In 2024, Throw out the Coffee Pot and Try This Instead

Our lives have a way of becoming more stressful as we grow older. When we are children, we long for the day that we can be ‘grown up’ and do whatever we want. We do not recognize how great life before adulthood is until its too late to turn back!

Adulthood is a constantly evolving landscape without rules or ‘fairness.’ Adulthood in late-stage capitalism is the daily struggle to work hard enough to earn a measly income to keep our debt-collectors from reaching directly into our pockets.

This daily race to accumulate money is unbalanced with our human experience.

We need to sleep 8–9 hours a day, eat at least 2,000 calories, engage in moderate physical activity for 20–30 minutes, move our bowels, empty our bladder, engage in human contact, keep up with the latest entertainment, battle with our health conditions, and make sure we call our parents.

All the while ensuring that we do not run afoul of other humans trying to satisfy all their financial and personal needs.

This is stressful! Why did we ever leave childhood behind? Adulthood is a bizarre, lawless, wasteland!

But there is hope. Its name is self-care.

Hopefully, adding self-care to your already overflowing calendar does not send you screaming into the abyss. If it does not, let us continue.

Self-care is the warm retreat that makes the daily grind doable. Self-care brings you back into balance and reminds you what it means to relax.

Self-care is mandatory to avoid falling into unplanned self-care, also known as getting sick, or ‘burning out.’

Among the range of self-care options there are herbal supplements that can provide the relief of self-care, without breaking your streak of work attendance. They are known as adaptogens.

Adaptogens are herbal preparations that increase attention and endurance in fatigue, reduce stress, and reduce stress-related disorders.

In the graphic below, the blue dotted line is the normal rollercoaster of stress. The pink line is the same rollercoaster, but with the help of an adaptogen.

This shows where adaptogens help to reduce stress, and they help in protecting you from exhaustion from too much stress.

Read on for how adaptogens do this!

Cortisol

Our body is amazing at regulating our internal environment to optimize our performance in the exterior world. One of these processes includes the steroid hormone Cortisol.

When you are stressed, Cortisol is released from the adrenal glands that sit on top of the kidneys.

Cortisol helps:

- Your body respond to stress or danger (fight or flight)

- Increases the body’s metabolism of glucose

- Controls blood pressure

- Reduces inflammation

However, people in the modern world experience stress in ways that our evolutionary ancestors never encountered. In the old days, stress came from having to out run a tiger. Nowadays, it is hard to name what we are not stressed about!

Bills, debt, job security, global warming, driving, the economy, etc. All these stressors keep our bodies in a constant state of fight-or-flight.

When this occurs, we see people ‘burning out’ from a job they once loved, as well as chronic fatigue, obesity, and so on.

For some people, their only option is to drop their career and take a very long vacation to reset their stress level.

We cannot change the modern world quickly, but we can try to adapt to it as best we can (and hopefully drop unneeded stressors along the way too).

Adaptogens aid in this by helping the body keep calm in the face of stress.

Fatigue

When too much cortisol is pumped out of the adrenals for too long, the body starts to run out of juice to keep up its ‘fight or flight’ response.

Again, this is the chronic fatigue we see in people that work stressful jobs for years.

Adaptogens have been found to reduce fatigue by reducing cortisol levels.

They also increase attention and endurance when performance has been deteriorated by fatigue. This is important as long-term stress has been shown to negatively affect memory, attention, and heart health, as well as increase anxiety and inflammation.

Adaptogens have been found to protect the brain from the negative effects of long-term stress.

This means that if you were not convinced that taking an adaptogen would be good to avoid chronic fatigue, take it to protect yourself from the long-term brain problems that stress causes.

What Adaptogen is Right for Me?

Aside from stress support, there are a wide range of adaptogens that have other functions. Before taking any adaptogen, you should talk with your primary care provider and a licensed herbalist to ensure that it is safe for you to take an adaptogen.

For any of the adaptogens talked about in this article, the long term (months to years) effects are yet unstudied. It is wise to take a new supplement for a several weeks at a time and then stop taking it. This will give you the opportunity to see how the herb and your body interact, and to decide if continuing to use the herb is in your best interest.

Here are a few popular adaptogens.

A very widely used adaptogen is Rhodiola Rosea:

- Increases mental and physical performance

- Decreases symptoms of fatigue and depression

- Provides antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects

This could be a great adaptogen to start the day with as its effects are more focused on anti-fatigue and increased work capacity.

An often-mentioned adaptogen is Ashwagandha:

- Reduces stress and anxiety

- Improves sleep

Ashwagandha is a great bed-time adaptogen. It has been found to be helpful in insomnia patients as it improves sleep quality, sleep efficiency (time spent asleep), and sleep latency (time to fall asleep).

A readily available and easy to include herbal is Schisandra chinensis:

- Anti-cancer effects

- Anti-obesity and anti-diabetes actions

- Anti-aging (protects skin, muscle, and bone health)

Schisandra is also known as Wu Wei Zi or Five Flavor Berry, it is used by Nanai hunters to reduce thirst, hunger, fatigue, and to improve night vision.

Wu Wei Zi has been used in Chinese Medicine for millennia as a sleep aid, an astringent of sweat and the bowels, and it tonifies the Kidneys and Qi.

Schisandra is a great berry to have as a pre-bedtime tea! Its sour flavor helps to pull in and anchor down the mind at the end of a long day to ensure you get plenty of Z’s.

And more! There are many adaptogens available with various effects and studies to support their benefits. Is there an adaptogen you use that you enjoy? Leave a comment!

Why Adaptogens Instead of More Caffeine?

Caffeine has been the lifeblood of industrial-capitalist society for almost 200 years. As much as we all love coffee (feel free to buy me a cup if you enjoyed this article), it only adds to burnout.

Coffee is like pouring more gasoline on a dying fire. It gets the fire hot again but it consumes more fuel. The same goes for our bodies, when we are exhausted, caffeine puts us into a deeper energy-debt that will have to be paid eventually.

When patients come to the clinic asking for acupuncture to increase their energy, I automatically ask how they sleep.

Energy, or Yang Qi, can only be expended in equal part to Yin, or sleep.

In other words, if you want more energy, you need more restful sleep. Adaptogens can help you get that better sleep.

Check out this chart comparing the characteristics of stimulants (caffeine) vs adaptogens:

Conclusion

Adaptogens are a powerful tool for reducing stress and preventing the effects of long-term stress on the body and mind.

Adaptogens work by affecting cortisol levels, by supporting sleep, and by protecting the mind from stress.

After checking with your primary care provider, choose an adaptogen that is right for you.

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