Welcome to the Dr. Berg's Healthy Keto and Interminate Fasting Podcast, where Dr.

Berg takes you on the journey for the truth about getting healthy and losing healthy weight.

Let's talk about depression and the HPA axis.

What is HPA stand for?

Hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenals.

We have this feedback mechanism.

A certain hormone is made by the hypothalamus, which is kind of like the true master gland.

And it's sent down to the pituitary, which is like the middle man.

It's like you have the owner of the football team, and then you have the coach.

And then the coach then gives it to one of the players.

And that communication is another hormone that then tells the adrenals what to do.

And so the adrenals then make its hormones.

And we're going to be talking about the cortisol, which then creates its effect.

And then there's a signal sent back to the pituitary and hypothalamus to turn off that communication.

So we have a communication cycle where we're sending messages that's being received.

And then there's a return communication to turn off that communication.

Because we don't want cortisol to keep going because that's going to burn out your body.

Which is exactly what happens when you keep stimulating cortisol with chronic stress.

There's also something in your brain that cortisol affects.

And that's called the hippocampus, which involves memory learning.

And what happens with high levels of cortisol over a longer period of time,

you have a shrinkage of the hippocampus.

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