You’re Having Trouble Getting Out Of Bed
It can be nice to stay in when you’re feeling tired, or like you need a night alone. But if this becomes your MO, take note. “When isolation seems like a good idea, perhaps the symptoms are not just from a long week, or year, but perhaps even years of the drain that stress has taken,” Davis says. If that sounds like you, consider checking in with your therapist to give yourself a mental health tune-up.
Experts:
Can Poorly Controlled Blood Sugar Cause Adrenal Fatigue
Yes, one common cause of adrenal fatigue is out of control blood sugar. Low blood sugar makes the adrenal glands work hard to make cortisol which raises blood sugar levels. During severe adrenal fatigue, the adrenal glands cannot produce enough cortisol. The symptoms of low blood sugar are dizziness, shakiness, and irritability. These are also symptoms of adrenal fatigue.
Herbal Remedies For Anxiety And Panic Attacks
From occasional circumstantial anxiety like the stomach butterflies you get before an important event, performance triggered nerves, or going-to-the-dentist jitters to full-blown generalized anxiety disorders with panic attacks and debilitating phobias, there are many different types of anxiety. And, thankfully, there are many different types of herbs and plant medicine that can help with anxiety.
But before we get to the solutions, it’s important to recognize that anxiety is real. With a multitude of guises, it can present itself in your life as insomnia, depressions, fatigue, addiction self-medication, job or relationship paralysis, and more. In many cases, it can be fleeting natural even, to feel anxious before, say, your wedding, or the birth of your child, or in the midst of a major life change. However, chronic anxiety is not meant to be a daily part of the human experience and can lead to stress which leads to cortisol dysregulation that can eventually impact not just your emotional well-being but your physical health as well.
If you have anxiety, you know its no joke to feel that something is constantly holding you back or that the sky is going to fall in on you at any second. You know how much it can impact enjoying your life.
The most prevailing antidote? Pharmaceuticals.
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Learn More With Overcoming Estrogen Dominance
The body has an amazing ability to heal. We just need to give it the right resources.
In Overcoming Estrogen Dominance, my goal is to empower and give you the tools to take control of your hormones and health.
More than 70% of women experience estrogen dominance. The symptoms range from lumpy and fibrocystic breasts to thyroid nodules, hot flashes, fibroids, uterine polyps, painful, heavy or irregular periods to infertility and miscarriages, from mood swings to insomnia, weight gain to fatigue.
So many women have experienced the pain and frustration that comes when they feel their symptoms and complaints are dismissed or minimized. This is particularly true for women who are experiencing the symptoms of hormone imbalance. Even when doctors do offer treatment, its typically in the form of prescription medication or invasive surgical procedures.
In Overcoming Estrogen Dominance, I hope to show that those extreme interventions are often unnecessary, and to give women a roadmap to reverse estrogen dominance using food, herbs, supplements and natural protocols to rebalance hormones.
To get your copy of Overcoming Estrogen Dominance, go here.
How Do You Know If Adrenal Fatigue Is Contributing To Your Depression
If you have been depressed for a while and have not responded fully to psychotherapy and/or medication , I would strongly suggest finding an integrative practitioner to help you understand whether Adrenal Fatigue is contributing to your depressive symptoms.
Here are a few databases to find qualified practitioners in your area with knowledge of mental health issues and physical root causes:
In addition, I do phone consults around the world to help you identify and work with the root causes of your depression, including Adrenal Fatigue. To set up an initial phone consult .
My next blog will be on what to do next if you are depressed and find out that you have adrenal fatigue. Stay tuned
If you like this post and want to hear more information about the root cause of depression, . As a bonus, youll get my FREE Nutrition For Mental Health Guidebook.
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Causes Signs Symptoms Treatments And Controversy
With James L. Wilson, PhD
Excess stress causes the adrenal glands to increase cortisol production.
