If your adrenal function is low, as it is in adrenal fatigue, your body cannot respond and adapt in the healthiest way to stress. The reduced adrenal response not only makes you tired, irritable, and less able to cope, but also affects many other body systems, including blood sugar balance, immune function, libido, hormone balance, sleep patterns and mood. The lower your adrenal function, the more profound the negative effect on every organ and system in your body and the more difficult it becomes for you to properly recover from or handle further stress.
Adrenal hormones include steroids such as cortisol, estrogen and testosterone that are essential to your health and vitality, along with many other hormones that also significantly affect every part of you, including the way you think and feel.
Stress-related adrenal fatigue is so common that an estimated 80% or more of North Americans and others worldwide suffer from it at some time in their lives, yet the medical community generally still does not know how to diagnose or treat it. The result is that millions of people needlessly suffer decreased quality of life for long periods of time. Burnout and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome are examples of stress disorders that have adrenal fatigue as their physical component. For full recovery in all cases of stress-related health problems, the adrenal glands must get the support they need to function well.
Most people recognize that stress is an unavoidable part of daily life but don’t understand the impact it has on their health. Physical, emotional and mental stresses have specific effects on your body that can add up and start affecting your vitality and many aspects of your well-being.
In its normal function, cortisol helps us meet these challenges by converting proteins into energy, releasing glycogen, and counteracting inflammation. For a short time, that’s okay. But at sustained high levels, cortisol gradually tears your body down.
Sustained high cortisol levels:
– destroy healthy muscle and bone
– slow down healing and normal cell regeneration
– co-opt biochemicals needed to make other vital hormones
– impair digestion, metabolism and mental function
– interfere with healthy endocrine function; and
– weaken your immune system.
Adrenal fatigue may be a factor in many conditions, including fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism, chronic fatigue syndrome, arthritis, and more. It can also be associated with a host of unpleasant signs and symptoms, from acne to hair loss.
The Loss of DHEA Production
When the adrenals are chronically overworked and straining to maintain high cortisol levels, they lose the capacity to produce DHEA in sufficient amounts. DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) is an immediate precursor hormone to estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. That means that whenever DHEA is in short supply, people have a hard time balancing their hormones.
Over time, low DHEA leads to fatigue, bone loss, loss of muscle mass, depression, aching joints, decreased sex drive, and impaired immune function.
Take this Quiz
1) Do you have trouble getting up in the morning even after going to sleep at a reasonable hour?
2) Are you tired much of the time, especially in the morning?
3) Do you regularly experience mid-morning and/or mid-afternoon energy lows?
4) Do you often feel better after 6PM or your evening meal?
5) Do you crave and/or rely on caffeine and sugary/salty snacks to keep going throughout the day?
6) Do you feel rundown?
7) Do you feel overwhelmed at work or at home?
8) Have you been getting sick more frequently than you used to?
9) When you’re sick do you take longer to get well or feel wiped out for weeks after?
10) Has your sex drive decreased?
11) Do you feel mildly depressed for no apparent reason?
12) Have you become more irritable?
13) Do daily tasks seem to require more effort?
14) Are you putting in as much or more effort but find yourself less productive?
15) Has your general enjoyment in life diminished?
16) Are you taking or have you recently discontinued taking prescription corticosteroids?
17) Have you experienced severe, frequent or chronic illness, and/or a recent life crisis?
If you answered yes to 2 or more of these questions, stress is probably affecting your health to some degree. The more yeses, the more likely it is that you are experiencing some stress-related adrenal fatigue.
Since my adrenals crashed I became a patient of Dr Richard Brouse. I went through a battery of blood test and saliva test for hormones and DHEA levels. I also did some test for digestion that is often affected from continual high stress levels.
In my next post I will share some things that brought my adrenal glands back to normal.
After many months of 24/7 care taking for family members I was under several years of continual stress. Of course being Ms. Tough Woman I thought I was handling it with minimal nutritional support. I guess I was in De Nile…you know the river we get into when we don’t accept reality. I was in denial so much that I didn’t even use Shaklee’s Stress Relief on a regular basis but continued to push myself into late evening hours to carve some time for myself without someone calling my name.
