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Denver Chiropratic Center

1780 South Bellaire Street
Suite 710
Denver, CO 80222
Tel: 303-300-0424
denverchiro@yahoo.com

Hours:
Mon-Thur: 9am - 5pm
Friday: 9am - 4pm
 

Wellness

Natural Endurance Sports Performance Enhancement

Preparing for competition is all about training and recovery. It's actually a simple formula, but it's a hard one to apply correctly. Few athletes get it right.

Get Started Now!
  • Call to set up a consultation
  • Order your Adrenal Stress Profile Kit
  • Out-of-Denver patients welcome

While we all know what training is and we know how to track it, recovery is more difficult to gauge. How do you know how well you're recovering?

Common markers include fatigue, performance decline, and sports injuries. But if you think about it, these are indicators of overtraining, or NOT recovering. If you're fatigued, your workouts are poor, or you're getting hurt, you've already dug yourself a hole. By the time you notice these markers, you've got a problem that's difficult to fix.

A better way to track recovery is by monitoring cortisol and DHEA levels. Cortisol and DHEA are two naturally occurring hormones that are produced by the adrenal glands. Cortisol is the "breakdown hormone" that mobilizes reserves to meet the demands of training. DHEA is the "repair hormone" that helps your body recover from training.

Here's the tricky part – these hormones are also a crucial part of your body's response to all stresses – the ones besides training - like overworking, having a family, financial issues, injuries, and illness. In addition to these stresses, lifestyle stressors can include eating processed foods, skipping meals, using too much caffeine, taking prescription medications, and poor sleep habits. These stresses also affect cortisol and DHEA.

The secret to Natural Sports Performance Enhancement

Keeping these two hormones in balance (naturally – no cheating!) is what allows you optimize and maximize your training, recovery and your race day performance. The good news is that these two hormones can be accurately measured without blood tests.

Your cortisol levels should follow a predictable pattern within a specific range throughout the day. Cortisol should peak when you wake up and slowly decline throughout the day.

Ideal Cortisol Graph

When your cortisol levels are within this ideal range, your DHEA levels are usually within an ideal range, too. As cortisol goes down at the end of the day, DHEA comes up. This is when the cycle of training and recovery functions optimally, and you perform at your best.

An overwhelmed adrenal system responds in a predictable way. First, cortisol levels rise higher than the ideal range. This is sometimes referred to as Stage 1 Adrenal Burnout. Some of the symptoms can include difficulty losing fat, fatigue, and trouble sleeping. The symptoms are subtle, and performance declines may be subtle, but this is where overtraining begins. This is also where under-recovering begins. Remember, when cortisol levels are high, recovery is suppressed.

High Cortisol Graph

As the process continues, DHEA levels may drop, and cortisol levels may drop below the ideal range. This is called Stage 2 Adrenal Burnout. Accompanying symptoms may include more severe fatigue, moodiness, food cravings, and insomnia. For an athlete, this is where burnout starts. Significant performance decline is obvious, and injuries almost always follow. Recovery is lagging way behind, and your training is breaking you down. There is no reason this should be allowed to happen.

Low Cortisol Graph

The good news is that this process can be disrupted and reversed. You can rebalance your hormones naturally and correct these issues before they destroy a season or force you out of your sport. The goal of Natural Sports Performance Enhancement is to address many of the factors that affect the stress hormones WITHOUT ELIMINATING OR CUTTING TRAINING.

The first step is evaluating your adrenal hormonal system with a simple saliva-based lab test called the Functional Adrenal Stress Profile. We provide you with the lab kit and you complete it at home by providing 4 saliva samples collected throughout a single day. The kit is then sent to the lab and the results come back to our office.

As a triathlete and kettlebell lifter, I know: we love our sports. Training and racing is what keeps us happy and sane. Most of us build our whole year around training for events. We get up early, we plan our weekends, we plan our vacations around our sport. We love it. Quitting isn't really an option. It shouldn't need to be an option.

Luckily, many other modifiable factors affect the stress hormones, and by paying careful attention to these factors most athletes can bring themselves back into balance and feel great all season long.

Using your Functional Adrenal Stress Profile results and the detailed health and lifestyle history, we will work together to create a Natural Sports Performance Enhancement program. Pgrovehiggins@gmail.com rograms vary based on each patient's unique situation, but each program reduces or removes sources of stress so the adrenal system can rebalance itself.

Our Natural Treatment Programs support a healthy adrenal system with:

  • Dietary changes (addressing food quality, quantity, and intolerances)
  • Adrenal Support Supplement Programs based on lab results
  • Lifestyle and stress management advice

Unless an athlete is making obvious training mistakes, which is rare, we will not alter your training. The whole idea here to evaluate your cortisol and DHEA levels, and adjust the OTHER stresses that may be draining your system. This will minimize the extra stresses and allow you to train and recover.

Get Started Now

To get started, contact our office to set up an initial consultation and purchase a Functional Adrenal Stress Profile kit. We can work with out-of-Denver patients over the phone.