What is adrenal fatigue?
Adrenal fatigue is the umbrella term used to describe a range of symptoms that includes tiredness, body aches, nervousness, anxiety, low mood, sleep disturbances and digestive problems.
The symptoms associated with adrenal fatigue are thought to be the result of your adrenal glands (endocrine glands which sit atop each of your kidneys) becoming “worn out” from prolonged stress (being in an almost perpetual state of “fight or flight”).
Due to their being overused your adrenal glands begin to produce lower amounts of hormones.
What’s interesting is adrenal fatigue is not a medically recognised condition.
What is recognised (and can be medically diagnosed via blood tests) is something called adrenal insufficiency.
Adrenal insufficiency is exactly as the name suggests, the case in which your adrenal glands are producing insufficient levels of the adrenal hormones.
The symptoms of adrenal insufficiency overlap with the symptoms of adrenal fatigue (fancy that!) and can include unexplained weight loss, low blood pressure, light-headedness, hair loss and skin discoloration (hyperpigmentation)1.
The difference between the two then, is simply the degree to which hormone production is altered.
People with signs and symptoms of adrenal fatigue would return blood tests showing their hormone levels were within what we’d consider “normal” ranges.
However, these levels which are “normal” at a population level may not be normal for them. Meaning for their body this level really could be low.
What Can You Do About It?
The only real answer to this question is de-stress.
The ways in which you achieve that is where the magic lives.
Everyone knows they should “stress less” and everyone knows stress is bad for your health but if anything, knowing that simply means you stress more because you feel stressed that you can’t lessen your stress…
Which is why I am going to offer some practical suggestions on ways to reduce stress in your life and by doing so experience less of the symptoms associated with adrenal fatigue (leaving aside if it’s a real phenomenon or not because it doesn’t matter).
If the following 3 adrenal soothing suggestions I am about to make are things you can’t simply do or don’t make you feel any less stressed for doing them then get help because the nutrition plan, the meditation plan, the best exercise plan in the world has zero value until you are doing them.
Furthermore, from my point of view the value of doing them is less than the value of doing them if you are not enjoying doing them.
The doing (as opposed to the knowing we “should” do), in my experience as a healthcare professional, is the part where people struggle the most and it is certainly where I struggled the most during my 15 years in “recovery” from anorexia nervosa) and where we have the least support and clear guidance for how to do it.
We have all the data on what to do but when it comes to the “how to do” well some people succeed and some people fail and we accept that as just the way it is.
However, the way it really is, is that there is that middle part of the real how to do the wonderful things so that they feel wonderful now.
Here’s my list of wonderful things to reduce stress and the only way I would recommend going about the “how to” do them if you are struggling to do them or feel good doing them would be to see a clinical hypnotherapist.
Research around and find someone who is also a health professional or a psychologist because I am a big believer in mainstream training meeting what we’d often term as “less conventional” modalities in order to ensure the person is well educated and trained.
There really is no modality other than clinical hypnotherapy which will take into account your unique circumstances and be as tailored to you and this is why it works.
- Nutrition
Are you eating well?
And by this I don’t mean do you eat a salad or green juice every day and never eat chocolate or takeaway, I mean are you fuelling your body with a variety of nutritious foods day in and day out?
Diet is something we all know to be important to our health, physical as well as mental but that can often be where it stops because the absolute overwhelm of information on what constitutes healthy eating is ludicrous.
From someone who’s been overwhelmed with food and making choices, looking for the outside world to tell me what was ok, not ok and permission to eat this or that I know it’s exhausting and soul crushing to not be able to trust your most fundamental need for nourishment.
I’m here to briefly add to that, just for a moment before you get to the really good stuff which if you choose to take it may just change your entire life. I have no celery juice, detox blend or 5 step guide beating adrenal fatigue because while there are some overarching nutrition principals, we know what humans can eat and thrive off is vast and varied.
We know there are communities across the world and through history who have eaten in very different ways from one another, think of the amount of rice someone in Japan eats compared to a Masai warrior who’s never seen let alone eaten a green vegetable in his life for example, yet we know both can be exceptionally healthy people.
The way of eating which makes you happiest and healthiest will, at the end of the day be unique to you and if you don’t believe this then you’ve come to the right place. I am a Dietitian who will not give you a hard and fast do this and don’t do that meal plan, what I will do is help you learn you because I know and I have lived it and seen it too many times to pretend health lies in anything outside of knowing oneself.
