Adrenal Fatigue

[pelagia]

This may be relevant to all, but I am posting here because caregivers, who might otherwise be healthy, may have direct health effects associated with the care of a loved one.  I pulled it from a website called "Project AWARE", which is directed mostly towards women's health issues.

Adrenal Fatigue

by Vicki Wade, Pharm. D
January 2005

Have you recently experienced a major stress in your life, be it illness, job, death, children, etc? After this stress, have you felt as though you just cannot seem to get yourself together, or at least back to where you used to be? Are you usually tired when you wake up, but still "too wired" to fall asleep at night? Is it hard for you to relax or to get exercise? Do you find that you get sick more often and take a long time to get well? If so, then you, like many other Americans may be experiencing symptoms of Adrenal Fatigue.

Adrenal fatigue is not a new condition. People have been experiencing this condition for years. Although there is increasing physician awareness, many are not familiar with adrenal fatigue as a distinct syndrome. Because of this lack of knowledge, patients suffer because they are not properly diagnosed or treated.

Adrenal fatigue is a condition in which the adrenal glands function at a sub-optimal level when patients are at rest, under stress, or in response to consistent, intermittent, or sporadic demands. The adrenal glands are two small glands that sit over the kidneys and are responsible for secreting over 50 different hormones—including epinephrine, cortisol, progesterone, DHEA, estrogen, and testosterone. Over the past century, adrenal fatigue has been recognized as Non-Addison’s hypoadrenia, subclinical hypoadrenia, neurasthenia, adrenal neurasthenia, and adrenal apathy.

Generally patients who present with adrenal fatigue can often be heard saying, "After______, I was never the same." The onset of adrenal fatigue often occurs because of financial pressures, infections, emotional stress, smoking, drugs, poor eating habits, sugar and white flour products, unemployment and several other stressors. After experiencing many of these events over a long period of time, the adrenal glands tend to produce less cortisol, the body’s master stress hormone. Cortisol’s main role in the body is to enable us to handle stress and maintain our immune systems. The adrenal gland’s struggle to meet the high demands of cortisol production eventually leads to adrenal fatigue.

The article is pretty long, so to read the rest go to this link:  http://www.project-aware.org/Resource/articlearchives/adrenalfatigue.shtml

[monrein]

Very good information for us all to have.  Thanks P.

[Marley]

Hi Palegia

Great article.  It caught my eye because I was diagnosed with adrenal insufficency two years ago.  I had been taking prednisone (steroid) to treat my rheumatoid arthritis for over 10 years, along with other meds.  I was heavy and I had lost 97 lbs within 8 months time.  While on the prednisone, I had an abdominal surgery and had some pretty bad complications and wasn't healing, so under my surgeons' care, I tapered down and then off the prednisone thinking it would aide in the healing.  I had no idea why I was loosing weight so fast, feeling SO tired, couldn't eat and had no energy.  I was also going to ER for re-hydration!  It wasn't until I saw my doc's PA and I told her to tell my doc that I had lost another 6 lbs in one week!!  I guess that put two and two together for my doc, one simple blood test and he figured out my adrenal glands weren't working--put me back on prednisone and within 24 hours, I was a new woman!!  It was because of all those years of taking prednisone and then stopping, 3 months after stopping was when I started feeling so sick.

Back on prednisone now and will have to take it the rest of my life.  My doc told me I had "burnned out" my adrenal gland, it got used to me taking the prednisone and just stopped working--now I have Addisons disease.  When I'm under stress (more than usual) I start feeling fatiqued, no appetite, (which is cool with me) and really wipped out.  I have to increase my prednisone a few days and then taper back down to my daily 10 mg.  Now I take it religiously. 
I had lost almost 100 lbs and have since gained almost half of it back again, but I'm getting a handle on it again......trying to!!

So, long story short, in my case my adrenal gland just got used to not having to make the steroid because I was taking one.  My body lets me know when it's had too much stress too!!

Thanks for the article.

 

[pelagia]

I think most of us have little idea about what our adrenal glands do for us.  I'm happy to hear that they figured out what was happening in your body.  I know that you have had more than enough stressful things to deal with.