Your adrenal glands sit right above your kidneys uh in your lower back . And the adrenals release , as the name suggests , adrenaline also called epinephrine and also a molecule called cortisol , which is involved in the kind of longer term stress response has some healthy effects too on the immune system . Ok .
So this again could be just one or two drinks per night or it could be somebody that drinks just on Fridays or just on Saturdays or maybe just on the weekend , 2 to 4 drinks . Well , those people experience changes in their hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis that result in more cortisol , more of this so called stress hormone being released at baseline when they are not drinking . This is really important .
So the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis , I know it's a mouthful . You don't need to remember the names , but the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis maintains your physiological balance of what you perceive as stressful and what you don't perceive as stressful . People who drink regularly .
This is a little gland that actually sticks out of the brain , but it receives instructions from the hypothalamus . And then the pituitary releases hormones into the bloodstream that go and talk to your adrenals . Your adrenal glands sit right above your kidneys uh in your lower back .
That level of cortisol that's released at baseline has increased substantially . Again , this relates to a defined neural circuit between brain and body and it has to do with the ratio of cortisol to some of the other hormones involved in the stress response . We provide a reference to the study that describes how all of this works for those of you that really wanna delve into it .