So, you can keep looking to the outside world for the best meal plan or supplements and follow this one and then that one as new information and technologies come to life or as one doesn’t give the results you were hoping for but this is the long route, this is the giving away your power route and it won’t have results that even scratch the surface of what’s possible.
When you can listen to and respond to your bodily cues accordingly, you will go places and experience life in ways few human beings get to. That may sound farfetched and starry eyed (it’s just food!) but it’s true, we are biological beings and as biological beings our abilities will forever be limited by our biology and our biology is only as strong as what we eat.
2. Sleep
Sleep is, like nutrition another of those things we know is good for us but for many reasons don’t always translate what we know into our day to day lives.
We’ve all heard it and we’ve definitely all experienced the very real effects of sleep deprivation even if this has been short term.
There are all sorts of protocol and information on “sleep hygiene” and setting yourself up for a good night’s sleep, how many hours you should get and so I’m not going to give you too many tricks and hacks around sleep because that’s all available and when it comes down to it, it’s the same as food. It’s finding what works for you.
If you read somewhere that you need 7 hours of sleep a night, but you find yourself tired throughout the day if you don’t get at least 8, get 8. It’s that simple. If you read that you must turn your phone off or limit your usage an hour before you go to bed but you find you’re fine on your phone up until your head hits the pillow with no qualms falling asleep and this makes you happy, do that.
There is no right or wrong. If you know yourself you can’t lose.
3. Connection
You thought the third tip was going to be exercise, didn’t you?
Well you’re right, movement can be an incredibly stress relieving activity (it can also be an incredibly stress enhancing activity).
Movement is important and there are many other points I’m not including in this post such as having a purpose and passion in life and making time to get outside in nature, here I’m going with three of the big ones.
When you address and change these 3 you will by default be addressing and changing the others because you can force yourself eat well, sleep well and see other people but until you’re doing it from a place of inspiration (that is wanting to versus I “should”) the benefit is nothing.
Therefore, long story short, I would put connection above exercise.
It truly is up there with food and sleep because as a human being you are biologically wired for human connection.
When we feel we genuinely belong and can share our true selves with those we love knowing they will continue to love us back there is no greater feeling of relief and freedom.
If that’s not stress relieving, I don’t know what is.
Find yourself some wonderful friends, reconnect with old friends or bring the friendships you have in your life currently to a new level through sharing real, open honesty and you will sooth the emotional centres of your brain such as your amygdala and hippocampus which are the very places which initiate the cascade of the signal that ultimately leads to telling your adrenal glands you’re stressed and to release stress hormones in the first place.
Take Home Points
It can be beyond frustrating to be experiencing symptoms your doctor cannot do anything about but before you jump into putting your health in the hands of someone potentially unqualified for that precious role please ensure you do get the right tests to rule out other underlying problems such as fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis or depression.
Whether or not adrenal fatigue exists as a phenomenon and whether or not we ever give it its own diagnostic label, to know within you that something isn’t quite right is truly all the information you need.
If you are constantly stressed out, experience digestive or sleep problems, body aches or feel anxious more often than you’d like, it’s unquestionably worth doing something about.
In any case there is likely no human being on this planet who would not benefit from learning to enhance their physiology to naturally decrease their stress levels, because we know stress is incredibly harmful to our bodies.
To live in a perpetual state of stress is not the badge of honour society would have us believe nor is it “just the way it is” and something you have to endure, it is destroying you.
I know, and had I not been on my own journey with ill health to phenomenal health, it’s easy to overlook these symptoms, learn to live with them or feed yourself that wonderful line of “one day” I’ll be less stressed, or “one day” I’ll deal with the stress.
If I could have told my past self one thing, knowing what I know now it would have been this: The time is now.
There are so many things you can do to decrease stress and being a dietitian and a clinical hypnotherapist these two modalities are my go to because from all the things I have tried these are what have worked, without exception to help myself and others decrease stress in real and tangible ways versus hoping for things to change one day.
Moral of the story: If you don’t have your health it doesn’t matter how much money or time you have.
The time to take care of your health is now.
With my whole heart I hope you found this information useful and inspiring.
Become Great. Live Great.
Bonnie.
Reference
Adrenal Fatigue: What Causes It? Mayo Clinic. 2020. Available online: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/addisons-disease/expert-answers/adrenal-fatigue/faq-20057906
