Anyone recovering from hypoadrenia (adrenal fatigue)?

I was just diagnosed with adrenal fatigue but I'm concerned because I can't find any solid medical writing about adrenal fatigue, nothing that appears in any peer reviewed journals, that is. I'm going along with my doctor's supplement protocol for the time being. I don't know what else to do. I've been on anti-depressants for about 5 years for symptoms that seem to match with hypoadrenia and my doctor feels hopeful that with this treatment we might be able to wean me off of those since the adrenal fatigue might be the underlying cause. Is anyone recovering from hypoadrenia here?

Even the anti-depressants can't keep away the fatigue, brain fog, loss of sexual appetite and general malaise. Anyway, I know it would just be anecdotal evidence but I'd love to hear that a real person actually recovered from hypoadrenia by following a protocol of supplements and diet modification. It would make me feel a little bit better about spending so much money on oversized pills.

There are two types of stress - physical and emotional. It is well know that physical activities that require sudden strenuous movement use adrenalin that must be replenished. There are no studies showing emotional stress does the same thing and the mailstream medical community does not support the hypothesis that it does.

The question of how to increase adrenal funtion has not been answered. If you get the nutrition needed to support adrenal function you have done all you can on the physical side. If you subscribe to the idea that emotional stress depletes the adrenals then reducing emotional stress should be your next goal.

Here is a test you can try called Ragland's test. In the morning just after getting up, when your adrenals should be at their best, measure your blood pressure while lying on your back on the floor. Then stand up quickly and measure your blood pressure again. If it goes up, you adrenal function is normal. If it goes down you have hypoadrenia. Now, assume your blood pressure went up. In the evening, when you are totally fatigued, repeat the test. If it still goes up, then your fatigue is unlikely to be related to adrenalin.

I was dragging, energywise, for months and living a high-stress lifestyle. Then, one day in October of 2007, I noticed a strange acetone-like smell on my breath. I dismissed it as a bit of ketosis since I was also on a strict diet at the time.

A few days later my symptoms got worse and I was having trouble keeping my blood sugar stable. Every 2 to 3 hours I would have to eat or risk becoming ravenously hungrey and VERY shaky and sweaty. Apparently, my adrenals were not able to supply enough cortisol to keep my blood sugar from plunging. Also, I began urinating a lot and the urine was almost colorless. I noticed that I had a salty flavor to my saliva that would not go away. I had only the most limited tolerance for mild exercise and had to take to my sick bed.

I've been bedridden for almost 3 weeks now and am making a slow recovery. But, recovery is measured in weeks, not days.

I'm retired and do not have health insurance so I am forced to treat myself. I have eliminated as much stress as possible from my life and take a Walgreen's "ULtra Choice" Mature formula Vitamin / Mineral tablet, one 250 mg chewable Vitamin C tablet, and 2 100 IU Natural Vitamin E capsules per day. I divide the tablets in half and take them 12 hours apart. EVERY two to three hours I eat a low glycemic meal and sleep about 12 hours per day. I am confident, despite an occasional "bad" day of making a complete recovery in another month or so.

Yes, I learned the HARD way that "hypoadrenia" is REAL despite what all of the doctors who do not have the problem say. I agree that using steroids to treat the problem should only be reserved for the worst cases in which the problem becomes life threatening. Otherwise, rest and nutrition will restore you. And, most importantly, ELIMINATE as much stress from your life as possible.

MY definition of stress is ANYTHING, physical or emotional, that will cause your blood sugar to drop. Actually too much of ANY activity will, in time, become stressful and put extra demands on your adrenals. You need to take the pressure off of them to manufacture cortisol constantly as much as possible.

In reality, I think what happens is that a person with hypoadrenia has, literally, KILLED off a large percentage of the hormone producing cells in his adrenals. That then puts the remaining functioning cells under even more pressure to make hormones and this will so overwhelm them that they will just slow production to a dribble.

Remember, when you are recovering from hypoadrenia, your FIRST priority is to ceate NEW cells in your adrenals. New cells there are formed at the rate of hundreds per SECOND. But, if you have, say, destroyed half of your adrenal cells, that means you must form BILLIONS of new hormone producing cells. THAT takes time...figure on several months...BUT only if you assist the process by reducing the stress that keeps prompting your surviving cells to make cortisol and other hormones.

How do I know if an activity I'm doing is too much and beginning to stress my adrenals? The first sign for me is that my hands start to feel ice cold. Then a quick digital temperature reading shows my body temperature dropping down below 98.0 degrees Fahrenheit.


