Appetite for Adrenaline

Ever wonder why you can go all day at the Drop Zone or Wind Tunnel on pretty much sports drinks and protein bars, but when you slow down your stomach feels like it’s eating a hole in itself so you plunge into the nearest junk food? Ever thought there might be a reason you binge at the end of the day?

Adrenaline effects on appetite and food choices, and what to do about it.

Adrenaline, oh how we love that rush! With a drop of mindful breath, fear turns to excitement and we’re off! As action sports folks, we know the feeling of adrenaline well. That perfect moment when skill and challenge peak and if you can say yes to that stress and relax into it, reward chemistry triggers and magic can happen - rapid learning, motivation, acute focus & decision making, greater sense of connection, it’s all there in the flow and it feels awesome!

An appetite for adrenaline is born and the baseline for what it means to feel good is raised and sought after (thanks to getting the "good brain squirts" of dopamine and endorphins going on-the-regular). We become accustomed to this feeling, so much so that after time we don’t even feel “the rush” with the same intensity unless the perceived challenge is great enough. The effect on the body’s stress response systems, however, are the same and without attention can eventually become a major limitation to an athlete's performance and health.

Let's look under the hood...

Adrenaline, a hormone neurotransmitter, makes you feel speedy and alert and is released from the adrenal glands in response to stress. Whether you’re looking over the edge of the exit point, have crappy eating habits, worrying about money or stuck in a traffic jam, these are all stressors. The fight-or-flight response is our built-in survival mechanism, which in the face of stress or danger, tells us to run for the hills or stay and fight (Dr. Walter Bradford Cannon, Physiologist, discovered this). Adrenaline along with cortisol aka “the stress hormone” are two major players in this response. As action sports enthusiasts, we activate fight-or-flight regularly, which takes a toll on the body and mind, making managing it a top priority. How? With food and relaxation practices.

Food is the Foundation...

Stress impacts appetite and blood sugar regulation via the sympathetic nervous system, hormones, and insulin. Stable blood sugar levels are vital to life and any extremes trigger the stress response. High sugars have you bouncing off the walls and, if chronic, can lead to a myriad of health issues, including diabetes. Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) can go from Hangry-ness to fatal if unattended. You feel low blood sugar as fatigue, increased frustrations, difficulty concentrating, decreased motivation and trouble communicating. Deciding something as simple as what to eat gets difficult, brain fog or spaciness sets in, visual changes happen and there is an increased risk of target fixation when your blood sugar is dropping.

Some of the biggest problems I hear from action sports athletes are managing energy levels, focus, and balancing extreme behaviors in down time. Two major culprits are dysfunctional eating habits (insufficient or poor food choices) and an unmanaged stress response (riding the wave of adrenaline).

Ever tried to eat when you’re all jacked up on adrenaline? Not nice rolling that dry mass around your mouth, is it? Your body can literally have a repulsion reaction to putting food in your mouth during fight-or-flight. If you can actually get food down, you’ll likely end up with stomach cramps and a headache. Adrenaline suppresses appetite and digestion, causing cascading hormonal and metabolic effects that mobilize glucose and fatty acids into the blood, making all energy available for survival. You use this available energy when you fly, and cortisol signals to rapidly replenish lost stores, which you experience as cravings for sugar and salt. Your body is desperate for glucose and you associate that with sugar and refined carbohydrates like bagels, pasta, pizza and convenience foods that are dripping in inflammation!

Sugar, like adrenaline, also has a powerful effect on the reward chemicals of the brain, giving us that racing high feeling. Starting to see why you go directly to sugar drinks as a quick fix between loads?

Do this all day or for an entire tunnel camp and by the end your cells are starved for energy, your ability to concentrate and make a clear decision goes down and injury rates go up, which is not a good combination for high consequence sports. By the end you're wiped out, cracked lipped, red-eyed and congested. It's not because your willpower sucks, it's because the activities you love, that thing that gets you going, happens to run riot on your body’s chemistry, strongly influencing your choices. This goes on for a while and you’ve got yourself some major digestion and metabolism issues, starting with indigestion, gas, bloating, IBS, weight gain or loss, thyroid issues, stubborn belly fat, and skin eruptions, to name a few symptoms.

