Adrenal fatigue is a non-medical diagnosis referring to a common physical condition that occurs when the adrenal glands have been worked to exhaustion, often due to chronic stress. Adrenal glands are like batteries that power the physical, chemical, and emotional needs for your body. When your adrenal system fires for too long without proper time to rest of be restored through proper nutirion, your whole system gets depleted and you experience adrenal fatigue.
The adrenal glands are located above the kidneys and produce vital stress hormones such as adrenaline, cortisol, and DHEA. These hormones are responsible for modulating and managing stressful events. Whether you’re experiencing a predator attack or a deadline at work, real or perceived, internal or external, the adrenals respond the same. Over time, chronic stress weakens the ability of the adrenal system to moderate stressors, causing adrenal fatigue and chronic low energy. While you can’t always change a stressful environment, you can change how your body responds to stress.
At Active Edge, we will evaluate the contributors to your adrenal fatigue and come up with a holistic plan to reverse adrenal fatigue naturally and get your adrenal system working properly again. By resetting the proper conditions in your life and adding supporting supplements for adrenal fatigue, your body can rebalance, making you feel new again.
Adrenal fatigue is a condition that occurs when the adrenal glands have been worked to exhaustion and in turn, causes a collection of nonspecific symptoms listed below. These small glands are located above the kidneys and produce vital stress hormones such as adrenaline, cortisol, and DHEA. These hormones are critical for our bodies to modulate and manage stressful events. However, our bodies cannot discriminate between stressors like a predator attack, a nearing work deadline, or an anticipated confrontation. Whether real or perceived, internal or external, adrenals will respond to stressors the same. Over time, chronic stress weakens the ability of the adrenal system to moderate stressors causing adrenal fatigue and chronic low energy.
Signs and symptoms of adrenal fatigue may include any combination of the following or a number of other seemingly unconnected complaints that “just aren’t right:”
Cholesterol is a precursor to many important substances in the body including stress hormones, sex hormones, digestive enzymes, and vitamin D. Since cholesterol is shared between all of these substances, usage needs to be balanced to ensure you are producing the right amounts of each for proper bodily function.
When you are stressed, whether from physical, chemical, or emotion stress, the body prioritizes using cholesterol for cortisol, a stress hormone, to modulate these stressors. This puts a strain on the adrenal glands and affecting the balance of other chemicals. Chronic stress creates a chain reaction of higher levels of cortisol and lower levels of DHEA (that affect testosterone and estrogen), vitamin D, stomach acid and digestive enzymes.
With lower levels of stomach acid and digestive enzymes, this causes blood sugar levels rise and nutrients to become depleted leading to nervousness, anxiety, weight gain and MORE STRESS. This vicious cycle continues to drain the body and the systems required for rest, repair, and digestion begin to shut down, resulting in adrenal fatigue.
Depending on your type of stress response (wired, tired, anxious, depressed), you may experience any combination of symptoms as your body fights to recover from the over-activity of your adrenals. Symptoms can worsen when triggered by other stressors or infections.
If you have tried adrenal support supplements before without the results, you may have been taking the wrong supplements for your adrenal deficiency, OR your body needs to heal something else first before your adrenals will be receptive to repair.
At Active Edge, we take a personalized approach to understand your unique stress response. Our adrenal fatigue doctor can guide you with the right supplements to restore balance and energy.
Download our questionnaire for insights into your type of stress and personalized supplement recommendations based on your results.
While Western medicine may take this list of symptoms and treat them one at a time with a different medication for each, our adrenal fatigue specialists aim to view all your issues in conjunction with each other and consider their relationship to your environmental stressors.
With a holistic approach in mind, the first step in healing your adrenal fatigue is identifying the stressor. The best way to help your adrenal system recuperate from exhaustion is to eliminate stress as much as possible and allow your body to rest. By eliminating the common denominator to many of your issues, your systems will balance out and start producing a healthy amount of hormones, vitamins, enzymes, and more. This may involve critical lifestyle changes to prioritize your health.
