Quitting Smoking – OMG What Happened To My Adrenals

When we think about the effect of quitting smoking most attention is given to the lungs, I’m sure you know plenty about lung cancer and emphysema for starters. But the lungs are just the celebrities in the risks of smoking world.

There are lots of other body parts which suffer as well. Your adrenal glands are very useful to have working well. They perform many useful functions including:

1. Producing adrenalin, help you react quickly in times of heightened stress or danger.
2. Releasing cortisol, which wakes you up, acts as an anti-inflammatory, and influences metabolism.
3. Secreting DHEA which is your live long, feel great hormone, it converts to testosterone or estrogen, helps you sleep better and have more energy.
4. Plus, your adrenal function affects your blood sugar levels.

So how does smoking affect your adrenals? The enemy of adrenal function is stress. Physical stress, emotional stress and or chemical stress.

Every cigarette is a powerful stress on your body, over time your adrenals attempt to cope by creating more adrenalin and cortisol. This action creates some serious hormonal imbalances.

As cortisol rises, then DHEA falls, plus melatonin which is your sleep hormone becomes displaced by elevated cortisol.

This is in itself bad enough news, causing increased stress and anxiety, an increased inability to manage depression and heightened pain responses.

But over time the adrenal gland fails to produce cortisol and the levels drop. This has a big impact on blood sugar, and consequently energy, concentration and general wellbeing.

I’m sure now you can see the problems around smoking, stress and hormone balance. When you quit, naturally your lungs will recover quickly, because of the fast turnover of lung cells, but your adrenals will take some time to re-boot.

Vitamins B5 and B6 are essential, plus the herbs Avena Sativa (Oats) and Liquorice plus the Chinese herb Buplerium.

Plus direct stress management tools whether they be Yoga, Meditation Qigong or specific techniques given as part of your quit smoking hypnosis session.

You need to take your adrenal recovery seriously, because if you don’t you won’t have the emotional reserves to handle life’s trials and tribulations as they are thrown at you, whether you like it or not.

The added bonus is that is that not only your post smoking recovery will be faster; you will feel better than you have in years and you will be very unlikely to return to smoking in the future.