Thursday, January 31, 2013

Just Because the Dr. Says it is Not Adrenal Fatigue...


I know in my last post on hypothyroid and adrenal fatigue testing, I had said doctors in the main stream  do not always recognize adrenal fatigue. Some like to pass it off as some quack thing that alternative doctors do, and what do they know?

Today, I want to encourage you to not full hardly accept this answer. Adrenal fatigue is real. It can cause a huge mess in your life, just like hypothyroidism can. Adrenal fatigue is becoming more prevalent in today's society due to excessive amounts of constant stress, caffeine which is a stressor to the body, too little sleep and poor diets. If you are being treated for hypothyroidism and not finding relief, adrenal fatigue could be contributing.

Our body's are under constant stress these days, always thinking they have to out run some bear or other harmful situation. Our adrenal glands were not meant to be under this much stress day in and day out. It was suppose to be when a bear was chasing us, running after our dinner, being spooked by something, on occasion, not constant. When our adrenals are being asked to pump out cortisol, the hormone produced by the adrenals, constantly, after a time they become stressed and exhausted. When this happens, we go down hill. We cannot keep up with the demands of life any longer. We become tired, exhausted, depressed, cannot think any longer, all we want to do it sleep, stress overwhelms us, not feeling well and needing longer to recover from illness and things such as exercise, we just feel like we cannot hang on any longer. Most might tell you this is depression, take an anti-depressant. This will not fix the problem, only mask it and give you many other undesirable side effects, that can be very dangerous. You might want to fix your adrenals first.

One way to see if you have adrenal fatigue is taking a list of symptoms to a chiropractor  a holistic nutritionist  or a doctor of some type that is more holistically minded. If they are good and understand the symptoms, they can diagnose you through symptoms and/or a questioner. Some might have you do a saliva test, a 24 hour urine test or blood work can be done. The saliva test is done through collecting your saliva four different times through out the day. The 24 hour urine test is just that, collecting your urine. In this test they will be looking for extra coritsol dumped into the urine. The blood test is a challenge test. Blood is drawn, medicine is injected into your blood stream to stimulate the glands called Adrenal Corticotrophic Hormone, ACTH. After about an hour, more blood is drawn and compared to the first blood draw, seeing how the adrenal react to the stimulation. Testing is not always definitive. Therefore, a combination of knowing symptoms, questioner and testing is a better approach.

Treating adrenal fatigue takes time and patience. These sweet little glands need time to heal. This will take commitment on your part and a change in lifestyle.
Get to bed an hour or two early EVERY night, before 10 pm. I know you, you have too many things to do and get done. The excuses go on and on. If you would like to continue feeling like you are and get worse, then stay up late. Your body needs extra sleep to heal.
Limit your intake of caffeine. A pot of coffee, chocolate, energy drinks, these all might be what help you to drag through your day, but you are destroying you adrenal glands. Caffeine should be done in very small amounts or avoided if you can. Bullet coffee can be a good way to intake some caffeine, but has the added benefit of butter and coconut oil, which will help with energy and blood sugar stabilization.
High quality supplements would speed up the healing processes. Vitamins such as a B complex, magnesium, Vits. C, A and D.
Stabilize blood sugars.
Avoid processed foods and sugars.
Avoid to much beta-carotene. You want your Vit. A to be the real deal retinol, this comes from fat.
Avoiding as much stress as possible. Figure out what is causing the stress and take actions to decrease the stress. As long as you are stressed, your adrenals can not heal. This could require significant life changes.
Practice deep breathing.

In the next post, we will look at other nutritional components to treating and helping with both adrenal fatigue and hypothyroidism.

Saving the world, and adrenal glands, one stick of butter at a time.
God's many blessings be showered upon you,
Jenn









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