Maureen Benkovich (00:01.26)
Hey, sober fit life people. I got a question for you. Do you feel tired? Not just sleepy tired, but bone tired, the kind of tired that sleep just doesn't seem to fix. Maybe you've cut back or stopped drinking alcohol. Maybe you're exercising and you're eating better. You're doing all the things and you still feel off. You feel bloated, you feel moody, wired at night, exhausted in the morning, frustrated. And most people assume the culprit is too much cortisol. We've all heard it.
Lower your cortisol, manage your stress, take the adaptogen. But what if that's exactly backwards? What if the problem isn't too much, but too little? My guest today is someone I can speak to personally. I've been her patient, and I can tell you firsthand she's the kind of doctor who actually listens, who asks the right questions and gets to the root of what's going on. And that's exactly why I asked Dr. Kinney to come back on our show.
Dr. Erin Kinney is a naturopathic doctor, stress physiology expert, and the founder of the Kinney Clinic right here in Annapolis, Maryland. Her new book, The Cortisol Cure, has come out in September. And today she's breaking down exactly why you feel the way you feel and what to do about it. So, Dr. Kinney, welcome back to Sober Fit Life.
Dr. Erin Kinney (01:18.05)
Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be back and excited to talk about this.
Maureen Benkovich (01:21.4)
Yeah, this is so exciting that you've written this book and taken this time. I know I would get emails from your practice saying Dr. Kenny is writing her book and you really set aside the time, which is such a good example of how to manage stress. But let's jump into this because you are obviously motivated to write this book. Let's talk about the Cortesan myth and how it just everybody seems to be getting mixed messages. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (01:29.112)
Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (01:36.387)
Wow.
Dr. Erin Kinney (01:44.558)
It's everywhere, as you said in your intro, it's everywhere. Lower your cortisol, suppress your cortisol. Cortisol is the enemy. I got an email last week that was, I don't know, sublysemon. The guy was like, cortisol is the fire that will destroy your body. And I'm sitting there banging my head against the wall, saying, No, that's not it. So so let's talk about what cortisol actually is. Cortisol is your body's primary energy hormone. And here's where I think people get a bit confused. Cortisol is the hormone your body produces in response to stress.
Maureen Benkovich (02:02.241)
Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (02:13.474)
But it does that in order to give you energy to deal with stress. Without cortisol, you would not get out of bed. It's actually the hormone that wakes you up in the morning. It's what controls our circadian rhythm. And the other major thing that cortisol does is it's your body's natural prednisone, which if you're listening and you've ever taken a steroid, typically that's a form of prednisone, which they give you when inflammation or pain gets out of control. Well, if you're under your computer, you can Google.
Maureen Benkovich (02:19.744)
Hm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (02:40.044)
Molecule of cortisol versus molecule of prednisone, and guess what? They're almost identical. There's one double bond difference. So, meaning cortisol is your body's major anti-inflammatory hormone. So it's what's responsible for mitigating pain. Again, it wakes you up in the morning and it helps reduce inflammation. Now, again, this is there's a lot of misinformation. Everyone's like cortisol is the problem, it causes inflammation. It actually doesn't. Now, there's a couple of nuances here. Too much cortisol can cause problems, but it's not actually the cortisol.
Maureen Benkovich (02:59.787)
Right.
Dr. Erin Kinney (03:09.038)
cortisol itself that causes the problems. It's what cortisol does to your blood sugar. So one of cortisol's jobs is if you've never eaten, if you haven't eaten anything and you wake up in the morning and a lion chases after your tiger or you have a major stressful thing happen and your blood sugar is low, one of cortisol's jobs is to go talk to your liver and it says your liver, hey liver, I know you've got some stored glucose there in the form of glycogen. Let's break that down and release it into glucose. So again, one of cortisol's jobs is to release sugar, which if you haven't eaten
Is great, then your sugar comes up, you have energy. But if you're eating a lot and you're very stressed and your cortisol is high, it can start to increase blood sugar, which the blood sugar itself can cause inflammation. But it's really not cortisol's fault all the inflammation. When we see unchecked and unregulated inflammation all over the body, it's typically a result of not enough cortisol instead of too much. And so this is where go ahead.
Maureen Benkovich (03:46.68)
Mm.
Maureen Benkovich (03:50.208)
I see.
Maureen Benkovich (04:02.178)
So how did Hor Cortisol get such a bad rap then? Wha what happened? Like why do we have it so wrong? I'm so glad you're writing about it.
Dr. Erin Kinney (04:08.984)
I mean, I I I think I think it's because when we are under a lot of chronic stress, you will see elevated levels of cortisol. And people tend to sometimes we can see other things like the elevated glucose, some other elevated inflammatory markers. And I think cortisol got blamed, but your body's just producing producing cortisol to give you the energy and help you deal with the stress, right? But the interesting thing is in my practice is
Most of my patients don't come to see me when they're in the midst of their acute stress. Let's say you're going through a divorce or you're going through something major, you're dealing with your life and you're usually handling it okay physically. My patients end up coming in to see me once the stressor's over. Their body has essentially run out of cortisol, which we'll get to in a minute when I talk about my cortisol bank account. But they come to me and their cortisol has crashed. And so
And I think this is part of where the kind of misconception comes. It's like, someone was stressed so long for so long and their cortisol was so high and then they feel like they feel terrible. They feel like crap. But it's at that point, again, I test tons of cortis levels. Usually when they come in and they're not feeling well, their cortisol levels are low. So again, I I think cortisol got blamed for other things that are causing it, right? And the cortisol is just high because your body needs it to be high during periods of stress because it's what helps you handle stress.
