Modern life is full of stress. There’s a lot of information about the dangers of stress as well as the diseases and health issues that it can cause or exacerbate. Stress has been linked to serious problems such as heart attack, stroke, different types of cancer, and mental disorders. But even when these don’t occur, stress can still have a devastating effect on your health and on your life overall. Adrenal Fatigue (AF) is a serious disorder often resulting from long periods of stress. If left untreated it can result in an adrenal crash. If this happens to you, it will have serious implications for your present and future health and well-being.
Your adrenal glands are a key part of the system that helps your body cope with stress. This system is called the NeuroEndoMetabolic (NEM) Stress Response.
When activated, the NEM facilitates changes that prepare your body to react to perceived threats. It also distributes the strain of dealing with stressors out over several organs and systems.
But the NEM system isn’t meant to be activated all the time. In the distant past, the NEM stress response mostly helped your body react to physical threats, such as physical attacks. These stress events may have been severe, but they were usually short-lived.
Unfortunately, the stress experienced in the modern world is far less tangible and lasts much longer. Many things may cause you stress, from moving to relationship problems to financial worries. We tend to face many stressful factors on a daily basis. These stressors result in a constant NEM stress response that could cause long-term problems.
When your body exists in a stressful state for too long, it can cause fatigue in the adrenal glands. Your adrenals play a key role in the NEM stress response. When your adrenals stop functioning at their best, it can result in Adrenal Fatigue.
Your adrenal glands secrete a number of hormones important in your day-to-day life and even more essential in times of stress. These hormones include cortisol and aldosterone, both essential for stress relief and daily functions. These hormones may become dysregulated due to prolonged stress and a high, continuous demand for stress hormone production. The adrenals cannot keep up with demand and may become fatigued. An adrenal crash could result.
You’ve probably experienced an adrenal crash at least once in your life. Not everyone can recognize it. It occurs after a prolonged period of stress. During this stage, the body seeks to heal itself by conserving its energy as much as possible through lower physical activity. To put it in more basic terms, you feel so exhausted that all you can do is stay in bed and rest.
If the body is allowed to heal itself in this way, and if the measures are adequate for the task, the adrenal crash will eventually stop and the body will slowly recover and return to normal functioning. This is a fairly normal cycle for people with Adrenal Fatigue. However, if the body is not allowed to rest, or if the period of rest isn’t enough to heal the damage, the symptoms will actually worsen during the recovery period. And if additional help isn’t provided, the body will continue to decline through the Adrenal Fatigue stages until full adrenal failure occurs.
Adrenal Fatigue has four stages of steadily worsening symptoms and functioning. Adrenal crashes and ineffective recovery periods may trigger faster progression through these stages. Major adrenal crashes can occur once every few years during the first two stages of Adrenal Fatigue. The latter stages may see crashes as often as every few weeks.
During adrenal crash periods, various systems in your body will stop or slow down to a crawl. All non-essential systems become suspended as your body tries to decrease the amount of work it needs to do to continue living.
This means that your thyroid functions will slow down, causing a variety of changes in the body. For example, digestion may drastically slow down and become more sensitive, your reproductive system may shut down, and your overall energy levels may drop.
Even your detoxification organs, i.e., the liver and the kidneys, slow down. This can result in a buildup of toxins in the body and cause or worsen feelings of fatigue, confusion, brain fog, and memory problems.
Although it may seem frightening, these essential changes encourage your body to heal.
This situation can and will continue until your body feels that it has healed enough to start functioning normally once more. Unfortunately, if in an advanced stage of Adrenal Fatigue, you may find yourself in bed for an extended period. You may find it very difficult to return to a state of normal functioning. The key to avoiding this situation is to support the body during this stage and give it everything it needs to heal quickly and completely so you can get on with your life again.
Once you’ve entered the crash and recovery cycle, it’s too late to avoid the problems associated with it. That’s why early action is so important with Adrenal Fatigue. By identifying the symptoms and the problems early, you can take measures to avoid an adrenal crash and help your body recover, before it gets to that stage.
The first step in avoiding an adrenal crash is to identify the triggers. Whether the crash is a minor one, which requires only a nap or a snack to allow recovery, or a major one that puts you in bed for weeks, there is always a trigger.
An example of a trigger includes a high-stress event or a situation that overwhelms your coping abilities. Identifying your triggers is the first step to avoiding them in the future. It may also help you support your body during similar events so that you can take preventative measures.
