There are times when we feel more tired than usual. Perhaps a bit cranky and out of sorts. It’s common to chalk it up to stress or poor sleep. But there’s a time when your body won’t allow you to ignore it any longer.
Adrenal fatigue is a term fairly new to mainstream medicine. Many conventional medical experts don't even believe it exists. But for those who have it, the struggle is real.
Over the last year, our friend and clinical nutritionist, Christa Orecchio, has worked with thousands of people using a cutting-edge, six-pillar strategy for healing anxiety, exhaustion, and insomnia.
Ready to have more energy, better sleep, and a calmer life?
What Is Adrenal Fatigue?
Your adrenal glands are endocrine glands that sit just atop your kidneys. These small but powerful glands play some very important roles in the body.
During times of stress, they release epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol, and testosterone. These hormones / neurotransmitters are part of a built-in survival mechanism that gets you ready for a fight-or-flight situation.
But the adrenal glands are designed to pump out these hormones in emergency situations, like an encounter with an aggressive dog. They are not designed to release these hormones 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Repeated stressful events, poor diet, and other factors can cause your adrenals to work overtime until they are no longer able to properly distribute cortisol and other important hormones throughout the body.
In addition to cortisol and other stress hormones, your adrenals produce another important hormone called DHEA, which helps to improve mental clarity and reduce fatigue.
In someone with adrenal fatigue, this hormone becomes critically low. This can result in brain fog and fatigue that is not relieved by rest or sleep.
Symptoms of Adrenal Fatigue
The symptoms of adrenal fatigue are wide and varying, which is another factor that makes it difficult to diagnose.
Do any of these symptoms sound familiar?
- Difficulty waking up in the morning
- Brain fog and memory lapses
- Fatigue and lethargy
- Easily stressed and overwhelmed
- Unusually emotional, frustrated, or cranky
- Mild depression
- Long recovery time after illness
- Recent abdominal weight gain
- Loss of libido
- Intolerance to bright light
- Cravings for salty or sweet foods
- Pale lips
- Lines in the fingertips
- Muscle weakness
- Frequent sighing
- Especially low energy between 3-5pm
- Tired between 7-10pm, but rally later in the night
- Improvement of symptoms when stress and demands are lower (weekends, vacations, etc.)
Causes of Adrenal Fatigue
Extreme and Prolonged Stress
When you have chronic stress, your body remains in a state of fight-or-flight, with your adrenals pumping out cortisol and other hormones constantly. Your adrenals don’t know the difference between mental stress and the threat of immediate danger, so they will continue to release these chemicals until they’re exhausted.
According to an article published in Alternative Medicine Review, it’s not just the adrenals, but several other endocrine glands that work together to produce the human stress response.
First, the hypothalamus in the brain responds to stress by releasing corticotropin-releasing
factor (CRF). This hormone sends a signal to the pituitary gland to release adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which stimulates the adrenal glands to release cortisol.
“With the rise in stress hormones, a complex mechanism of feedback controls is set in motion, eventually signaling the hypothalamus to stop producing CRF.”
When the hypothalamus stops producing CRF, the pituitary gland no longer receives the hormone stimulation it needs to signal the adrenals to release cortisol.
According to a study published in Hormones & Behavior, the complex system which controls the stress response (known as the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA)) has been shown to be dysregulated in both anxiety and depressive disorders.
Could it be that constant stress creates a domino effect in the body, slowly burning out mechanisms until chronically low cortisol levels manifest into adrenal fatigue?
That certainly seems likely.