Maureen Benkovich (05:25.258)
I see. Well, I think you've come up with an amazing way to explain this, the cortisol bank account. So can you talk about this framework that you've developed? This is so interesting. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (05:30.934)
Yes, yes. Yeah, so this is the framework that the book is based on. And so I essentially I like to think of cortisol as being the currency that your body uses to spend on things. It gives you energy and it helps your body. I call it the fix-it hormone in the book. It helps your body fix things because it helps with inflammation. So if we think about this being the currency, then you have this bank account that we call the cortisol bank account. And anytime you rest, you sleep, or you do something where the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, which we can dive into that in a little bit.
Maureen Benkovich (05:58.817)
Mm-hmm. Right.
Dr. Erin Kinney (06:00.758)
That's when your body earns or builds cortisol. And we see this perfectly when we look at a graph of the circadian rhythm and when we look at what cortisol does throughout you know the 24 hour cycle, it's typically at its highest in the morning. And then so when we do anything, when we go to work, when we drive in traffic, when we answer emails, when you know, listen, we're having a good time, when we're talking on a podcast, we're both in an activated state. That's when you spend your cortisol. So again,
Maureen Benkovich (06:25.592)
Starts going down. Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (06:26.806)
Yes, it goes so throughout the day it's gonna go down. And then when you go to sleep at night, you'll watch, and if you look you can look this up, your cortisol levels will rise. So again, we see this this bank account analogy perfectly portrayed in the circadian rhythm graph. So again, when you do anything, you're that's a spend. And when you rest, sleep, engage in parasympathetic activity, that's when we make a deposit back into that account. So, you know, I I think I came up with this because I was getting so frustrated with myself personally and dealing with patients who are told.
Maureen Benkovich (06:33.9)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (06:54.902)
You're stressed. You need to manage your stress. And I'm sure listeners, and I'm sure everyone has been told that at some point, right? you seem like you're stressed. You need to manage it better. What does that mean? I started to think about like when you're told that, what does that mean? Because a lot of times our stressors, and I talk about this in the book, stress to the body is neither good or bad. It just is. It's whether you're in a spend state or you're in an earn state. Because sometimes things that we love are stressful. Take exercise, for example. Exercise is the
Maureen Benkovich (06:57.836)
Right. yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (07:07.468)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (07:17.752)
Mm-hmm. Love that.
Right.
Dr. Erin Kinney (07:23.552)
epitome of fight flight, especially if you're going for a run. That's a spend. That's a stress. But we love exercise. We want to keep doing, right? Or our jobs. Like I love my job, but a lot of times my job, I have to be on. I'm talking, I'm holding space. I'm technically in a stress state. Do I want to get rid of my job or stop exercising? No, I don't. So so if those are your major stressors, those are withdrawals, right? So instead so I came up with this framework to be like instead of being like, you need to manage or you need to lower your stress.
Maureen Benkovich (07:28.727)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (07:40.215)
No?
So those are withdraws. Okay.
Dr. Erin Kinney (07:50.808)
We just need to make sure you're making as many deposits as you are withdrawals. And I think that it lands really well with people when I taught I've taught I've been teaching this framework with my patients for a long time and they're like, that's that's so much simpler. I don't have to worry about, you know, managing or getting rid of things in my life. I just think about where can I add in some deposits and make sure that I'm not overspending. So it's it really simplifies it and I think I I
Maureen Benkovich (07:58.071)
Great. Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (08:13.334)
It does. I like that. And and so if we t we talk about withdrawals of, you know, things that require energy. life is lifey and we have to expend energy and we have to take these withdrawals. And you mentioned a few deposits, but can you go into healthy deposits first? Let's talk about healthy deposits.
Dr. Erin Kinney (08:17.538)
Yes, yes.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so I mean the first biggest deposit is sleep. And that's usually that's your your largest deposit. And so, you know, when I'm working with a patient, we're we want to work on their sleep and make sure they're getting good, deep, restorative sleep. However, for a lot of people
Maureen Benkovich (08:33.431)
Hm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (08:43.148)
their spend throughout the day might be more than what they're earning in their sleep. Or you might go through a phase where you're really busy. You know, I'm sh as you know, I know like running a business, sometimes you go through phases where you're launching something or you're an entrepreneur and you're starting something. You might be spending a little more during the day and that's okay. So this is where we might need to be like, I need a little some extra deposits here to match my spend. So the thing that's
Maureen Benkovich (08:53.602)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (08:57.729)
Right.
Dr. Erin Kinney (09:07.106)
That I find is also really helpful with this framework is it doesn't have to be you need to get an hour massage once a day. You know, it doesn't have to be these large, complicated things add into your schedule. Most of the practices that I talk about in the book are small. They're very easy to incorporate, and all of them are free. So things like taking five minutes before you enter a meeting or in between meetings to do some deep breathing. Things like I talk about some of the practices that I do when I'm having a busy day with patients. I go to the bathroom in between every patient and I take
Maureen Benkovich (09:23.318)
Hmm. Perfect. Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (09:36.744)
One to two minutes, I wash my hands with a really nice smelling soap and I hum to myself. So humming stimulates the vagus nerve, which calms the body down. And so it's not a huge deposit, but it's a little tiny deposit, right? So it's a little tiny thing I can do. I also recommend you know taking 10 minutes in the afternoon to lay flat. Maybe you listen to some music, maybe you just sit there and breathe, just to calm the body down. So these are things, micro deposits that you would make throughout the day. And so
Maureen Benkovich (09:42.72)
Vagus nerve.
