to learn more about becoming a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine check out the links right below this video [Music]

#Adaptogenic #Herbs #Reduce #Stress #Cortisol

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