372: Breaking the Cycle: Can Your Body Be Addicted to Emotional Stress?
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Welcome to the Ancient Health Podcast, where East meets West in the world of medicine. I'm Dr. Chris Motley, and here we explore how modern Western science and traditional Eastern wisdom come together to unlock the body's full healing potential. Each week, we'll dive into powerful tools, techniques, and approaches from both sides of the world to help you optimize your health and live with vitality. Let's bridge the gap between ancient practices and cutting-edge medicine. Let's get started.

Hello, friends. Welcome to the Ancient Health Podcast where East meets West. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Motley. Today we're going to talk about emotional addictions, how to break emotional addictions. Can your body become addicted to the biochemistry that's created in your body when you're undergoing trauma or severe emotional problems?

Can your body become addicted to high amounts of adrenaline and cortisol, known as the fight or flight chemicals? Yes, you can. So we're going to talk about this mechanism of fight or flight. We're going to talk about what you can do to help you break out of the adaptation of the fight or flight and then look into proper identification or triggers for you.

We're going to talk about these steps to help moderate and modulate your adrenaline and cortisol in an Eastern medicine perspective. And so with this, there are going to be a few steps that will help you in this process to help you identify the problem to break the adaptation. Write this down for me. Number one.

helping heal the adrenals and the kidneys nourishing the adrenals and the kidneys with good glandulars and herbals to bring the strength of the adrenal glands and kidneys up to balance number two you need to identify the emotion that is created by the person place or thing that's creating the trigger

What is the emotion that first comes to mind when you have a thought or an encounter? Number three is to use the chart I put in the show notes to relate the emotion you are feeling to the organ that processes it in Chinese medicine. And number four, you want to work to cleanse and nourish that organ so that it has more capacity to actually process the bad emotions yourself.

but it will also help give you the strength and power to identify when that emotion or that trauma is coming into your life, when it's trying to sneak in. So I know that's a lot to put into the intro, but I really appreciate when I get to work with patients that go through emotional trauma because I learn so much. Now, I want to go over the basics. You know, I'm pretty basic. I just like to give you the simple format. I see many patients that undergo stress, and one of the

physicians and doctors I would love for you to look into is Hans Selye. Now it's H-A-N-S and I believe it's S-E-Y-L-E. It could be S-E-L-Y-E. I got to remember. I have his books, so I should remember. But he basically won a Nobel Prize because he identified the adaptation triad. And this is what it says. Your adrenal glands basically help you produce

adrenaline, cortisol, many of the sex hormones like progesterone, testosterone, estrogen. They do. They actually help. They don't create as much as the testes or the ovaries do, but they do help promote that. And basically the adrenal glands give you basically steroids so that you actually can get the energy, right, to fight a problem, run from it, freeze or fawn. That's what your adrenal glands do.

So certain layers and certain parts of the adrenal glands create these biochemicals. And Hans Selye realized and researched that your body releases certain of the adrenal hormones in stages. So if you, for example, encounter somebody that triggers you,

Let's say it's a coworker, and you avoid walking past their office because they annoy you so bad or something happened, and there is bad blood between you two. Well, the first initial problem, the first time there was ever a spat or a fight or a problem, that's the reactive stage. You react to that person doing something to you. That initiates the adrenal response.

Second stage is you adapt to it. So if you have to go to work every day and you have to walk past the office every day or see that person every day, you have to adapt to that person and the look on their face, their attitude, and you have to adapt. Okay, I have to work. I have to make money. I have to be around this person. So even though they did this to me, I have to moderate. I have to acclimate to this. Have to adapt.

In fact, I had to change my habits and my movements in life in response to how this person treated me. Then the adrenals get used to it. They react. They pump out adrenaline and cortisol. You get used to it. You adapt. So now you're at a higher level of output. And then Hans Selye said, but if you do that enough and you don't have proper nourishment to the adrenals or kidneys, your adrenals wear out.