In addition to eliminating environmental stressors wherever possible, supplements can be used to support your body in its healing process by calming the nervous system, metabolizing cortisol, promoting relaxation, and supporting resilience for weakened individuals. This questionnaire can help you identify which type of stress you are experiencing to better know which pathway to address in treatment. Based on your results, you may consider one of the following adrenal fatigue supplements from Metagenics:
Furthermore, it is important to keep a diet low in refined sugar, caffeine, and junk food, substituting with a balanced whole foods diet of organic meats, vegetables and fruits to maximize your nutrient intake.
Over time, high levels of cortisol can have drastic, long-term negative side effects including:
The hope is that your condition is identified and treated before these long-term effects settle in. While some of these issues are not necessarily permanent, it is much more challenging to reverse the effects of chronic fatigue once these long term effects start to emerge.
Wherever you are in your journey to healing, it is never too late to start intervention! Call (614) 407-5335 to book your appointment today.
Resources:
Chiropractors have been practicing functional medicine since long before Jeffery Bland coined the term in 1990. Long before “Functinal Medicine” had a name, chiropractors have recognized the importance of all systems functioning well together and appreciated prevention (not early detection) over reaction. This means we’re accustomed to recognizing and addressing issues before they become a problem as well as helping resolve problems if you’ve waited that long. Being Doctors of Chiropractic, means that our whole education is presented with the underlying idea that our bodies are intelligent, interconnected, and do nothing in vain. Our rigorous curriculum contains substantially more nutrition than medical doctors and we have some of the most in-depth training in anatomy, microbiology, diagnosis, vertebral subluxations, and more.
We have continued refining and enhancing our knowledge of how to identify and heal problems from the inside out with studies under some of the Functional Medicine greats including Bob Rakowski, Jeffery Bland, Mark Hyman, and Jeff Bryst. Our doctors have spent countless hours enhancing their coaching techniques, studying the most bioavailable diagnostic tests including hair, skin, nails, blood, and more. We have an in depth knowledge of supplements, tinctures, essential oils, and more for helping patients’ bodies heal themselves.
Applying this comprehensive approach in private practice since 2012, our doctors are dedicated to finding the root of dysfunction and giving you the tools to activate your body’s potential. We regularly see positive improvements in pain reduction, range of motion, energy, and more as patients receive and implement the tools they need for healing naturally and holistically.”
Adrenal fatigue can be identified through urine, saliva, or blood tests to determine various hormone levels in your body. Your symptoms will determine the type of test that you require.
10.Walk barefoot I the grass
Adrenal fatigue can take anywhere between a few weeks to multiple years to completely recover from. The time varies based on your level of adrenal exhaustion, the severity of your symptoms, how much you are able to reduce your stressful environment, and intake to balance your system (diet and supplements).
The four stages of adrenal fatigue are alarm, resistance, exhaustion, and burnout. Each one comes with varying levels of hormone imbalance and resulting symptoms.
At this point, you are feeling better than you ever thought you could as you are feeling energized and thriving. You have learned a lot about your body, you are moving more efficiently, you understand your body’s cues, and you have a good idea of what to do with these cues. This means you get to try new things, achieve new goals, and conquer new challenges! As you do, we will be here as your resource, as needed, to help you nourish, boost, and refresh your health.
Pain is generally the last symptom to show up and the first to go away. This means that by the time you realize there is a problem, there has been a problem for a long time. Especially for chronic or recurring issues, understanding how you got to where you are is so important for getting to where you want to go. In this stage of your journey, you will resolve underlying dysfunction, remove cheats, and retrain habits. As we aid you in activating your body’s natural healing potential, we will help you regain movement, energy, and body function both inside and outside. Throughout this process, you will start to feel greater ease and inspiration as you restore communication and efficiency in your body. Together, we will constantly assess, observe, and reassess your body’s responses to boost your results.
You are your own person, with your own collection of life events which brought you to where you are today. You deserve to be heard, seen, and treated as the individual you are. Your journey begins with your Discovery Evaluation. This first visit includes your exam which works to uncover the root of your issue(s), new patient diagnostics, and, of course, your first treatment. This is how we will help you begin connecting the dots and feeling better. After your first treatment, we will ask you to observe your body’s responses– good, bad, or indifferent. There is no wrong answer as this is just starting point information and direction for moving forward. In your second visit, we will review this feedback and your diagnostics to further identify potential underlying causes and compensations. We will combine everything we have learned about you, consider your goals, and together create a plan to resolve your concerns from the roots up.