Scenario... You’re at a tunnel camp on 5 hours of sleep. You ate whatever was available at 1 a.m. when you arrived. You’re up, pounded 2 coffees and you're ready to go! Super excited to be learning some mad skills with your favorite coach, you've flown for 30 minutes, and are kinda hungry, but your next round is too soon to eat, it will make you sick. So, you have a sports drink, a shot of water, and munch on a protein bar or some fruit. Ciggie perhaps? A few hours have passed, concentration is waning, you're making mistakes on stuff you know you can do. Frustrations are rising and you keep hitting the walls (literally). Coach calls the break. You’re hank-marvin starving! Do you eat junk, junkier or the junkiest, as that’s what's on offer around the tunnel? It’s a 3 hour break so you mack on a burger, fries, and soda and start buzzing around being social and smashing out Intsta-book posts. In about an hour or so, you’re falling asleep on the bean bags... just a quick nap.

Briefing time again, feeling a bit out of it, have another coffee, ciggie or sports drink, gearing up, eyes are bright and you’re ready to roll! By end of day your tendonitis has kicked up, muscles are tightening and you're buggered! Time for beer, pizza-binge, sleep, repeat.

Do this with any regularity, plus all the other stressors of life and you create a cycle of chronic stress and disordered eating fueled by adrenaline.

The perfect storm of adrenaline, lack of quality calories and stimulant use like coffee & the "addictive white powders" (sugar and white flour products) equals no appetite and then zero control as you demolish an entire pack of biscuits! Refined carbohydrates spike your blood sugar, signaling insulin to rapidly remove the sugars from circulation to regulate the blood, which equals a nose dive in energy. You are officially on the energy roller coaster. You might be gearing up for your next flight before you plummet and adrenaline will save the day, but not your health.

Poor nutrition amplifies the damaging effects of the stress response and prolonged activation can cause brain chemistry changes that mess with your happiness. This contributes to anxiety, depression, addictions and adrenal dysregulation (HPA axis dysregulation) - a condition in which the feedback loop between the brain and adrenal glands is disrupted leading to irregular cortisol patterns - too high, too low, or all over the place. The common term for this is adrenal fatigue, which typically refers to the later stages of HPA axis dysregulation. This is when stress hormone cortisol outputs are consistently too low, which plays havoc with your entire life, not just your energy levels.

Managing blood sugar levels and the stress response with food and relaxation practices is essential in action sports to counter the damaging effects of living our passions; we are not about to stop doing what we love, that would be crazy! Thankfully, the fix is quite simple, the catch is doing it.

7 Tips to help control the energy roller coaster:

1) Prioritize - eat enough quality foods so your body is not stressed from lack of calories.

2) Use quality energy sources- whole plants, calorie dense nuts, seeds, beans, legumes, whole grains for sustained energy.

3) Use protein & fiber combos - to help stabilize blood sugar (i.e. hummus & carrots).

4) Carry a snack-bag - with homemade energy balls, nut butters and veggies.

5) Avoid stimulants for breakfast - eat before you have your coffee and toast.

6) Eat a mixed meal for breakfast - of plant proteins, fats and quality carbohydrates.

7) Use mindfulness and breathing practices - to calm the nervous system & stress responses.

Adrenaline is a stress & arousal chemical. When given the right environment, it can lead to a flush of other reward chemistry and pleasurable feelings. Sounds good, but it can potentially lead to dependance, and even addiction. Without awareness around this, it’s quite normal to unconsciously seek-out other ways to get the same rush feelings in daily life; so we use coffee, addictive white powders and other stimulant drugs to get that pleasurable punch. Active awareness and making better choices with foods and lifestyle practices that fulfill these needs can dramatically improve your performance in and out of the air flow.

Take action to help stabilize your blood sugar and rapidly improve energy levels, focus, and extreme behaviors in down time; reducing the need for other stimulants to replace adrenaline. The stress response is a magnificent survival mechanism that can literally save your life, but if unmanaged can break you down and even kill you. Interestingly, it is the same system that, when managed with one of our other built-in systems, the Relaxation Response, can set the stage for peak performance in all areas of life.

Want to take control of your energy, focus, and recovery? Dm me and let's handle your "Biological Basics" like a champ!

References