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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Alisa Vitti
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February 25 - March 12, 2021
Schedule dinner so that you will be going to bed three and a half to four and a half hours after the meal. If you stay up longer, you’re going to get hungry and will naturally crave sugary foods that provide quick sources of energy.
In its early stages, adrenal fatigue is characterized by ongoing tiredness and a general lack of vitality. Other telltale signs include acne, weight gain, insomnia, depression, increased susceptibility to colds and other infections, and sugar cravings.
When your adrenals are functioning optimally, you wake up feeling energetic and optimistic.
Zona glomerulosa. This outermost layer produces the hormone aldosterone, which helps regulate your blood pressure and protects the sodium/potassium balance within each of your cells—a balance that allows cells to survive, divide, and remain intact. You can’t survive without this hormone.
Zona fasciculata. This middle layer churns out cortisol. Your body relies on a certain amount of cortisol coursing through your bloodstream in order to maintain your circadian rhythms (more on that in a moment) and mobilize stored fats, proteins, and carbohydrates from your cells when you need them for fuel.
Zona reticularis. This innermost layer produces dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), a precursor to androgens—estrogen and testosterone—in men and women. In women, 90 percent of our testosterone is manufactured from DHEA in this part of the adrenals. This hormone is crucial in both men and women for maintaining and building fat-frying muscle mass, boosting your libido, supporting your energy, protecting your skeleton, and safeguarding your mental health and cognitive function as you age.
When stressed, the adrenal medulla sends norepinephrine into your bloodstream, which restricts your blood vessels and increases your blood pressure. Meanwhile, epinephrine (a.k.a. adrenaline) boosts your heart rate and directs blood flow away from your organs and toward your muscles,
Here are my specific exercise recommendations when you’re working to heal adrenal fatigue:
Three days a week do brisk walking/jogging intervals for a total of twenty minutes. Walk briskly for two minutes; then jog for thirty seconds. That’s one interval. Do eight total.
Two nonconsecutive days per week do a full-body strength-training work-out with weights for twenty minutes. Choose exercise pairings that combine multiple muscle groups, such as squats with overhead presses, lunges with bicep curls, side lunges with lateral raises, pushups and crunches. Do two sets of twelve reps for each exercise. Start with five-pound weights and work up to about ten pounds.
Rest two days per week, which can include gentle yoga or walking when feeling better.
the cardio component (the walk/jog intervals) is long enough and intense enough to help you burn fat, but without causing the adrenals to become overstimulated. When you’re recovering from adrenal fatigue, anything longer than twenty minutes causes cortisol levels to rise, so be vigilant about stopping your exercise at that mark even if you’re used to pushing yourself harder or longer.
The strength-training component will help increase lean muscle mass, which aids blood sugar stability because your muscles consume glucose for fuel; in turn, this “legitimate” use of glucose will take the strain off your adrenals because your bloodstream will no longer be bombarded by glucose.
You’ll know this workout is working for you when you feel energized instead of drained after you exercise. Never work out on a completely empty stomach have something small such as an almond yogurt or green juice beforehand.
Try to schedule your workouts for first thing in the morning or midday. Since women with adrenal fatigue tend to have inappropriate cortisol spikes—these occur when you’re trying to fall asleep instead of first thing in the morning, as they should—morning workouts will, over time, fix this problem.
waking up with energy will be the sign that your adrenals are well on the...
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If you wake up in the morning without an alarm clock and feel like getting up and moving, it’s time to work up to thirty, forty-five, and eventually sixty minutes of cardio, and to adjust your strength-training workout by increasing the amount of weight you’re lifting and upping the duration to thirty minutes per session.
When they’re functioning normally, the adrenal glands are most active between 8 A.M. and 8 P.M., with a big surge to wake you up in the morning and another key surge midday.
Internal stressors are those that disrupt your body’s normal, healthy patterns and prevent you from accessing your WomanCode benefits—things such as mismanaged blood sugar, inadequate sleep, lack of physical activity, and even the absence of orgasms. External stressors are those that occur outside of your body but have a real physiological and psychological impact on your well-being.