Dr. Erin Kinney (10:05.324)
What I usually tell and what I talk about in the book is you pick one or two of these things and see if they feel good to you. Because the you have to notice and the other thing is you want to do something, you want to pick something that you enjoy that you're going to keep doing. Because if you're doing something, you know, I I and I talk about, you know, over the years the different things that I've done to help regulate my nervous system. And s for a while meditation was my go. I loved it. I would meditate for 20 minutes a day. And then I went through a divorce early in the pandemic and
Maureen Benkovich (10:12.024)
You have to notice.
Maureen Benkovich (10:18.498)
Yes. Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (10:25.356)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (10:33.868)
I couldn't get my brain to calm down. Meditation did not work for me. And I was dreading it. And I would, I was almost like forcing myself to do it and it didn't feel good. And when you don't feel good, you're not getting the true benefit. So I started doing jigsaw puzzles because I felt like I was accomplishing something. I could think, I could like watch TV, I could listen to music, and and my brain could like do its thing without being so focused on meditating. So the point is you want to find something that
Maureen Benkovich (10:39.639)
Right.
Maureen Benkovich (10:44.28)
Mm mm.
Maureen Benkovich (10:49.696)
Yes.
Dr. Erin Kinney (11:00.088)
calms your body down, keeps your brain somewhat focused so it's not spinning out, that you can do regularly.
Maureen Benkovich (11:01.068)
Mm.
Maureen Benkovich (11:07.66)
Yeah, I love that what I'm hearing, Dr. Kinney, is you then have to be aware of your withdrawals and your need for deposits. So there has to be a level of awareness and mindfulness. And we go through seasons, like you said, super busy times, super stressful times, where you need to be more mindful and think about these small deposits that you can do throughout the day. Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (11:12.77)
Yes, yes, yes.
Dr. Erin Kinney (11:26.764)
Yes.
Dr. Erin Kinney (11:30.348)
Yeah, yeah, that's really that's really all it is. And I think I I also the practices are very simple. Doesn't necessarily always mean that they're easy. You still have to kind of get them into your and you have to make sure that you are being aware. And I also find that sometimes just setting the intention, hey, I'm gonna pause. I'm just gonna set the intention to pause, and maybe I'm gonna read a book, maybe I'm just gonna turn off my phone and my computer and I'm just gonna sit back on my chair, put my hand on my chest, and be like, hey, what do I need? So it's it's really an intentional
Maureen Benkovich (11:39.374)
Right. Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (11:49.911)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (12:00.238)
Pause rest to refill your cup or rebuild your cortisol account.
Maureen Benkovich (12:04.662)
Yeah, I love that. That makes so much sense. So we have withdrawals that we can't avoid. They're just necessary for living. Let's talk about unhealthy withdraws, and you know where I'm going with this, of course.
Dr. Erin Kinney (12:10.503)
absolutely.
Dr. Erin Kinney (12:14.542)
Sure. Can we can we, I wanna just say before we get into that, because we'll get there, I just want to talk a little bit about I use I like to categorize your stressors or your withdrawals into two major categories. We one category is what I call your external stressors. And so that would be things like your job, politics, things that are happening outside of your body, traffic, things that we don't always have a ton of control over, right? And then I have what we call internal stressors, and these are sometimes things you might not be aware of.
Maureen Benkovich (12:24.118)
Yeah, let's hear it. Perfect.
Maureen Benkovich (12:31.17)
Mm.
Maureen Benkovich (12:43.757)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (12:43.98)
These could be things like a nutrient deficiency, could be things like a food allergy, could be something like a stealth pathogen like Lyme disease or the Epstein Barr virus. So these are things that you may need to go to your doctor to get checked for. but then the other the other thing, the external stressors, that would also include like, hey, what choices are I making? So I would I think where we're going next, I would look at as an external stressor that's also impacting your internal stress load, right? So go ahead.
Maureen Benkovich (12:54.007)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (13:05.729)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (13:09.526)
I'm glad you brought that up. And the case study, the person I was talking about in the very beginning is actually me because I'm doing all the right things, right? And I am busy and I have a lot of stress. but I also love what I do, but I exercise, I don't drink alcohol anymore. I try to eat right, but I'm exhausted. So I did take a saliva test because I thought immediately must be my cortisol. Turned out I have very good rise and fall of cortisol, just like you explained.
Dr. Erin Kinney (13:18.146)
Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (13:23.778)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (13:28.195)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (13:31.906)
Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (13:36.32)
And yet all my neurotransmitters were coming up really low and not really getting in enough protein and some supplemental things. So it was really eye opening because I immediately thought must be my cortisol. And it wasn't that at all. Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (13:36.376)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (13:47.406)
yeah, everybody thinks that, yep.
Yeah. Yeah. So there's I mean there's lots of things. This is where like going to a provider to have them look into things to help you kind of figure out, hey, what is the thing for me can be so helpful, right?
Maureen Benkovich (13:54.86)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (13:59.927)
Yeah. Yeah. S yeah. So so let's talk about let's go there with the alcohol and the cortisol connection because I know that my audience likes to hear about that and understanding cortisol better because most people drink and this isn't a conscious thought, but because they're trying to downregulate their central nervous system, they don't like the whatever physiological state they're that they're in, you know, whether it's stress or anxiety or boredom.
Dr. Erin Kinney (14:07.118)
Sure. Yes. absolutely.
