Adrenal Fatigue: A 21st Century Pandemic in the Making

Our modern society is wall-to-wall stress! We cope with that stress by downing gallons of coffee, soda, and caffeine products; by stealing sleep time to be more "productive"; by relying on our food fixes to wake us up when our energy drags.

All of this winds up depleting and ultimately overwhelming your adrenal glands, the little walnut sized powerhouse that sits on top of your kidneys, and give you the go-juice to live your life and cope with stress. The result is adrenal fatigue.

Stress can be any combination of physical, emotional, psychological, environmental, or infectious stress. All stressors are additive and cumulative; they all add to your stress load and their effects accumulate over time to wear down your adrenal glands’ ability to function.

Adrenal fatigue is a huge and growing problem. According to Dr. John Tintera, a top authority on clinical manifestations of adrenal dysfunction, if you include arthritics, asthmatics and hay fever sufferers, alcoholics and other groups affected by low adrenal function, approximately two-thirds of Americans have moderate-to-severe adrenal dysfunction.

Yet most doctors don’t recognize adrenal fatigue. Adrenal fatigue is a problem for millions of people, but it is largely unrecognized by today’s medical establishment. This is because, despite being widely recognized and treated in the 1800’s and early 1900’s, today adrenal fatigue is not taught in medical schools. Consequently, the average doctor is unaware of this condition and doesn’t know how to test for it or treat it. Adrenal fatigue also has no diagnosis code on insurance forms. Without a code, doctors don’t get paid for treating you, and you don’t get reimbursed for your expenses to get well.

Could YOUR Adrenals be Fatigued?

Conditions related to adrenal fatigue include:

• Functional hypoglycemia
• Allergies
• Arthritic pain
• Impaired immunity
• Frequent respiratory infections, rhinitis, asthma, colds
• Fibromyalgia
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• Adult onset diabetes
• Auto-immune disorders
• Alcoholism

Your Lifestyle Choices Can be Leading You to Adrenal Fatigue

Lifestyle patterns that lead to adrenal fatigue include:
• Lack of sleep, irregular sleep patterns, staying up late despite being tired
• Poor diet – sugar, white flour, low fiber, not enough vegetables, stress eating
• Using foods and drinks as stimulants when you are tired
• Constantly in a position of powerlessness coupled with responsibility
• Constantly driving yourself, trying to be perfect
• Negative attitudes and beliefs, psychological stress
• Constantly stuck in a no-win situation over time
• Not enough enjoyable and rejuvenating activities
• Your mother was adrenal-depleted when pregnant with you, causing you to have less ability to deal with stress

Traumatic Life Events that Can Trigger Adrenal Fatigue

Typically, your pressure-filled life and poor diet will deplete your adrenals. Then a traumatic event such as these triggers adrenal exhaustion:

• Unrelenting pressure or frequent crises at work and/or home
• A severe emotional trauma
• Death of a close friend or family member
• Major surgery with incomplete recovery or subsequent persistent fatigue
• Prolonged or repeated respiratory infections
• Serious burns (including sunburn)
• Head trauma
• Loss of a stable job
• Sudden change in financial status
• Relocation without support of friends or family
• Repeated or overwhelming chemical exposure (including drug or alcohol abuse, smoking)

Cortisol and Adrenal Function.

Cortisol is a life sustaining adrenal hormone essential to the maintenance of homeostasis. It is called “the stress hormone” because it influences, regulates or modulates many of the changes that occur in the body in response to stress, including, but not limited to:
• Blood sugar (glucose) levels
• Fat, protein and carbohydrate metabolism to maintain blood glucose (gluconeogenesis)
• Immune responses
• Anti-inflammatory actions
• Blood pressure
• Heart and blood vessel tone and contraction
• Central nervous system activation

Cortisol levels normally fluctuate throughout the day and night in a circadian rhythm that peaks at about 8 AM and reaches it lowest around 4 AM.

Your adrenals need to secret more cortisol when you are stressed, but it is equally important that cortisol levels return to normal following a stressful event.

The problem is, in our high-stress society, the stress response is activated so often that the body doesn't get the chance to return to normal, resulting in too much circulating cortisol and eventually too little cortisol if your adrenal glands become chronically fatigued.

Higher and more prolonged levels of circulating cortisol (like those associated with chronic stress) have been shown to have negative effects, such as:
• Impaired cognitive performance
• Dampened thyroid function
• Blood sugar imbalances, such as hyperglycemia
• Decreased bone density
• Sleep disruption
• Decreased muscle mass
• Elevated blood pressure
• Lowered immune function
• Slow wound healing
• Increased abdominal fat, which has a stronger correlation to certain health problems than fat deposited in other areas of the body. Some of the health problems associated with increased stomach fat are heart attacks, strokes higher levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and lower levels of “good” cholesterol (HDL), which can lead to other health problems.

Chronically lower levels of circulating cortisol (as in adrenal fatigue) have been associated with negative effects, such as:
• Brain fog, cloudy-headedness and mild depression
• Low thyroid function
• Blood sugar imbalances, such as hypoglycemia
• Fatigue – especially morning and mid-afternoon fatigue
• Sleep disruption
• Low blood pressure
• Lowered immune function
• Inflammation

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