By Helen Kobek, Copyright Helen Kobek | From BayLines Express, January, 2022
Your adrenal glands – familiarly called “adrenals” – don’t have the Public Relations of, say, the heart, or the brain. And they sound like “renal” even though they have nothing to do with kidneys, other than that they are attached on top of them. Like a very top-padded hat. Adrenals are triangular-shaped, and are around 3 cm wide. They are part of the endocrine system. Most people have two of them. You can count them for yourself if you’re worried.
Your adrenals make steroid hormones, adrenaline, and noradrenaline – hormones that help control heart rate, blood pressure, and that have other key functions. Adrenals also help with sodium-water balance, growth hormone use, and more. But adrenals are most commonly associated with the “fight-or-flight” response to danger or stress.
We should all get to know and care about our adrenals. And there are reasons why – as blind people – getting to know our adrenals is especially important. We’ll get to that later.
Why should you get to know your adrenals? Because your adrenals know EVERYTHING about YOU! They know when you sleep, how much, and how well. They know how much caffeine you drink, how much refined sugar you eat, how much alcohol you drink. They know if you like your job or if your boss causes you suffering. Your adrenals know if you exercise, and whether your exercise is good for your physiology. They know if you meditate or if you just tell people you meditate. Your adrenals know if you are at a good weight. They know if you lie a lot to your friends, family, or officials, or whether your life doesn’t require that you lie. (Needing to lie causes stress. That’s the truth.)
Your adrenals know all this stuff without any judgment, which makes them superiorly evolved beings. Like Saints. Or Buddhist arahants. They are like that.
It is important to know what our adrenals know about us because all relationships need to be mutual, or it’s not a relationship. It’s, instead, like a usery thing. It’s like, “You know all about me and I don’t know you or care,” which is unsustainable and rude.
If we don’t take care of our adrenals, they run the risk of saying, “Whatever. Do what you want. I don’t care.” So, I take back that they are saintly, because it’s not true, now that I think about it. Here’s a better way to put it: If all goes well and your adrenals are pretty respected, they will be pretty amazing and non-judgy. Like an exquisite friend.
And do know that if you mess up your relationship with your adrenals, it’s pretty easy to repair that relationship. Like, in only a few months. As compared to your relationships with other organs or glands, like the thyroid which holds grudges like you wouldn’t BELIEVE. FOR YEARS! Or – worse yet – your heart, which, if you let it get shocked by something ungrounded, literally never forgives you. EH-VER. The corneas are hands-down the most forgiving body part, cheerily making your fave breakfast in just five days after you accidentally zipped a piece of braille paper across an eye. Corneas are like yellow Labrador puppies: It’s all good, they let offenses go. We will get to how to heal betrayed adrenals later. Right now, let’s talk about what we need to do to be responsible in relationship with our adrenal glands.
Adrenals are sensitive, just as we’d want good friends to be. Superfriends, though, in that they are awake all the time, with some rest during the night, but never off-duty. Now that I think about it, adrenals are martyrs. Nah, let’s not think that way because we’d feel needy and inadequate. Forget I said that thing about martyrs.
Adrenals being sensitive is precisely how they know all that stuff about us listed above. They are sensitive to all stimulants, including caffeine. They react to blood sugar spikes. So, we need to temper our intake of those things.
Adrenals are sensitive to over-exercise, and to the wrong kind of exercise for your body. Competitive exercise can stress the adrenals, as can overly strenuous exercise. So, check out where your ideal heart rate is for stamina or weight loss, and keep it there.
But the biggest thing we need to be responsible about for our adrenals is managing stress. We all know about stress and we’ve all experienced way too much stress from various types of hardship. This pandemic has been a huge stress and many of us haven’t dealt with it all that well. Here are some of the best ways to manage stress, keeping in mind that we don’t need to eliminate all forms of stress (we couldn’t if we tried), but to bring it to a better level so our adrenals don’t take a long walk off a short pier:
- Meditate. All kinds of meditation exist, and I suggest starting with the Relaxation Response. It’s a twice-a-day-for-about-ten-minutes process of bringing your brain into the alpha state which is the state where the brain says, “Everything is fine. I am superior in my ability to let go of all stress. Unlike my neighbor Greg, who is petty about my quiet parties.” Read the book The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson, or watch YouTube videos.
- Laugh. Find out what makes you really laugh in a generous-of-spirit way. Not to laugh at or about other people. But about things in life that are funny. Stand-up comedians – if they are generous-of-spirit – are great at bringing that laughter home.
- Give to people without seeking reward. That means just being nice by holding a door open. Blind people can do that, too, even though sighted people are confused by our being able to do anything normal. Hold doors, tell people they make the world better. Studies show that being kind eases stress.
- Go into nature. Be around trees, the hormones they put out, and the oxygen cast off. And notice their resilience, which is part of stress ease. Define resilience for yourself and strive for it.
So, those are just a few ideas that we all can benefit from in reducing stress. If you’d like dozens more ideas of how to ease stress, the book Everyday Cruelty: How to Deal with Its Effects without Denial, Bitterness, or Despair (Kobek, 2014) has a lot to offer in one chapter.
And I promised that I said something about why, as blind or low vision folks, our adrenals are more vulnerable as blind or low vision folks. None of this will come as a surprise, and some of it’s hard to think about.
Let’s start with the easier stuff: We can sometimes have trouble finding things that we’ve put down somewhere odd, or that a sighted person we live with or who visits (like neighbor Greg) moves to somewhere odd. STRESS!
Also, as we O&M our way around, even with the best skills, there’s the pesky hole we know we might miss, or that traffic that doesn’t go as expected. Nothing pumps up stress like finding ourselves in the middle of a highway, thinking we are on the sidewalk.
And then there’s not being able to read our print mail, and seeking out readers we can trust, not always being sure whom to trust until they’ve shown themselves to be either trustworthy or not trustworthy. STRESS.
And, worse yet – trigger warning – there are people who wish us harm, and might target us for robbery, assault, or worse, because we are perceived as vulnerable. A way to take the edge off of that is to take an excellent self-defense class. I took Impact Boston 32 years ago. And it changed my life, making me able to defend myself in all kinds of wretched situations, included attempted assault. In Impact Boston, the teacher/attacker is screened, trained, and padded so you can go after him with the right kinds of hits, not pulling your punches. He goes after you until he receives a blow that would knock him out were he not padded. I took this class blindfolded so I’d be sure I could do it, no matter what. Do consider such a class.
So, yes, us BVI folks get stressed a lot. Your adrenals might be stressed if you’re tired a lot, hair-trigger, or unendingly weepy. You can read about adrenal stress and fatigue symptoms, or ask your doctor.
Here’s how to repair things, if you’ve messed up your relationship with your adrenals, either with lifestyle, or because you are blind. Don’t waste time feeling guilty. That’s not helpful. Try these things for several months:
- Sleep at least 10 -12 hours a night. Start your sleep by 10 pm if you can, and go through 10 am. I know this is difficult, but the closer you can get to it, the better.
- Keep optional obligations to a minimum.
- Make your home a refuge.
- Use naturally scented things like essential oils. Scent goes right to the brain to send a calming memo. It’s the most primitive of senses and changes the nervous system quickly. (Even sighted people can have a normal sense of smell. That’s a little-known fact about sighted people. Share it.)
You can explore supplements but be careful not to uptake stimulating supplements. Seek professional care if you feel you have serious adrenal stress. So, there we have an overview of how to maintain a good mutual relationship with your adrenals and to heal a strained relationship. Some processes are easier than others, but worth it to do, just as caring for our friends and other relationships is worth it. Always.