When your pathways of elimination are congested, your body cannot get rid of toxins (such as the endocrine-disrupting FLO Blockers I mentioned in chapter 2) as well as the natural buildup of hormonal by-products that occur with normal metabolism.
The liver’s primary purpose is to convert fat-soluble toxins (most toxins are fat-soluble) into water-soluble waste through a two-step process so that your body can excrete them via sweat, urine, and bowel movements. Toxins include chemicals in your diet and environment, such as pesticides, insecticides, dry-cleaning chemicals, alcohol, cosmetics, and household cleaning products, as well as hormonal waste—that is, hormones your body has already used and needs to get rid of. Hormones are fat-soluble because that allows them to stay in the body longer; if they were water-soluble, you’d eliminate
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In the first phase of detoxification, the liver breaks down fat-soluble toxins into multiple components using nutrients such as glutathione, B vitamins, and C vitamins—nutrients stored in the liver from the foods that you eat.
In the second phase, selenium and amino acids in the liver (also stored from your diet) combine with these free radicals to make them harmless and water-soluble. Ideally, once your liver transforms a toxin from a fat-soluble to a water-soluble molecule, it enters the gallbladder, mixes with bile, and leaves the body via the large intestine. The last thing required to complete this journey is an adequate source of dietary fiber in the large intestine to bind with the waste to make sure it leaves quickly.
The last place you see this process being successful, the final phase, is when you wake up in the morning, have a glass of water, and feel the urge to have a bowel movement within about twenty minutes of waking. If it’s longer than that or if you require a cup of coffee in order to go to the bathroom, then you’re constipated (yes, even if you eventually go later that day).
your liver goes into self-cleaning mode from 3 P.M. to 3 A.M. Your first bowel movement should happen soon after waking, because the liver has been working for the past twelve hours to get rid of yesterday’s waste.
The lining of your large intestine is osmotic in nature, meaning that things can travel in and out through the membrane. If you don’t have an efficient transit time because your liver or large intestine is congested or you’re lacking the necessary nutrients for them to perform their functions efficiently, the toxins and other chemicals working their way through this p...
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Your skin is your body’s largest organ, so it’s also, naturally, the largest organ of elimination. It has to handle whatever the large intestine and liver are unable to eliminate. It does so by excreting waste, to the best of its abilities, via sweat.
Your skin is the last place symptoms show up when you’re experiencing elimination issues. If you develop cystic acne, rosacea, or eczema, it’s often a sign that the other systems haven’t been working well.
When working efficiently, your lymphatic system directs white blood cells to germs and other invaders and helps you fight off infections. But when it’s congested, the lymphatic system has the opposite effect: the fluid attracts these same viruses and bacteria and transports them throughout your body, dumping them into your bloodstream, and putting you at even greater risk of infection. People with lymphatic congestion issues are also likely to experience inflammation-related conditions
Fortunately, there’s a way to get your body to release its white-knuckled grip on your fat: up your dietary and supplemental forms of intake of vitamin A, vitamin B, and vitamin C, as well as sulforaphane and the antioxidant glutathione—nutrients your liver needs to detoxify effectively. By helping your liver do its job properly, you’ll prevent those toxins from becoming backlogged and wreaking havoc on your waistline.
Fill your diet with plenty of vegetables from the brassica family: cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and all kinds of kale. Try to sneak at least one brassica-type vegetable into every meal throughout the day. Add them to smoothies and juices that you make, too. • Reach for lemons and oranges. Add fresh lemon to your water. However, not all citrus will do—grapefruit contains an enzyme that impedes liver detoxification, so avoid it while you’re working on getting your liver back into shape. • Sneak caraway and dill seeds into as many meals as you can. Grind them in a spice
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Staying hydrated is extremely important during this cleanse. It supports your body’s ability to flush out toxins and keep your bowels regular. Try to drink more water than usual, aiming for at least eight glasses a day.