Your adrenal glands do not get enough nourishment, and instead of looking like plump little organs, they actually will shrivel up and they'll dry out. You literally go into an exhaustion phase where you don't care. Have you been there? If you get into exhaustion phase, you don't care. You don't care trying to adapt anymore. You don't care about that person. You don't even want to get up out of bed. You don't have the energy to. And so you try to adapt. You can't anymore. Now you're exhausted.

He even says there's a fourth stage, cell death. I'm not trying to be morbid, but he said that if you do it long enough, people can pass away because of the chronic adrenal stress in their life. So you have three stages that's happening to the adrenal glands. You guys got all of them. And so when you look in your blood work and you have cortisol levels that are very low in the morning, staying low, sometimes they shoot up a little at night, you have adrenal exhaustion.

If you have that plus you're starting to have thyroid issues like Hashimoto's or hyperthyroidism, then your adrenal glands are related to your exhausted thyroid. So you have an exhausted thyroid. If your adrenal glands and your cortisol levels are basically screwed up on your urinalysis, you have already had thyroid issues. Your thyroid is your spark plug and it starts the energy in your cells when you encounter stress.

And if you get used to that, your thyroid keeps on kicking on the cells to create energy, but your cells get tired. And so your adrenal glands turn on in response to the thyroid to create a turbo effect. Thyroid creates energy. Adrenals try to keep it going. Then you go into reactive, adaptive, exhaustion. Does that make sense? All the while, your body is just trying to adapt. It's trying to balance. It's trying to do what we do in Chinese medicine, trying to create a balance in the qi.

So you look at how your body identifies the person, the place, or the thing that's creating the trauma. So the step in number one is to help us be able to break the addiction to the chemicals that are released. So when you get used to tasting the adrenaline or the cortisol, your body is undergoing a natural process where you just continuously release.

absorbing those biochemicals in your bloodstream and your body is so used to the amount of blood pumping and the amount of heightened awareness and the amount of cold hands and feet that it becomes your norm. So this is happening, but the only way to really start to create a wedge in that process is to make sure that you train your body to identify which emotion is not being processed properly.

So, number one, remember, is we have to first start to nourish the adrenals and the kidney. Here's a little backdrop. Your kidneys, you have two kidneys. They sit in your flanks like your bottom of your ribs protect your kidneys. Boxing, they call it a kidney punch. If you are watching the podcast, you'll see right here in the low back, it's right here, the small flank areas is your kidney area. The kidneys...

receive all the energy from the ground, from the grounding apparatus in the body. Qi and electricity goes through the feet, through the kidney one point, travels up inside the legs, up to the kidneys, and they store energy to put that energy into your spine and into your brain. It's called the Ming Men. The kidneys have the adrenal glands sitting right on top of it. The adrenal glands work in conjunction with the kidneys. They both are working with each other.

The more electricity you have in your body, the more your kidneys are supporting you with enough energy. And if you have enough energy to call upon enough of that fortifying chi, your adrenal glands can release these biochemistry and you'll start creating and pulling out of that reservoir of energy. So they work together. It's beautiful. They call it the gates, the triple warmer. So the adrenals are just basically tapping into your internal energy.

They're creating a gateway for that chi from the kidneys to flow through your body. But the hard thing is, is that when our adrenal glands and kidneys are initiated by bad emotions and bad trauma and bad people, so then our adrenal glands start to wear out like we talked about and our kidneys do too. Our kidneys have to keep supplying energy to put through the gates and our adrenal glands are working hand in hand with them. And so we get worn out.

The kidneys start to get sick. The adrenal glands start to waver. And then you'll also notice that you could have UTIs, kidney infections, bladder infections. You may not even think you have those. But if you've ever had adrenal issues, I want you to look in your past and think, I used to get a lot of UTIs when I was younger. A lot of kidney infections, maybe some bladder infections. And you think, well, I never did. Well, you're right.