Dr. Erin Kinney (14:16.6)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (14:24.354)
discomfort, family dynamics and they think I'm gonna use this, I'm gonna drink because it's gonna make me feel better fast. And we you and I have talked about this. It in fact does that. It's a central nervous system depressant. But all the ramifications of that I we don't realize. So can you speak to that?
Dr. Erin Kinney (14:25.878)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (14:31.597)
Yep.
Dr. Erin Kinney (14:40.748)
Yeah. Sure. I mean I I think the f the biggest thing of how alcohol will impact cortisol is first it really fragments your sleep. You don't get deep sleep, you don't sleep very well. And the other thing that happens, you know, we touched a little bit about like cortisol and blood sugar, is when you drink alcohol, your sugar's gonna go up immediately and then a couple hours later your sugar is actually gonna crash. And when you have a blood sugar crash, if this happens whether during the day or for a lot of people it's at night because we're drinking in the evening to unwind after the day, you'll have a blood sugar spike.
Maureen Benkovich (15:05.912)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (15:09.43)
Blood sugar crashes. When sugar crashes, that is actually a stressor. So that will c that will become a major cortisol spend so the body can then try to bring the blood sugar back up. So you're actually gonna have a peak in your cortisol at some point earlier in the evening, not when it's supposed to be peaking. So it's gonna start to dysregulate your cortisol. You know, it cortisol should be kind of slowly building throughout the night. If you get a spike of cortisol at maybe one or two AM post-drinking, then the whole circadian rhythm is gonna be thrown off.
Maureen Benkovich (15:24.833)
I see.
Maureen Benkovich (15:29.816)
Mm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (15:37.74)
Right. So that's that's like the immediate effect of what alcohol does. So if you're stuck in a pattern of, you know, you're drinking alcohol to calm yourself down, you're gonna get dysregulated blood sugar and dysregulated sleep habits, which is going to tank your cortisol over time. So that's
Maureen Benkovich (15:37.761)
Right.
Maureen Benkovich (15:50.775)
And what happens when that's happening over time? And we're talking about just to be clear, this is even moderate drinking people. So I just want you to to hear this. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (15:56.486)
yeah, this is even having one glass of of one glass of wine will do this to you, right? I I've worn, you know, CGMs before and what watched what alcohol does to my sleep patterns and you know, which it's amazing how much data we can get with our body these days, right? With aura ring and CGMs and you know, one glass of wine for me will disrupt my I'll get a terrible sleep score. I feel terrible the next morning. And and again, if this is if you do that once a month, once a quarter, is that gonna have a major impact long term? Maybe, maybe not. But if you're doing that
Maureen Benkovich (16:24.791)
Right.
Dr. Erin Kinney (16:25.662)
every night, or let's say you don't drink during the week and then you drink three or four glasses of wine Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or more, yeah, whatever amount that is, you're going to over time, you're gonna slowly deplete that cortisol bank account. Because if you're not getting that good sleep, it's it's like let's pretend that when you sleep at night for eight hours, you deposit a hundred dollars into your bank account and you have to spend a hundred dollars. But if you're only getting fifty dollars in your bank account every night,
Maureen Benkovich (16:30.488)
Or more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (16:54.136)
For months and months and months and months, what's gonna happen? Your body's gonna go into debt. And so here's where s stuff starts to happen long term. The first thing that the body will do when you're in debt, because your body will still let you keep going, it will produce adrenaline. So in so instead of producing cortisol, it's like, my I don't have enough cortisol. Let me let me pump out some adrenaline. So you'll wake up in the morning, you might have like that anxiety feeling, right? And that's because your adrenaline's gonna be through the roof and you don't have the cortisol, and you might go drink some caffeine, which is gonna make it even worse. Your blood sugar is tanked, and this is gonna mess.
Maureen Benkovich (17:04.183)
Right.
Maureen Benkovich (17:10.232)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (17:23.692)
drastically with your neuro your other neurotransmitters, right? Too much adrenaline is gonna make sure your body's not making enough dopamine and serotonin. So we're gonna get a major imbalance in the neurotransmitters. So that's the first thing that'll happen. And for a lot of people, myself included, I get terrible anxiety. I have horrible adrenaline spikes after I drink alcohol. it's it's awful, which I don't really drink because it feels so bad because I don't enjoy it, right? So so that'll happen. But then over time the body's like, yeah, this adrenaline subs the birds, I don't want to do this. We start to
Maureen Benkovich (17:29.41)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (17:36.724)
Mhm. Mm hmm. Yeah, I used to too. Yeah. Right, right.
Dr. Erin Kinney (17:51.55)
the body will start to look at other hormones and I like to think of your sex hormones, your testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, like your sex or your cortisol savings accounts. So when you look at the the molecule of progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, they are also very, very similar to cortisol. So if the cortisol count is low, the body's like, you know what, let me steal from that testosterone, or let me steal from that estrogen, or let me steal from that progesterone. So then in women, we start to see impacts on the menstrual cycle.
Maureen Benkovich (18:14.911)
Interesting.
Dr. Erin Kinney (18:18.728)
women typically the hormone in a cycling female, though it'll start to steal from progesterone. And so progesterone levels will slowly start to decline, which makes you even more anxious, makes it harder for you to sleep. We can again we can start to get all these like PMS type symptoms. Now, if this is happening during your perimenopause or menopausal phase of life, when you have a dwindling savings account, you're gonna feel even worse. Your perimenopause symptoms are gonna be three times as bad as they might have been without having a low cortisol bank account. So, as you can start to see, it starts to really start to disrupt.
Maureen Benkovich (18:22.808)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (18:34.21)
That's right.