Common stressors that can cause crashes include the following:
Once you’ve identified your triggers and taken steps to eliminate them or minimize their impact on your life, it’s time to adopt other strategies that will help you avoid an adrenal crash. This is not a one-size-fits-all program. Everyone’s needs are different, with a unique combination of symptoms, triggers, and stressors. This is why you should tailor a plan to avoid crashes that fits your situation and preferences.
The following are some of the measures can help you avoid the crash and recovery cycle of Adrenal Fatigue:
You might think that exercising more will increase your energy levels. And for people who don’t have Adrenal Fatigue, this is usually true. But if you’re fatigued because of Adrenal Fatigue, exercise often makes the situation worse because it demands a level of energy that your body just doesn’t have. This makes exercising one of the biggest causes of an adrenal crash. So, if you have Adrenal Fatigue, you need to tailor your exercise schedule to your needs, not to someone else’s pre-designed program. Focus on gentle exercises, like adrenal breathing, walking, or yoga, and stop before you're tired.
This is one of the major problems for people with Adrenal Fatigue. Too often, when you go to your doctor with a set of strange symptoms, you’ll undergo testing and be told that you’re fine. This could leave you still struggling with symptoms but without a path to recovery. This can cause an incredible amount of stress for your mind, emotions, and body.
What you need to remember is that medicine is still in its infancy. We discover new diseases every day! The testing procedures just can’t keep up. So even if your lab results seem normal, it doesn’t mean that everything’s fine. Instead, if you still feel sick or seem to be getting worse, it may be time to consider other options.
Many mainstream medical professionals do not yet accept Adrenal Fatigue as a health condition. This means that you will probably have to seek out a doctor who’s aware of Adrenal Fatigue to get the right advice on this debilitating disorder. Even if your lab results are normal, there can still be a problem, and you need a doctor who is able to take a detailed history and a larger perspective to find it.
Adrenal Fatigue often causes unusual symptoms. Because the normal balance of your body is off when you suffer from this disorder, it can cause some unusual and even paradoxical reactions. For example, certain essential nutrients in food might upset your stomach or cause an allergic reaction, or medications could have the opposite effect on your body. Ignoring these types of symptoms puts even more stress on your body as it struggles to cope with all the changes and the additional negative sensations and symptoms. Instead of ignoring symptoms, you should act to address the cause, such as resting when you are fatigued rather than taking more caffeine, or avoiding foods that make you feel ill.
There are countless different types of medication available today to treat almost any symptom. Your doctor may prescribe these medications to suppress some of your Adrenal Fatigue symptoms, but this can actually cause more damage.
Although uncomfortable, your symptoms are indicators of your overall condition as well as a sign that you need to work on certain things. If you suppress your symptoms by using medications, you could miss out on important signs of an impending adrenal crash or other Adrenal Fatigue complications.
It is tempting to focus only on the organs or systems that cause trouble. But this is a mistake. The organs and systems in your body are all connected, and just because one of them is giving you trouble doesn’t mean that the others are healthy and unaffected. In fact,Adrenal Fatigue usually causes decompensation in multiple organs. So it’s important to consider the health of your entire body when you’re trying to recover from Adrenal Fatigue.
We often regard supplements as a safe, natural way to supply our bodies with common, essential nutrients. Yet supplements can have side effects, build up in your system, and cause adverse effects. They are also unregulated and may not contain what they claim. All of these can negatively affect your health and cause an adrenal crash. So please consult your healthcare practitioner before taking supplements. They are best able to determine their efficacy and dosage.
If you have Adrenal Fatigue, it’s important that you seek recovery options immediately. This will help you to avoid an adrenal crash, a complication of Adrenal Fatigue that can cause long-lasting problems. Healing from Adrenal Fatigue isn’t easy. Most in the medical field do not understand the topic, nor has much research been conducted in this particular field.
However, taking steps to support your overall health and reduce your stressors is a good place to start. If you think you might suffer from this disorder, make sure you seek out a doctor aware of Adrenal Fatigue to avoid experiencing misdiagnoses and complications.
If you would like to know more about adrenal crashes and the correct protocols to follow in addressing the issue, the team at Dr. Lam Coaching can help. We offer a free**, no-obligation phone consultation at +1 (626) 571 1234. We will privately discuss your concerns. You can also leave us a message through our Ask The Doctor system by clicking here.
Adrenal crash occurs when you experience a trigger, a stressor that sets off a negative response. To avoid this situation, you need to improve your overall health, avoid triggers, and take measures to ensure that your body and health are supported in the right ways for AFS recovery.