One thing you have to pay attention to is the kidneys are right here on the flanks and they are connected to the hip flexors. So you have tight hip flexors, tight knees, dark circles underneath the eyes, nighttime urination, frequent urination, possible UTIs, possible kidney or bladder stones. Those are all from worn out adrenals and kidneys. So we want to nourish them. So I always say nourish the kidneys with a supplement from Supreme Nutrition Products.

We could put it here in the show notes. It's called Uva Ursi. You can use, write these down, Uva Ursi Supreme, or you could use cranberry with D-Mannose. I also like to add in Bodyguard Supreme, which is a stonebreaker. It's known as stonebreaker. So Uva Ursi Supreme, basically cranberry and D-Mannose, and Bodyguard Supreme, known as stonebreaker. Those are my three top picks to help clean and nourish the kidneys. Now, an additional thing I throw in there sometimes is mushrooms, known as reishi mushroom.

Mushrooms will help nourish the kidneys. So reishi mushrooms or reishi mushroom. If you put those together, you'll start nourishing the kidneys and allowing the qi to get in the kidneys to give you energy, a reservoir. Then, if you don't mind using any type of animal products, I also incorporate good glandulars or good organ meats.

If you're on carnivore or like to eat organ meats, you know what I'm talking about. They give you plenty of strength. They give you iron, B vitamins, minerals, vitamins, all in a capsule. So you could use – there's heart and soil. You can use ancestral supplements. There's many out there that do good organ meats. But I like to use a good, clean, grass-fed source, and I like to look into using adrenal and thyroid glandulars. And I also like to use kidney, those three.

So if you write those down, those herbs I just mentioned, and then any type of grass-fed either lamb or beef, kidney, adrenal, and thyroid, follow the direction of your primary care doctor or look into the website and research it for yourself. And remember, start low and slow. Two to three-month period, you'll start to see that you'll start to nourish these organs. They'll start to get the nourishment and the minerals and vitamins and the literal protomorphogens, the proteins they need to actually build cells.

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You start using some herbs. I guarantee you your body will also benefit from a couple other sources of good fish oils, fish oils such as omegas 3, 6, and 9s and phosphatidylcholine, so PC. So fish oils, phosphatidylcholine, and make sure you take a good multimineral.

Those three plus your glandulars and some of the herbs, you're going to start seeing that your kidneys and adrenals will thank you for it. You're not going to be so reactive. When you have low adrenal glands, you're going to be very reactive. You're going to be tense and you'll be fearful. Here's why. The kidneys, they are related to the emotions of fear. Why? Because your adrenal glands go into fight or flight anytime you respond to the emotion.

Your kidneys are getting asked to produce lots of energy to shove through the three gates, the triple warmer. The adrenals are pulling it up saying, hey, we need some energy. And so your body can go into a frenzy. It goes, oh my goodness, I've got to go past this person's office. I don't know if I have the energy to take care of it and to handle it. Have you been that way? I have. And you go, wow, you get fearful. You get afraid. You get anxiety. Fearful, anxiousness, anxiety. So you have this fear. It turns into anxiety.

All from the fight or flight. But if you nourish your body and give it the strength it needs to actually have good reservoirs of energy and you strengthen the adrenal glands, you'll actually reduce your anxiety. And this is what else happens. You'll actually have enough strength in your adrenal glands and your kidneys.

That you'll raise the innate intelligence and awareness of your body that will signal to your brain going, hey, I'm walking past this person's office. They're coming and I'm encountering them, but is it worth the energy expenditure? That's where you want to be. You want to strengthen your adrenals and your kidneys to go, is this person, is this place, is this thing worth me spending my energy? That's the answer you have to answer. I mean that's the question you have to answer. That is where identification starts.

The first and foremost identification is, is this worth me actually freaking out? And if you get enough energy in these organs, you'll go, well, I don't think it's worth me freaking out. But then I ask number two, what is the emotion I'm feeling right now? And you say, I am feeling, wow, let's stick or let's go into fear from the kidneys. And let's say grief.