Mm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (18:47.602)
all of these different things. And then, you know, I know we've talked about this before on a previous episode with gut health, right? With what it does to like the gut. So long-term the gut lining, yeah. So when we have elevated levels of cortisol for a long period of time, that will actually start to destroy the gut lining. It changes the gut flora. And when we're also changing the neurotransmitter picture from what we just talked about with the blood sugar kind of roller coaster, you're gonna have major impacts on gut health, which is also going to contribute to fatigue and brain fog and all the other things.
Maureen Benkovich (18:53.164)
Yep. The gut lining.
Dr. Erin Kinney (19:17.356)
So, you know, over time, and this is where alcohol can become a like a major cortisol spend. It's gonna be a major spend from that account. And this is something that it's pretty easy to cut that spend out, right? But yes, yes, yes. But over time, the alcohol is going to majorly affect your internal stress load, right? So it does have a big difference. And the other thing I talk about, I talk about this some in the book is
Maureen Benkovich (19:29.73)
Right. It's that external withdrawal you're talking about. We're choosing to do it.
Maureen Benkovich (19:38.615)
Yes.
Dr. Erin Kinney (19:44.078)
You know, a lot of times we use alcohol or any other sleepy substance, whether that's Benadryl or Xanax or C B D or THC, we use that to like knock ourselves out. We're like, I can't handle this emotion, I can't handle I'm feeling, I can't have the stress, let me not. And and I I liken that to it's like having your mom write your term paper for you. So when you take those away and you try to go to sleep, if you've not developed the skills, the skill set to write your own paper or to calm yourself down.
Maureen Benkovich (19:46.872)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Maureen Benkovich (19:56.728)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (20:06.156)
Yes.
Dr. Erin Kinney (20:11.384)
When you take it away, your stress levels are gonna go through the root because you haven't taught your body how to calm down on its own. Right? Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (20:15.212)
Yeah. A hundred percent. And I see that all the time when people take a break from alcohol with me, they're like, Maureen, I'm not sleeping well. This doesn't feel good. Because your body's recalibrating, right? So you're talking about your
Dr. Erin Kinney (20:25.378)
Yes. Well your body doesn't your body doesn't know how to turn off, right? Because every time you've turned off to go to sleep, you've used an artificial substance to do so, right? And so that's the other thing that I really talk about in the book is is that our nervous systems are very trainable. So and I I like to think about our nervous as we have two main muscles. You've got your fight flight muscle and you have your rest and digest muscle. So we've got a stress muscle and a relaxed muscle. And if all you do is train your stress muscle.
Maureen Benkovich (20:29.985)
Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (20:34.625)
Right.
Maureen Benkovich (20:42.36)
Mm mm.
Maureen Benkovich (20:53.782)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (20:54.274)
That muscle's gonna get really strong, which that's fine. You want a strong stress muscle to react to stress or to exercise or to whatever, but you also wanna have a trained relaxed muscle. You want both muscles to be equally strong so that when a situation arises, let's say you get cut off in traffic, if you have both muscles strong, you could activate the relaxed muscle and be like, I'm not gonna get upset. But if only if you only have a strong fight-flight muscle, you're gonna react. You're gonna be in a reactionary thing. And and when you go to relax at the end of a day.
Maureen Benkovich (20:58.687)
Right.
Maureen Benkovich (21:02.988)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (21:12.727)
Right.
Maureen Benkovich (21:20.034)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (21:20.428)
you're not going to be able to. And this is something I hear a lot from many different patients. I'll be like, hey, what you do to relax? Usually their first answer, so I exercise. I'm like, well, that's great, but exercise is not actually relaxing. What do you do for relax? And then they'll stop and think about it and they'll say, I actually don't know how to relax. And I try to and I I can't. And so, and then they then they start making themselves feel bad and they feel guilty. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, hold up, we don't have to feel bad about that. You just haven't trained your body to do so.
Maureen Benkovich (21:29.322)
Right. Exactly.
Maureen Benkovich (21:36.821)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (21:41.014)
Get stressed out. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (21:46.072)
So, and you know, I work with a lot of patients that struggle with sleep, whether they're taking a substance or not, and oftentimes they they fall asleep okay, but they wake up in the middle of the night. And let usually we have to rule out other causes. And if we've rule out all kind of physical causes, it's it really has to do with how we've trained ourselves. And so if you have a really strong fight-flight muscle and that's the only muscle that works, when you go to sleep at night, the body's like, wait, this isn't right. I need to wake her up. She's got stuff to do. So the body wakes itself up.
Maureen Benkovich (21:49.304)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (22:02.338)
Mm.
Maureen Benkovich (22:10.828)
Mm, mm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (22:13.88)
I'm getting to all this because when you start putting in these micro practices throughout the day, two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes of getting your b teaching or training your body to relax so that you activate your fight flight muscle and then you relax and then you activate and then you relax. When you then go to try to relax, the body will be like, yeah, I I got this, I got a strong stress or relaxed muscle. I can take over. So sleep tends to get better. And you know, for anyone who's struggling with coming off of any sort of
Maureen Benkovich (22:42.402)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (22:42.604)
you know, substance, alcohol, drugs, anything, their your fight flight muscle is very strong because you haven't actually trained your rest muscle on its own.
Maureen Benkovich (22:52.224)
Not only that, but you decrease your stress tolerance. If you always turn to alcohol to handle your stress, you haven't learned how to pause and make a choice and do one of these micro treatments to yourself or micro relaxations because you just rely on an external substance. So there is a time period where you have to exactly what you're saying, retrain your stress response. So what I'm hearing you say is the good news is your system is trainable.
