Everything You Need To Know About Adrenal Fatigue
There are physical effects of stress, we know this to be true now, which can affect your mood, sleeping patterns, weight, and your overall health. The way that your body responds to stress includes signaling the adrenal glands to release a stress hormone (cortisol). This action of continually signaling your adrenal glands, due to stress, is adrenal stress. Which, in turn, leads to adrenal fatigue.
What is Adrenal Fatigue?
Adrenal fatigue is what links stress exposure to adrenal stress. It refers to the various symptoms including a lack of energy, the excessive fatigue some people feel because of this overworking of the adrenal glands, due to external stress.
Let’s back up and talk about what is happening in someone with adrenal fatigue.
The adrenals are two small glands that sit on top of the kidneys and produce several hormones, among them, cortisol. Short bursts of cortisol are released into the bloodstream when under stress.
Long-term stress causes adrenal glands to become overworked and fatigued and unable to keep up with the demands of the body.
It can be best described as a hormone imbalance in the body.
The adrenal glands do produce other hormones, not just cortisol, which regulate various other functions in the body including:
- Metabolism
- Blood sugar
- Blood pressure
- Stress management
So a variety of symptoms can surface, as the adrenal glands begin to produce less of these hormones. However, with stress, cortisol is often the worse affected hormone (being the stress hormone).
Common Symptoms of Adrenal Fatigue
Patients often report the following symptoms:
- Fatigue
- Difficulty sleeping or insomnia
- Difficulty waking up
- Sugar cravings
- Salt cravings
- Lack of motivation
- Brain fog
- Unexplained weight loss (sometimes weight gain if due to thyroid health)
- Loss of appetite
Adrenal Fatigue and Thyroid Health
There appears to be a connection between adrenal fatigue and thyroid health. Unrelenting stress during the early phases of adrenal fatigue generates excessive cortisol in the body, and this can affect thyroid hormone production.
Thyroid hormones are responsible for regulating metabolism. If the cortisol levels are high, it can suppress the glands that control the thyroid. Therefore, as a negative result of adrenal fatigue, one can also develop an underactive thyroid. This often leads to excessive weight gain and additional fatigue.
At Happy Hormone Cottage, we also treat thyroid conditions. Visit our thyroid health page for more information.
How Do You Diagnose Adrenal Fatigue?
Blood tests can diagnose adrenal insufficiency. Sometimes, adrenal hormone fluctuations are hard to detect in a simple blood test. Therefore, special stimulation tests are used that show inadequate levels of adrenal hormones.
At Happy Hormone Cottage, we would need to do a personal consultation first to determine all of the symptoms and begin the testing. At that point, we can come up with an effective treatment and management plan.
How Do You Treat It?
The best adrenal fatigue treatment is stress management. There are other lifestyle factors that are often recommended, in conjunction with a treatment plan, which includes diet and exercise.
The team at Happy Hormone Cottage works with you to provide the stress relief you need along with adrenal support. We review your condition and recommend a number of adrenal support products that would be best suited for your health.
We have a number of adrenal support supplements that we carry.
Because there is often a connection with adrenal fatigue and thyroid health, it’s necessary, during your consultation to also address any thyroid issues, if they exist. To diagnose thyroid health, our team uses the Thyroflex machine.
We also have thyroid health products that help to get the functioning back to normal levels.
Adrenal Support with Customization
The Happy Hormone Cottage has created two separate adrenal support products using the well—studied adaptogens at the proper therapeutic dosing.
Our Adrenal Support system contains proprietary formulations focusing on achieving a desirable cortisol curve. We customize these supplements specifically for our clients. They are found nowhere else.
To learn more, please contact us for a consultation.
Get an Appointment Complete The Form Below And We’ll Get Back To You Immediately.