Anyway, the human body has a remarkable ability to heal itself. You are not the first person to get hypoadrenia and will not be the last. You can make a COMPLETE recovery, but exactly how long it will take will depend on how much YOU reduce the stresses in your life. Good Luck!

adrenalfatigue.org/adrenal_recovery.php

If you checkout this website it may help a lot. I have been struggling scince i was 18 and am now 32 i`ve tried so many different therapies and tried to treat indivisual symptom which i now realise are caused by the same underlying problem, the adrenals. Dr J.Wilson is gunuine and his book ' Adrenal Fatigue the 21st century stress syndrome' has explained to me many of the missing links. it has diagnostic tests, case studies and a lot of info that will help you understand. I live in Australia so i had to order it from amazon.com cause you can't get it here. Don`t give up on yourself! some suppliments that will help the adrenals are: Dhea, siberian ginsend, withania{indian ginseng}, maca, and licorice{which helps with lack of cortisone} also high doses of vitamin c. and vitamin e. and a spoon of salt in a glass of water in the morning. anyway check out the book good luck

I am currently in what I hope to be the recovery process of adrenal fatigue. There is no doubt in my mind that it exists and if I hadn't found a naturpath that figured it out, I may not have lived to write this now. Looking back I now recognize the symptoms earlier on, but what brought me to this point was a few months of debilitating panic that never went away. I thought I was suffering panic attacks for days on end, until it became so severe that I was not able to breathe and my heart was racing all the time. I am a very health conscious person and not knowing what was going on with me added to my stress and panic. When the breathing and heart rate became bad enough I ended up in the ER. I was there for over 8 hours as they ran thousands of dollars of tests on me, trying to figure out why a seemingly healthy persons vital signs were all over the place. I left without any real answers and referral to a heart specialist, which just fueled my panic.
I visited my doctor twice in the next week, and was only prescribed Xanax. I knew something else was wrong. All of my basic functions were crashing. I couldn't sleep, breathe, eat, think, and I was losing weight by the day. The nurses would always point out that my blood pressure was low and my heart rate fast. I thought I was going to die. I was fighting for my life and I knew I needed answers fast. It came down to one day about a week after the ER, that I knew if I didn't find a new doctor I would end up in the hospital again, so I was calling all the naturpath, they were all booked for months, but I called one back later who had a cancelation that very same day. I don't normally think this way but I do believe it was a miracle.
He spent about 90 minutes with me going over my life history and medical history. He told me that it was my adrenals and started me on a regimine of licorice, l-tyrosine, and bovine adrenal supplement. I noticed a difference in a matter of days.
It is now over a month later and I am still not back to normal, but I am now aware that it may take months to feel somewhat normal. It is frustrating but at least I know what is going on with my body and can take proactive steps to healing. I have read most of Dr. Wilson's book and am glad that there is at least this resource. I believe he explains in it why typical western medicine ignores this phenomenon and sadly like most things I think it has to do with the pharmaceutical business. I would recommend this book and looking into natural medicine for anyone who feels they may be suffering from hypoadrenia.

I realize this forum isn't exactly active, but someone doing a search may benefit from my story.

Much of what is being said here sounds so familiar, I could have written it.

Although I can't squeeze a diagnosis out of the allopathic medical industry, I believe I've been suffering from adrenal fatigue, exhaustion or insufficiency for many years. My symptoms include not only the fatigue, weakness and dizziness others have listed here, but also strange pigmentation on my forearms and, lately, back of the hands. I saw a show on Addison's disease, and the woman suffering it had the same kind of pigmentation.

Of course, when I took this information - along with my long list of symptoms making me feel deathly ill - to an allopathic nurse-practitioner, she suggested I was simply panicky and needed something stronger than a benzodiazepine such as Xanax or Ativan. How about a little Prozac?

The problem appears to be that normal blood tests show little other than absolute pathology. So, if you do a cortisol test, and it turns out "normal," you couldn't possibly be suffering from hypoadrenia, hypocortisolism, Addison's disease or other Addisonian state. The woman in the documentary described couldn't get a proper diagnosis for a long time, during which she suffered horribly.

Other symptoms - such as she had, and such as I have had - include numbness of arms and legs, hands and feet falling asleep, during sleep and otherwise, just sitting at my desk.

I also have had the colorless urine - and for years, in fact, my urine has been acidic and burned.

I am currently seeking out a medical practitioner of some sort who will be able to work with a SALIVA test, such as offered by John L. Lee, MD.