I feel grief. I feel sadness, and I feel crying. This grieving went around this person because this person said something to you that hurt you so bad that you grieved. It made you hurt. It made you cry. So identify the emotion. Your first thing comes up and goes, okay, I'm grieving. I feel crying. And you look at the chart I sent into the show notes, and it says grief, crying is associated with the lungs.

In your family line, you have to look back if emotionally your family was always encountering lung problems. Truly. Did your mom and dad have bronchitis or lung problems or emphysema or asthma? Did you have seasonal allergies or always had lung issues, low oxygen levels? That can pass down through your genetics. But when it hits you, you have a tendency, possibly, to...

to always try to handle and resolve things with your lung energy that's in your family line. So your lungs are the ones that are addressing the emotions first in this particular moment. So you go, okay, grief in lungs. Have you had any bronchitis, allergies, seasonal allergies, any type of emphysema, asthma, any types of problems with breathing, shortness of breath? So identify the emotion in the organ. That organ is fatigued from your genetics first.

and from constantly trying to process your the majority of your emotions so then you do to step three you get the the organ which is the lung and you start to research herbs that help nourish the organ so if it's the lungs i always suggest mullein leaf m-u-l-l-e-i-n mullein leaf is in tincture or pill form it helps draw the mucus out of the lungs i also love to use mullein leaf

I love to use woad, W-O-A-D, supreme. Woad supreme is Chinese isotis. It's a white-colored herb. White-colored herbs is associated with basically the fall season, which is a lung organ. So the white-colored herb nourishes the lungs. It's woad supreme. I love those two. And I will throw in three of my most favorite overall antimicrobials. I love neem, which is malia supreme.

I love golden thread supreme, which is a great Chinese herb. And I love scutellaria, known as skullcap. Skullcap's got kind of a silvery purple look, so it works perfect in the lungs.

So those are my top four picks for the herbs. So you're nourishing the adrenals and kidneys, and then you start to use these herbs. You don't use all of them. You find the one that resonates with you. Which one are you drawn to first? Start low and slow and start taking these and start noticing if, man, my lungs feel better. I'm kind of hawking up a loogie. I'm spitting up stuff. Things are coming out. I'm having more bowel movements, healthy bowel movements. You start to use those herbs to flush out the lungs. Now,

When you start to use the herbs and you start to identify the herbs to cleanse the lungs, what you're doing is opening up the capacity of the lungs to be able to process your grief efficiently. When your lungs get tired, they can get full of infections and they can keep you from processing your emotions efficiently. The more you clean your lungs, the better you can clean your infections out and the more efficient you'll be able to process your emotions. You'll literally go, man, I grieved about that and I cried it out and I felt better and that was it.

Why is it that some people in our lives – have you ever met these people that can irritate me? Is that they can go, oh, I processed it. I processed it out, and it's done. And I'm like, you mean you process that whole thing out, and you're finished? Yes. Why? Because their organs are so healthy they can process it out and let go of it. Because some people you go, oh, they just grab it and let go of it, and then they shook it off, and now they're on their way like a gazelle that got attacked by a cheetah. I just don't understand it, but people have the capacity to do that.

So when you can identify the grief and you can say, oh, I can let it go, you know you're getting healthier. So you can use these herbs and say, well, how long, doc? How long do I use them? I always say use something for three months and then reevaluate. See if it changed your response to this person and see if you actually feel better when you're around them. And if that person irritates another part of your life, oh, he makes me so angry. Anger is associated with liver. Start to investigate the herbs that help clean out the liver.

you're going to notice that once you get the major organs nourished, you'll start letting go of emotions and you'll have more capacity in your organs to let them go and flush them out.

It's a constant process, I'm sorry to say. But when you do that, remember, you are going to give your body capacity to identify, and then it breaks the adaptation. It tells your body, I don't have to keep producing adrenaline or cortisol in my adrenal glands and wearing out my kidneys to keep adapting to this person or this person in my office that keeps causing these problems.