A day or two before the cleanse, stock up on: • green apples • pears • avocados • grapes • lemon • fresh berries (and other fruit you like, but no melon—it causes water retention) • baby greens • bok choy • dark-green leafy vegetables (kale, collards, mustard greens, spinach, broccoli rabe) • tomato • carrots • onion • scallions • cucumber • celery • radish • fennel (or other simple spring vegetables) • garlic • parsley • olive oil • apple cider vinegar • white fish (cod, tilapia, haddock, etc.)
salmon (preferably wild, no tuna) • beans (cannellini, lentils, black-eyed peas, chick peas, etc.) • Fiber Smart by Renewlife, Fiber Fusion by Enzymatic Therapy, or other fiber supplement • Chlorella tablets by Jarrow (optional but strongly recommended) • Green Drink—freshly juiced or powdered ( I recommend Kyo-Green) • Epsom salts or salt scrub • a sharp knife and a mandolin for slicing • a cutting board • a soup pot • brown rice (long grain only: plain brown, brown basmati, or brown jasmine) • quinoa • kasha (buckwheat) • your favorite herbal and green teas (if you use
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Fruit salad: This will be breakfast every day, so feel free to chop apples in advance or make it as you go. • Liver cleansing medley: I use the term “liver cleansing medley” instead of “salad” to emphasize the fact that this is much more substantial than just lettuce. You’ll be eating this with every lunch, so make a big batch of any of the medleys listed below. If you keep the dressing separate and use a sealed container, it can last you all week long. • grains: Make a batch of brown rice or quinoa. • Protein: Use the fish or bean recipes below. You’ll be eating fish for lunch, or just
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When you eat in a quiet environment and focus on your food, your body devotes more energy to digesting the food and absorbing the nutrients. You also enjoy the flavors and experience more, and therefore require less food to have a satisfying experience. • At the office: Find a quiet place to eat; minimize talking, e-mailing, and web surfing. Just eat and focus on your breathing and chewing (20 times per mouthful). • At home: Leave the TV off. Eat alone or acknowledge to your partner or family that during meals you will be eating more slowly and talking less.
Use a dry brush before your showers while you cleanse and brush toward your heart for best results. Dry brushing provides your organs of detoxification a gentle internal massage to stimulate digestion. It also helps with your circulation.
The products you use to clean your bathroom and household are potential stressors on your health. New scientific research shows that many of the chemicals found in everyday house-cleaning products are bio-accumulative and very toxic, which means that once in your system, they stay in your system and allow for increased free radical damage, which makes you more vulnerable to autoimmune diseases and cancers
Seventh Generation line of cleaning products: You can find this at some grocery stores, any health food store, and definitely Whole Foods. • Orange Oil multi-surface cleaner: dishwashing liquid, laundry detergent, toilet bowl cleaner, and mirror cleaner, all in one. It’s amazing and all natural. • BonAmi or Arm and Hammer baking powder in place of Ajax or Comet. • Hydrogen peroxide in place of Windex. • White vinegar instead of bleach (plus it’s a grease cutter for tile cleaning) Switching to these bio-safe products takes a load off your liver and helps protect your body year-round.
You should be having a bowel movement first thing in the morning without the aid of coffee or tea and another in the afternoon. If not, you are basically sitting with food that is days old.
So, if you have a tendency toward constipation, please: Increase your water intake: have 8 to 16 ounces of water upon waking to get peristalsis going.
There are five hormones that govern your experience of your menstrual cycle: estrogen, progesterone, follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), and testosterone. The quantities of these five hormones change four times throughout your menstrual cycle. This creates four distinct phases within each cycle—follicular, ovulatory, luteal, and menstrual—based on the concentrations of those hormones at each point. Not only do the varying ratios of hormones determine what’s going on inside your body from a reproductive standpoint; they also determine how you feel physically and
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PHASE 1: Follicular Phase Duration: 7–10 Days
Hormone focus. The hypothalamus signals your pituitary gland to send follicle-stimulating hormone to your ovaries, telling them to get ready to release another egg. Several egg follicles start to swell in preparation. Estrogen increases to thicken your uterine lining so that it can host an egg.
Body focus. Physical energy increases throughout this phase, and you may sometimes feel restless. Initially little to no vaginal secretions occur; then they start to increase—yellow or white in color and tacky or sticky in texture.
Lifestyle focus. Creativity and new beginnings characterize this phase. This is the time to direct your energy into stimulating projects at work and at home.
Your physical energy is at one of its highest points during your follicular phase. Emotionally, you feel outgoing, upbeat, and revitalized.