If you’re feeling tired and fried, chances are you’ve probably heard of adrenal fatigue and wondered if it may be the source of your constant exhaustion. But what exactly is it, and how do you know if it’s what’s causing your lack of oomph? Let’s investigate.
Adrenal fatigue is an increasingly common yet sometimes controversial diagnosis used to indicate depletion of the adrenal glands. Cortisol is a hormone released by the adrenals for use in the regulation of blood pressure. In response to stress, the adrenals release greater amounts of cortisol. Adrenal fatigue is thought to occur when the adrenals have become overtaxed by excess cortisol release and can no longer produce levels of cortisol necessary for optimal body function.
James L. Wilson, PhD, who coined the term adrenal fatigue in his book Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Syndrome, describes the adrenals as two little glands that sit over your kidneys and are about the size of two large grapes and weigh about five-to-eight grams.
According to Wilson, The adrenals put out over fifty hormones. We often only hear about DHA and cortisol, but forty percent of womens estrogen or progesterone are made in the adrenal glands and about forty percent of testosterone in males is made in the adrenal glands.
When Stress Becomes Distress
The dark side of chronic hypervigilance is anxiety! Your brain and body get stuck in survival mode, and you end up with:
- Afternoon fatigue, caffeine, or sugar cravings
- Allergies, food reactions, hives
- Perfectionism, feeling that youre never doing enough
- Trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up still tired
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Pay Attention To Your Coffee Intake
Coffee is misunderstood when it come to adrenal fatigue. The standard advice is to avoid it entirely because it spikes cortisol. The reality is a little more complicated than that.
Coffee does spike cortisol if you only drink it occasionally. If you drink it every morning, though , you build tolerance to the cortisol release, but not to coffees wakefulness boost.
But in order to build tolerance to the cortisol, you have to drink coffee every morning. If you only drink it occasionally, your body wont adjust, and the coffee will cause a big cortisol spike that isnt good for adrenal fatigue.
Basically, when it comes to adrenal fatigue and coffee, you should take an all-or-nothing approach:
- Drink coffee every morning, or
- Cut out coffee entirely
If you do decide to drink coffee, I suggest Bulletproof Coffee for extra mental clarity and effortless focus, which is crucial when dealing with adrenal fatigue.
A Great Book On Adrenal Fatigue
I highly recommend the bookAdrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndromeby James Wilson, Ph.D. He came up with the term Adrenal Fatigue. This book is the go-to book on this subject.
About 50% of the book is case studies about this doctors patients. Youll probably see yourself and half the people you know in these stories.
If youre not interested in the case studies, skip right to the section on recommendations.
Dr. Wilson heavily emphasizes using supplements.
Before you take any supplements, please consult with your doctors. Supplements can cause negative interactions with other medications and many are blood thinners.
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Adrenal Fatigue & Anxiety
If adrenal fatigue is the exhausted epidemic, then anxiety is the panic epidemic. As a result of our fast-paced culture and the general stream of negative events worldwide, it can be hard to feel safe, grounded, or in control.
Before adrenal fatigue sets in, youre living in a state of hyperarousal, which then leads your adrenal glands to become overworked. When you experience anxiety, youre in that same state of panic and hyperarousal.
So whats really going on here? Does adrenal fatigue cause anxiety, or is it the other way around?
The connection between adrenal fatigue and anxiety lies in our hormones and stress response.
Lets take a look:
In other words, anxiety and adrenal fatigue go hand-in-hand because of cortisol and our stress response. Every time you feel anxious, your body is kicking the adrenal glands into high gear and releasing cortisol.
Thats precisely why a diagnosis of high cortisol levels and adrenal fatigue have many of the same symptoms:
- Fatigue
- High blood sugar
- Difficulty concentrating
Cortisol plays a vital role in both anxiety and adrenal fatigue. Thats why you need to rely on natural and proven methods of keeping cortisol low if you want to heal.