Dr. Erin Kinney (22:56.065)
Yes, yes.
Dr. Erin Kinney (23:02.946)
Yes.
Dr. Erin Kinney (23:11.374)
Absolutely.
Dr. Erin Kinney (23:15.822)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (23:20.928)
It's highly trainable. And I think that's what's really cool about the body is it we I joke with my patients, I'm like, well, kind of like a dog. If you train it to do something, it's gonna do something. If we train it to do something else, that's what it's gonna do for you. Now, here's the thing that I think gets tricky: is training an animal or training your body doesn't happen overnight, right? So it might take several months, and so that's I'm very I'm very, very clear about that in the book. I'm like, listen, these practices that I'm giving you, they 100% work. If you're consistent with them and you do them.
Maureen Benkovich (23:22.014)
Yes. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (23:40.161)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (23:43.969)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (23:50.23)
You will train your nervous system to calm down. You will feel better. But you can't just do them once. You can't even just do them for a week. I'm talking like a couple months. And you'll start to feel better after a couple weeks. But if you really want to see change, you have to be consistent. And and the thing that's really cool is once you do some of these practices for a couple of weeks, they actually start to feel really good. I've had paid a patient come in last week and she's like, my God, I've been resting in the middle of the day every day for a month. She's like, I feel amazing. She's like, it feels great. I'm sleeping better. My energy is so much better.
Maureen Benkovich (24:03.512)
Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (24:18.306)
And I don't feel guilty for resting anymore. And she's like, I don't know why I felt so guilty about taking 15 minutes to relax in the afternoon, right? It's no everyone can spare 15 minutes, right? Or you can spare five minutes several times throughout the day, right? So what I'm talking about in these practices, it's it's not something that's gonna eat all your time up. And you know, and I and I think there's tons of amazing fancy biohacks and supplements and all these things you could spend thousands of dollars on and a lot of time on. There's nothing wrong with those things. Those things are fantastic, but I sometimes find that people actually get
better results when they find something they can do throughout their daily life where you don't have to I don't know if you ever had this experience, but I've like, man, I gotta I need to get a massage, I need to get acupuncture, and then I look at all the things that I need I want to schedule and I'm like, my God, how am I gonna have time to do all this? Let alone pay for all of it, right? It gets expensive, like money expensive and time expensive. And when you're a busy entrepreneur or woman, sometimes you're like, well that sounds so this is I've had to adapt this to my own life. How do I want to keep myself regulated and not have to spend 10 hours a week
Maureen Benkovich (24:58.23)
Yes, of course I have.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (25:16.096)
you know, going to appointments or doing these things. So it's it's really about these micro practices.
Maureen Benkovich (25:17.463)
Yes.
I love that you have that talk with people. Like, look, this is going to take a while. You didn't get here overnight, but we are inundated with messages of go, go, go, and look at five screens and you know, fill stuff in within the five minutes that you have. And so you're really speaking like countercultural message that people need to hear. Like, it's okay to let yourself give yourself permission to relax.
Dr. Erin Kinney (25:25.302)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Yes, yes.
Dr. Erin Kinney (25:36.782)
Yes. Yeah.
It is. Yeah. And you know, and and I know this really well because I have burnt myself out multiple times. I talk about that in the book. I'm very, very honest with what my life has been like. And, you know, the reason I'm so passionate about this is because one, I know how bad it can feel when you don't take time to rest and you burn yourself out. And it it can get bad. I mean, I got to a point in twenty twenty one where I was extremely suicidal. I did not want to be here. And my life looked perfect on the outside, right? I had
Maureen Benkovich (25:48.15)
Yes, you have. Talked about it.
Maureen Benkovich (25:57.186)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (26:05.381)
yeah. Yep, I I hear ya.
Dr. Erin Kinney (26:08.866)
Beautiful practice. I have beautiful kids. Like I achieved kind of all the things I wanted to achieve, but inside I felt like I wanted to die because I felt so horribly mis and I also felt like such a fraud. I'm like, here I'm teaching patients to feel better and I can't even feel good my myself, right? You know, it was major imposter syndrome. And but then I also know how good it feels when you put these practices into place, right? And
Maureen Benkovich (26:21.657)
yeah. I get it.
Dr. Erin Kinney (26:33.11)
Outwardly my life maybe looks a little bit different than it did in 2021, but on a whole nothing really is as that different. But I wake up every day and I feel happy, I feel fulfilled, I feel joy, and I don't I no longer feel guilty about I'm gonna take today off and take some rest or I'm gonna I'm gonna, you know, make these deposits. And you know, I still sometimes have to stop myself from saying yes to too many projects or from overfilling my calendar and
Maureen Benkovich (26:43.192)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (26:55.627)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Course.
Dr. Erin Kinney (26:58.966)
I still have a a story I tell myself that I know is probably not the best story, but it's what's working for me right now is hey, in order for me to keep being as productive as I would like to, I have to make sure I refill my account. Right. So there's I I'm very aware that I'm like, there's still a little bit of like I I I prioritize and I definitely value getting things done. Right. And sometimes I tell my patients, I'm like, listen, if you need to tell yourself the reason I rest is so I can keep going, that's okay right now. And that's why I'm kind of currently working on that. I'm like, I would like to.
Maureen Benkovich (27:17.804)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (27:25.921)
Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Erin Kinney (27:27.416)
be able to get my self worth from just being, but I still get some self worth from doing. And I think that's most of us, right?