When you tell a typical allopath about such tests, their eyes cross. Hey, if you can get someone's DNA from a saliva test, why wouldn't you be able to accurately detect hormone levels from saliva? It makes sense to me. But good luck finding someone who will work with the test.

In any event, I've ordered the Wilson book, and, after racking up bills for thousand$ I don't have, I'm realizing that I've got to most of this myself, although I'm still hopeful I can find a doctor who will work with me, rather than suggesting I'm nuts.

My adrenal exhaustion was also pointed out by a naturopath - seems they are much more on top of it. Unfortunately, he also wanted to suck all my money out of me by selling me every knicknack imaginable and suggesting I move into a hotel because my home was full of EMF. Otherwise, however, he may have helped saved my life by giving me a diagnosis where the allopaths failed.

While I was still struggling with his prescription, however, I turned to my old standby, the late great nutritionist Adelle Davis, who suggests that all adrenal dysfunction can be traced to a PANTHOTHENIC ACID deficiency. I had read this material many times in an earlier manifestation of this illness, which lasted three years. Adelle also suggests high doses of vitamin C. But, she says, when the condition has been long-standing, recovery is slow and uncertain.

I seem to be at that stage. I am hoping that with a saliva test, I can then get a compounded prescription that helps balance all my hormones, because this underlying adrenal condition could be exacerbated by the typical hormone reduction associated with aging, i.e., "menopause," whether female or male. That would mean that reduced levels of progesterone, estrogen and testosterone could also affect the adrenal output.

In any event, I hope this message helps others struggling with this horrible issue, which has been deemed an "American epidemic."

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Good post. I agree salivary test is a good one for adrenal functions. How do you know colorless urine is a sign of acidity ? In this case, maybe fighting acidity with appropriate diet might help adrenal glands?

To the guest who called this a made up disease. Unfortunately you will probably never be back to this site to see this but I want to post to anyway. I have had to put my daily five mile run and weightlifting on hold because of my adrenal fatigue. I can get through it, but don't expect me to be able to get up for work the next day because I'm so exhausted and feel like I've been beaten up. How many fat lazy a** do you know that run five miles a day? Do you? I seriously doubt it otherwise you probably wouldn't be on YOUR fat lazy a** writing posts and judging people you don't know. Do you know how bad we feel? No you don't. So stuff it up your fat lazy a**!

Here's my experience. Of course it exists but the regular doctors conclude irrationally that the adrenals are either shot out completely as in Addison's disease or they're fine - nothing in between! You won't get any help from the allopaths. And the blood tests for adrenal function are meaningless because of the wide diurnal variation of cortisol. I had all the classic symptoms: low blood pressure, nasty hypoglycemia, chronic fatigue, poor resistance to infection, menstrual disorders. After a 6 month bout with pneumonia, I ran into a book called Safe Uses of Cortisol by William Jefferies. Then I found Isocort, which is freeze-dried bovine adrenal tissue - all mammals produce the same cortisol, at the Health Food store and within a week of starting that my energy and hypoglycemia were vastly improved, I didn't have a or cold for over a year - I was by then menopausal so I can't say about that, but no hot flashes. I have been pretty normal since then but lately I stressed myself with excessive exercise and got a respiratory infection, hypoglycemia, fatigue etc all over again. I'm starting back on the Isocort. There's also Drenatrophin - I would recommend that. One thing that Dr Jefferies points out is that it doesn't just go away. I never had any luck with just the supplements - C, Pantothenic acid, calcium and diet (must have enough protein). Most of the naturopaths will tell you that you can restore adrenals with proper diet but I bet they've never had weak adrenals. I am very interested in Dr. Rind's approach - taking into consideration the thyroids also. I feel sure that both adrenals and thyroids should be looked at. I still have no endurance but generally I have the energy I need. I think I can do better, though I'm 100% better than I was in 2001 when I was laid up with classic hypoadrenocorticism. It's worthwhile to go into depth on the function of the adrenals and thyroid - Dr. Jefferies' book is based on experience back to the 50s. This stuff is not cut and dried - the description of adrenals as just fight-or-flight is grossly oversimplified. We need to know a lot to cure ourselves because it's subtle. Irritability & hypersensitivity - just a bad mood? The anxious feelings - just a depressive personality? Lack of endurance - weak mindedness? I remember all the agonizing about what's wrong with me. Dr Rind's metabolic scorecard is very useful in that regard. People with strong adrenals don't have to struggle with all that. I hope that is helpful to somebody.