I can let it go. Now, it may make you change your habits. You may say this is not worth it to me. I have to leave this office. OK, because you realize that you don't want to put up with that stuff anymore. You have identified like I don't have to go through that. I have power over this. I don't have to do that anymore. Sometimes people look and go, that is just not even worth me paying attention to. They can act like that all they want, but it's not my deal. So you have this ability to cleanse the organ.

And then I like to add one extra step. I love to use different types of flower essences with emotional work. Like right here, I have one called Wild Abundance. It tests for me. It's a flower remedy. You don't have to use this. It's by Lotus Way. They're a really great company. And I put drops in my coffee and in my water. And it basically uses the frequencies of the flower to actually stimulate your body to actually help you process certain emotions. I love flower remedies.

I love homeopathics. I love using them with EFT tapping. Tapping processes. Look at emotional freedom technique. If you can't process and identify your own emotions, find somebody that does NET, neuroemotional technique. Go to NET Mind Body. NET Mind Body. Look into those practitioners. See if there's one in your area. If not, call them up and see if there's anybody that can practice near you. Use these. Use EFT tapping, which you can do at home by yourself. Try to find an NET practitioner. Start to process them out.

The patients that are the cleaners are the ones that go through the emotional cleansing. They really are. So you are cleaning up your adrenals. You're identifying the emotion. You're cleaning up the organ that's holding and storing the emotions. And you're using flower essences, homeopathics, and or emotional techniques to help clean out the system, to give you the capacity to keep identifying the problem, clean out your adaptation so you can just let them go. You will find that the less or the proper treatment

How can I put this, guys? That the proper call or the proper use of your adrenal glands, your adrenaline, your cortisol, the proper use in the proper situation, in a proper fight or flight situation, and you use them when you only need it will keep you from getting adapted to the taste of it and you won't become addicted to it. You know why I don't want you to become addicted to it?

It's because you will start to get used to being around those individuals or those places or those things that are the worst for you. You literally become addicted to the adrenaline and the taste and the feel. And you're so used to it that you'll stick around in a bad relationship, at a bad job, around bad people or places because you got used to the emotional addiction.

You need to identify, break the adaptation, nourish your body, nourish your organs, process your emotions. I know this is a lot, but this is one of the initial steps. I know there's some really great books. I think it's Gabor Mate. I don't think I said his name right. I love watching his videos, but there's a book about learning how to say no. That book is really great. Any book that shows about – talks about boundaries –

That talks about how to say no to things and how to not allow boundaries to be crossed. And that in yourself would help heal your adrenaline and your cortisol levels by keeping that boundary where you're not allowing your body physiologically to go past it anymore. That's a really good thing too. So I'll put that in the show notes. Guys, I hope this was helpful. Try these simple steps. Let me know what you think.

We're going to put this up soon, this podcast, and I'm going to – we're going to take this and we're going to discuss it on the membership. So I mention this every time that in the membership we have a live Q&A and we try to have the members watch it and then we go over it in the Q&A. So it happens almost every single week. So we have this discussion where you get to jump on live with me and we go face-to-face and we talk about it.

And I wanted to see you guys there. If you're ever interested in getting into the membership, look at the show notes. We'll have the link there. And we just want to make sure that we can give the best advice we can. So check out the membership. Guys, if you have any other questions, please let us know. Remember, like and subscribe. Send this to somebody who needs it. And check out the membership. We want to be able to see healing at its finest. All right? Love you all. I hope you guys have a blessed day. Let's break that addiction. I'll see you. Bye.

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We hope you've gained valuable insights into the harmony between Eastern and Western medicine. If you've enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe, share, and leave us a review. Remember, true health is about balance, mind, body, and spirit. So stay tuned for more episodes where we continue to explore how ancient wisdom and modern science can work together to help you thrive. Here's to your health, balance, and well-being. I'm Dr. Chris Motley, and I look forward to our next episode together.