Maureen Benkovich (27:31.745)
Of course. I think I think that's natural. and and what you described, your state of your your mental state when you're feeling so depressed, so down, so dark. I did that to myself through my drinking as well. And I was at that state as well. And so I had to take a look at what needs to change here. So I think we're both we both with what we do talk about something very similar. We have to become aware, have to take a look at our lifestyle, our choices, and make choices that are going to support our nervous system.
Dr. Erin Kinney (27:39.064)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (27:49.71)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (28:01.24)
Yeah, yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (28:01.582)
but you really take apart this myth that cortisol is bad. And that's what's that's what's so cool. Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (28:05.91)
It's not bad. It's so important. It's so important. Yeah. I mean, here's what I'll say is most of the most of the advice that they give you on the internet or social media to lower your cortisol is kind of the same thing. It's also gonna build so so what they're telling you to do, lifestyle-wise, some of the supplements, you know, take taking a supplement that's gonna lower your cortisol if you have low cortisol will actually make you feel terrible. So I would say lifestyle practices when they tell you to go take a walk or be in nature, get off your screens, those are all gonna fill your cortisol account.
Maureen Benkovich (28:33.014)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (28:34.53)
you know, and get you out of that spend state. but you do have to be careful supplement wise because sometimes they're Take this, it'll lower your cortisol. And you might wanna be careful with that because you again, if your cortisol's already low and you lower it, you're gonna feel pretty bad.
Maureen Benkovich (28:40.439)
Right.
Maureen Benkovich (28:46.518)
And that's back to your talk that you have with your patients. This is gonna take time, some trial and error. You've gotta find the practices that you actually enjoy that light you up that you're going to do, not like I have to go, you know, stretch for five minutes. You have to find the things that work for you. Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (28:50.562)
Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And I find for a lot of my like busy, high achieving females that I'll ask them, Do you like to read? And I'm like, I love to read. And so reading is a really great way. You have to, you know, you've got to sit down and but it occupies your brain and it kind of puts your brain into a a story that's not your own life.
Maureen Benkovich (29:05.548)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (29:09.688)
Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (29:13.207)
Yes.
Dr. Erin Kinney (29:16.898)
I I sometimes patient like, Well love to read nonfiction. I'm like, listen, nonfiction is great and you can read my book and stuff, but sometimes fiction is better. Because we wanna like if you're nonfiction, you're like analyzing is this me? Is that me? So it's nonfiction is great, but I find you get a better like cortisol building if you're getting lost in a fictional story, right? Because it just it takes your brain to another place, you're not worried about your own life and and it's it's it's really these practices are about finding joy. And when you're in that joy state.
Maureen Benkovich (29:27.338)
Right. Good point.
Maureen Benkovich (29:36.962)
Right.
Maureen Benkovich (29:41.985)
Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (29:43.855)
You can't simultistic simultaneously exist in a joy state and a stressed out state. So it hacks it hacks you into a nice, like feel good state, right?
Maureen Benkovich (29:48.748)
That's a good point.
Really good point. Yeah. I try to recommend to my clients that they think of healthy activities that end with ing. So we know the the ones that are unhealthy, drinking, smoking, gambling, scrolling, whatever. Right. So what about gardening, walking, singing, breathing, you know, reading? Try to think of all those things. And those are the things we used to do when we were kids and felt kind of carefree. So think about the things that brought you joy. Cause we forget about those as adults, don't we? We just kind of
Dr. Erin Kinney (29:59.634)
yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well great. Yeah, all those things, yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (30:13.966)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that make you feel carefree. we totally do. Because we're so busy and we gotta get done and we gotta get done. And then, you know, I think back to that time when I was at my lowest point in 2021, I feel like I would I would wake up in the morning and I would just be like, I have to do do do do do, but I like, I just can't wait till I go to sleep at night. Right. And it was I would it was nothing I was not excited about anything in my day 'cause I wasn't I wasn't being in that carefree kid space, right? And
Maureen Benkovich (30:33.324)
Yes, yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (30:37.879)
Right, right.
But you really took some time and took a look at that and paused and became aware and did your own research and now you're sharing it with all of us.
Dr. Erin Kinney (30:44.514)
I did. Yeah. I did my own research. And I'll say the the I think the biggest thing that I did 'cause I listen, I knew what to do, right? I helped people through this. I I knew what I should be doing. I just wasn't doing it. And I think the the biggest thing that I needed at that point was I needed support. I didn't have any support. I didn't have a lot of boundaries, but I didn't have I mean I I knew I should have had a team, but I did not have a team of people helping me, right? I'm helping everybody, I'm taking of kids, I'm running a business, doing all these things, but nobody was supporting me. So the first thing I did was
Maureen Benkovich (30:52.169)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Sure.
Maureen Benkovich (31:07.358)
Mm-hmm. Right.
Dr. Erin Kinney (31:13.42)
I got back into therapy. I hired a coach. I started working with a somatic coach. And I like that's helped, you know, building out that support system was what helped allow me to be like, okay, I can now do the practices that I already know how to do. Right. So sometimes I think that's another piece of and I think this sometimes people that are drinking, there's something that they need support from or they need they need they have an emotional thing they haven't worked through. So getting therapy support, setting boundaries, those pieces are really important as well. I know that's what you you know, you work with
Maureen Benkovich (31:17.304)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (31:31.736)
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Maureen Benkovich (31:38.178)
Right.
Maureen Benkovich (31:42.349)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, but you walk the walk. This is so good that you, you know, you're this is an author who has gone through it, been in the darkest and lowest phase, and you figured out how to come out of it. Now you're sharing all your expertise with everybody else. So someone who's listening, and this is really clicking with them. what does the first step on the roadmap to the cortisol cure look like? What would you recommend?