A badly-functioning HPA axis increases the risk of experiencing anxiety and adrenal fatigue. But, left unchecked, it can go beyond these two conditions.
The Connection Between Fatigue Brain Fog Headaches And Gut Health
For a lot of people with symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, or difficulty sleeping, adrenal fatigue seems to offer an explanation. But research shows that the adrenal fatigue theory doesnt hold up to closer scrutiny. So what do these symptoms really mean, and what can we do about them?
Often, the things that we think of as adrenal fatigue symptoms are actually signs of a different problem, like an imbalance in the gut. Investigating and treating these underlying issues can help to improve symptoms, while nutritional and herbal products can provide simultaneous adrenal support.
Lets dive in.
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The Importance Of The Gut In Maintaining Health
The primary purpose of the gut is to absorb nutrients from food but what people dont realize is that the gut is also an integral part of our bodys immune system. The gut produces three quarters of the bodys neurotransmitters, contains two thirds of the bodys immune tissues, houses a genome that is one hundred times larger than the human microbiome, and has ten times the amount of bacteria than the rest of the human body combined.
Gastrointestinal disorders affect the gastrointestinal tract, including the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, and rectum, along with organs that aid in digestion, such as the liver, pancreas and gallbladder.
You’re Crying All The Time
It’s normal to feel a bit weepy when you’re overly tired. But if your fatigue is due to anxiety, it could reveal itself as an outpouring of emotion that doesn’t go away, even if you’ve had a good night’s sleep. It’s normal to be overly-emotional when you’re anxious, Zodkoy says, as well as a bit depressed.
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Illustration Of Woman With A Low Battery Icon Hovering Above Head
Dragging your feet at the end of the day? Find yourself longing for a nap by noon? Come to think of it, do you ever feel rested? As Americans, it is part of our culture to burn the candle at both ends. We rise to all occasions at both home and workto our own detriment. It’s no wonder so many of us are exhausted, anxious, and overwhelmed.
A controversial term, adrenal fatigue is often used to describe a host of vague but debilitating symptoms. Described as the depletion of cortisol from the adrenal glands, Western medicine providers do not believe this catch-all diagnosis exists. After all, conventional doctors train in acute care. They prefer to find a specific problem to fix and prescribe short-term solutions.
What Causes Chronic Stress
We live in a stressful world. Being an adult is harder than ever. Just ask people who are 20-30 years older than you.
- Todaysmiddle class is smallerthan it was a generation ago. Most middle-class households dont have savings and cant come up with $400 for a sudden emergency.
- Over 85% of men and over 65% of women work more than 40 hours a week. Americans work more hours than the Japanese, British, or French.
- We’re constantly battlinginformation overload. Between e-mails, social media, blogs, YouTube, and other information channels, our brain has to process too much information every day. This leads to constant stress and trouble making decisions.
Since it looks like everyone else is keeping up, we feel the need to look like we can too. The overachievers among us are driven to outwork everyone else. Being busy is now a sign of being smart, valuable, and important.
In some industries, if youre not stressed, people assume youre not driven enough.
Unfortunately, theres still a big stigma against asking for help. Instead, people numb with food, wine, pills, shopping, and spending hours online. Anything to make the overwhelm go away.
As much as we talk about living a healthy lifestyle, most Americans dont value preventing illness. Most people wont do anything about their stress until theyre already sick or completely hit a wall.
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Avoid Caffeine Which Pushes Your Body Beyond Its Limits
If you are feeling tired in the morning and If you use coffee or diet soda to feel good, you are likely to feel bad about two hours later. This is when the caffeine crash happens. If you eat a high sugar or starch breakfast, you will also feel an energy crash about two hours later. This is because your blood sugar plummets.
Adrenal Fatigue And Anxiety
- Anxiety is a very common adrenal fatigue symptom
- You can get it under control
In a survey of 89 visitors to this site, 84.3% said theyexperience anxiety.
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It is also one of the most bothersomesymptoms of adrenal fatigue.
