hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis

I know it's a long word.

We call it the HPA axis for short.

and the hypothalamic pituitary ovarian axis, so HPO axis.

The HPA axis regulates the body's stress response.

The HPO axis coordinates reproductive hormone production and ovulation.

When the body experiences sustained stress, and this stress could be psychological, could be mental, or it could be physiological, could be physical, When the body experiences stress, activation of the HPA axis increases stress-related signals that interfere with reproductive signaling.

And when this communication becomes disrupted, the ovaries are going to receive inconsistent or insufficient stimulation, which is going to potentially affect things like estrogen production, ovulation, follicular maturation.

And one of the most significant downstream consequences of stress-related HPO axis disruption is its effect on progesterone production.

How so? Walk me through the mechanism.

When a person lives in a state of constant hyperarousal, waiting for the next attack from their emotionally dependent or antisocial partner, their hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, the HPA axis, is constantly firing.

So they are just flooded with stress hormones.

Exactly.

So as soon as one starts to trickle out, you can pretty quickly wind up with a cascade on your hands.

You got a few different hormone cascades going on at any given moment, but one of the big ones, one that's really worth understanding, is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, or the HPA axis, because you don't want to have to say that every time.

This is a complex series of interactions between three glands that ultimately regulates lots of your body's daily processes, like digestion, sexuality, immune response, and how you handle stress.

And it's complex not just because of all the glands involved.

It's also one of the more crucial instances of your endocrine system coordinating with your nervous system.

Specifically, it's behind that fight or flight response that everybody keeps talking about.

The HPA axis is essentially the endocrine system's companion to the sympathetic nervous system.

The sympathetic system, in times of high stress, does things like speed up your heart rate and direct blood away from your digestive organs and to the muscles.

OK, so we think of the distress response like this in a woman's body.

So the system, well, there's a neurological process called the HPA axis, which is basically the hippocampus, pituitary, and adrenal axis, which controls our stress response for the most part.

But what it's downstream from is originally we have these little almond-shaped sort of vessels on the sides of our brain here called the amygdala.

And so I don't know if you understand about the amygdala, but the amygdala can be conditioned to stress.

So, no, it's called the fear condition.

The process is called the fear-conditioned amygdala.

So the amygdala, if that stress response has been wired and fired from a very young age, and that can simply look like just not having your needs met in a really simple way, maybe being denied... a toy or a situation because you know and inherently children are narcissistic and we are narcissistic because we have to make sure that we can survive as children and so it's always about us and what we do and sometimes we'll take on the roles of understanding oh this this happened so it must be all my fault and so if it's my fault then i'm the one who can control it too so i've got to be really hyper vigilant that that situation or that understanding or that feeling doesn't happen again Then that's what switches on this process, this HPA access process, which basically says, okay, we're going to stay primed now for all of these situations.

We're going to be scanning our environment.

Not good when you're sleeping.

Elevates cortisol through HPA axis activation, raises core temperature through peripheral vasoconstriction and prevents the exact... neurological conditions required for sleep onset and maintenance.

The anxiety about bad sleep scores causes the bad sleep that generates worse scores that generates more anxiety.

The watch causes the problem you're trying to avoid.

So tissue repair, muscle protein synthesis and metabolic restoration.

Not happening.

Cortisol reaches its 24-hour nadir, essential for resetting HPA axis sensitivity and maintaining immune regulation through glucocorticoid receptor responsiveness.

IL-16F-alpha, inflammatory cytokines.

week.

And so speaking of the second, how our gut is a communication system with our physical effects, pretty much everything in our body, including the HPA axis, where our

Here you go again.

Here he is talking to our adrenals.

There are like legitimate, like neurological, physiological behavior type reasons as to why our brains gravitate towards food when we're stressed.

So basically when we're stressed, our bodies activate what's called the HPA axis, which is basically like it starts at the base of your brain and then goes down like to the middle of your back.

And it's our body's main, one of our body's main stress systems.

And one of the hormones involved in that response is cortisol.