Dr. Erin Kinney (31:42.562)
with people and all of those things, right?
Dr. Erin Kinney (31:57.368)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (32:05.239)
Sure. So if you go to my website, drarinkenney.com, there's a quiz you can take. And it's actually a quiz that it's called the cortisol debt assessment, and it will give you a score on how healthy or full your cortisol account may be based off external lifestyle factors, internal factors in your body. And so it again I'll give you a score. And that and if your score is great, awesome. If your score needs some work, then I would recommend you buy the book and read it. It's
Maureen Benkovich (32:27.17)
Right.
Dr. Erin Kinney (32:28.78)
The book is is written in there's intro that kind of explains everything that we've talked about on this episode and more. And then the book is the chapters are I want to have more energy, I wanna sleep better, I wanna lose weight, I wanna have better digestion, I want a better libido. So you can flip to whatever chapter you're struggling with and read that and be like, ooh, okay, and it has tons and tons of practices, tons of explanations, tons of things you can do to get that part of your health back on track. So, you know, if you're really just struggling with sleep, buy the book, read the sleep chapter. I'm gonna encourage you to read it all, but but it's written so that
Maureen Benkovich (32:41.464)
Mm.
Maureen Benkovich (32:57.228)
I think everybody would want every one of those. Right.
Dr. Erin Kinney (32:59.466)
Well, exactly. Everyone does want every one of those things. Yeah. but so you can just and you can go back to it at times. It's written to kind of be like, Hey, I'm gonna read this during this season and then I'll come back to this during a different season and and I encourage people to you know, the patients that have read the book so far and people that have read it giving feedback, I'm having them take the quiz at the beginning, do the practices for a few weeks, and then retake the quiz and see if anything's changed. Because and that's what I'm seeing is people are like, it's like, wow, like my score got better after I did these for a few weeks. So
Maureen Benkovich (33:09.378)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (33:20.396)
Yeah, that makes sense. Like a baseline.
Dr. Erin Kinney (33:26.85)
So it gives you a little bit of a way to track your progress and kind of see how you're feeling. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (33:30.423)
Yeah, get a baseline. I like that. Well, if you are lucky enough to be in or near the Annapolis, Maryland area, you can actually go see Dr. Kinney at the Kinney Clinic. And I you guys, it is very cool. There are a lot of biohacking things you can do there. She has everything. So even though you know you talk about the things we can do on our own that are free and don't cost anything, there are some amazing tools that you have that you share that will also help with this reset that people are looking for.
Dr. Erin Kinney (33:38.52)
Sure. Yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (33:43.97)
we have all kinds of fun things. Yes, yes, yes.
Dr. Erin Kinney (33:51.757)
Yes.
Dr. Erin Kinney (33:55.18)
Yes, yes.
Dr. Erin Kinney (33:59.448)
Yeah. Yeah, so you can go check those out on the website. You can follow me on Instagram. I'm really active there. We've got tons of videos and I have my own podcast at Dr. Kinney Show if you want to hear more about things I like to talk about. Great.
Maureen Benkovich (34:00.46)
So check it out.
Maureen Benkovich (34:10.346)
Yeah, so we'll put all your links in the show notes. And I thank you so much for being here. I always ask this question, signature question, what do you do or what would you recommend to people to be sober fit?
Dr. Erin Kinney (34:14.725)
my gosh, thank you.
Dr. Erin Kinney (34:19.884)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Erin Kinney (34:23.476)
okay, that's right. You asked me this last time. I don't remember what I said last time. I think, you know, well, no, I think it's interesting. I'm thinking about what I'm doing in my life this year. I'm my word for the year was presence. And so I find when I am present, I feel like that's the epitome of sober for me, right? When you are sober, you are pre you are present in your life. And so
Maureen Benkovich (34:24.958)
Yeah. I should prepare people.
Maureen Benkovich (34:31.372)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
I love that.
Maureen Benkovich (34:40.416)
Mm.
Maureen Benkovich (34:44.13)
Hundred percent.
Dr. Erin Kinney (34:45.152)
Making sure I'm doing something every day where I feel a hundred percent present, whether it's simple as just washing my hands or having a conversation with someone or and that's what I've I'm like I need to spend one interaction every day where I'm a hundred percent focused on being present. And that to me, I don't know, I I've been doing that every day this year and I feel like I am more present in the most of my interactions now, which is really nice.
Maureen Benkovich (34:50.081)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (35:00.642)
That's it.
Maureen Benkovich (35:06.838)
That is a great challenge. I think everybody listening should give that a try. I'm gonna do that too. And certainly when you're not drinking yeah, it does. When you're not drinking, guys, you're present and I always say this, you're present for all the range of emotions.
Dr. Erin Kinney (35:11.766)
Yeah, it fe it feels really good. Yeah, when you're not drinking, yeah.
Dr. Erin Kinney (35:19.387)
All the range of emotions, yeah. Yeah. Sometimes that can get tricky, but but
Maureen Benkovich (35:21.612)
So get yeah, yeah. So get Dr. Kenney's book, The Cortisol Cure. It's also a beautiful cover. I know I've seen it on Amazon.
Dr. Erin Kinney (35:29.016)
Thank you. here I have these. We have these little like bo this is backwards, but little little bookmarks too. Yeah. Thank you.
Maureen Benkovich (35:35.713)
Yeah, I love the colors. Very beautiful. So thank you again, Dr. Kinney. It was a pleasure having you on. Sober Fit Life. Take care.
