In the emergency medical profession, doctors work according to an order of operations. The first priority is to stabilize the patient’s condition, and only then do they undertake more elaborate measures, operating if necessary. This is because without a stable base, without addressing issues like stopping hemorrhaging or providing oxygen or blood transfusions, the operation is more likely to fail. By creating a solid foundation, doctors increase their chances of success and saving lives.

In today’s fast-paced world, everyone is exposed to stress on a daily basis. Whether it’s in the form of our morning commute, pressures at work, the demands of raising a family, sleep deprivation, or even just the overwhelming number of messages and choices that bombard us, stress is here to stay. Unfortunately, we weren’t built to respond to chronic stress.

Your adrenal glands sit on top of your kidneys and regulate stress and energy output. Intense exercise can overwhelm the adrenals and eventually burn them out, leading to chronic fatigue, bags under the eyes and reduced performance.

Nourishing the adrenals alone is not enough, however – stimulating the adrenals without opening the surrounding pathways of the nervous system (or, from the viewpoint of Chinese Medicine, the meridians) is like increasing the output of an electricity generator in a home with faulty wiring.