People often experience extreme anxiety for seemingly no reason at all.
Like most people with adrenal fatigue, I had debilitating anxiety for years.I had periods of anxiety so bad that I would stop breathing.
But there are afew things you can do to get it under control, and eventually eliminate anxiety.
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How Does Chronic Inflammation Stress You Out
What is inflammation? You probably know the word flammable which means something can go up in flames. The word inflammation comes from the Latin, inflamare, meaning to set on fire. In the human body, the fire happens in your tissues and organs where you cannot see it. It is often silent which means you dont feel it.
In the short run, inflammation heals injury and prevents an infection. Conversely, long term inflammation is the cause of 90% of all chronic diseases.
Inflammation is the bodys way of responding to harm. In the short run, inflammation is good. If you step on a dirty object, inflammation heals the injury and prevents an infection. When it happens all the time, it is a threat to your health. Long term inflammation is involved in 90% of all chronic diseases. These include heart disease, cancer, Alzheimers disease, arthritis, and many others. Inflammation is one of the causes of adrenal fatigue.
You Would Describe Yourself As Burnt Out
There’s definitely a connection between anxiety, tiredness, and your busy life. “The problem with today’s stressors are that they are low grade but continuous, which means the fight-or-flight pathway never turns off or has a chance to rebuild,” says chiropractor Steven Zodkoy, author of Misdiagnosed: The Adrenal Fatigue Link. And that can definitely lead to feeling burnt out.
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What Are Adrenal Glands
This is a basic description for glands that do much to control several functions in the body. Adrenal glands are 2 small pyramid-shaped pieces of tissue positioned right above each kidney. Their task is to produce and launch, certain regulatory hormonal agents and chemical messengers.
Adrenaline which assists us in our flight or battle is made in the interior of the adrenal gland, called the adrenal medulla.
Cortisol, the other chemical from the adrenal gland, is made in the outside part of the gland, called the adrenal cortex. The cortex also secretes androgens, estrogens, and progestins.
Cortisol, commonly called hydrocortisone, is the most plentiful and one of the most important of lots of adrenal cortex hormonal agents. Cortisol helps you manage longer-term tension circumstances.Does Adrenal Fatigue Cause Frequent Urination
When out of balance these hormonal agents damage your physical and emotion.
Beside the above discussed addition these two primary adrenal hormonal agents, adrenaline and cortisol, help control body fluid balance. Which help high blood pressure, blood glucose, and other central metabolic functions.
In the increased worried state of adrenal burnout, the body overproduces adrenaline, cortisol and other tension hormonal agents. Constant stress and poor nutrition can deteriorate the adrenal glands. Ultimately, this causes the adrenal glands, the cutting edge in the stress reaction, to show wear and tear and end up being depleted.
Physical
So Whats A Person To Do
Navigating this ocean of uncertainty is not an easy task. Symptoms associated with adrenal fatigue probably have multiple causes. Frequent follow-up visits and a strong patient-clinician partnership are critical elements for success. Alternative and complementary clinicians often have better results, because the appointments tend to last longer and they view patients through a more holistic lens. An important word of caution: some medical professionals prescribe cortisol analogs to treat adrenal fatigue. Cortisol replacement can be dangerous even in small doses. Unintended consequences can include osteoporosis, diabetes, weight gain, and heart disease.
Regardless of what we call it, there are millions of people suffering from similar symptoms, and a personalized plan that involves counseling, medications, supplements, lifestyle change, among others could work for many. Improvement following these programs is slow, and the evidence is weak, but I hope advances in big data, genomics, and its relationship with the environment and the microbiome, may shine a light on how to better help people who suffer from these ailments.
The adrenal fatigue theory may fit like a glove to explain your symptoms, which are very real. But before buying expensive protocols over the Internet to treat something were not even sure exists, take a deep dive and reexamine your lifestyle. The path to feeling better may be closer than you think.
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