Hacking Your HPA Axis: Game Changers Law #4

In the best selling book Game Changers, the fourth law that Dave Asprey explains to the reader really has to do with hacking your HPA Axis. But, as Dave states it Law 4 ” even your false beliefs are true”

Let me explain how that translates into hacking your HPA Axis.

First, the term Adrenal Fatigue is not only a very controversial term, traditional allopathic providers and functional medicine providers alike are in agreement for upgrading the term.

It is true that the adrenals are known as your stress glands. It is also true that when you experience daily, repeated stress, your adrenals are constantly receiving messages from your brain to “handle” the stress.

But the controversy is the notion that the adrenals don’t actually fatigue.

That is where the term HPA axis comes in.

The brain processes the stress, co-ordinated in the hypothalamus (H). Next, the hypothalamus signals your pituitary (P). Last, the Pituitary stimulates the adrenals.

Thus the term HPA axis.

In Game Changers, Dave highlights and explains very well, how your beliefs are your reality. Meaning, much of what you were taught at a young age (before 6-7 years old) forms the majority of what you believe to be true.

Or as Dave describes it, the beliefs you have and the internal stories you tell yourself, shape your internal law of reality. They may feel like reality.

Here are the hacks:

  1. Your Beliefs Are Not Reality,
  2. Your Beliefs are NOT who you,
  3. Your Beliefs are Changeable

Let’s link that back to your HPA axis.

Remember, it acts to process all the stressors that you encounter. Send the messages from your brain to your stress response system, your adrenals, and all the receptor sites located all over the body.

But, before those stressors get to the Hypothalamus, another center in the brain places meaning on the stressor.

It is called the Amygdala. Which is what now places the meaning the stressors has. If you interpret that stress and damaging, so shall it be.

Here are the hacks:

  1. Your perception of stress is not reality,
  2. How you perceive your stress does not define you,
  3. Your perceptions of stress are changeable

Dave suggests swapping out your limiting beliefs. Going from human 1.o to human 2.0.

I suggest swapping out your limiting perceptions of stress. Going from human 1.0 to human 2.0.

Lastly, Dave reference Martin Seligman’s 30 years of research that clearly demonstrated optimistic expectations made a difference in the outcome.

Just think about that. Think about how you can apply that to your adrenal fatigue, HPA axis dysfunction.

Hacking your HPA Axis.

Check out this awesome interview where I talk about the difference between biohacking and data tracking, where I get deep into the A-HPA axis.