Now that we know a little more about adrenal fatigue, let’s talk about some very common adrenal fatigue mistakes that people often make during their recovery journey.
A key lesson to learn is to avoid the mistakes that most people make because most people try to self-navigate. They go online. They don’t understand the fatigue, what the reason is. Their healthcare professional was not able to offer them solutions. So, the natural progression is to just try to look for answers.
I’ve studied and collated these mistakes from thousands of people. My team and I have worked with many of these people over the years by telephone to help them recover, and I want to share these miss-steps with you to make sure that you don’t make the same mistakes.
Adrenal fatigue recovery mistake number one: wrong interpretation of laboratory testing.
There are so many ways to interpret lab testing and a lot of people do it differently. Like, what’s the difference between saliva testing versus blood testing? There’s a lot of variants even for normal ranges of lab results, and lab results can also differ depending on what stage of adrenal fatigue you are in.
For example, in the early stages, the cortisol, DHEA, and pregnenolone levels tend to be higher as your adrenal glands are working hard and pumping out all these hormones to give you the energy that you need when you undergo stress. However, in later stages, as your adrenals start to get burned out a little, the pregnenolone level tends to be lower. Your morning cortisol level blunts, and that’s where you get this flat curve on the saliva test. These are just some very general rules as there are a lot of differences between people.
Not only that, but computerized interpretations are often more wrong than right because they are templated. There’re so many variations. You can have a reversed curve. You can have a yoyo curve. You can have a nighttime curve that is lower than the morning--which is what it’s supposed to be--but sometimes it has a little blip.
There’re so many variations that help to track and understand what the rhythm of these cortisol curves really means. Many people are misled into thinking that they are looking at the absolute numbers. The absolute numbers can lead you astray.
When your numbers are astray, we see people get placed on glandulars, herbs,or hormones because their labs are abnormal, but those supplements don’t help in the long run, and could actually cause harm if not given at the right time.
So, it’s important not to just rely on lab testing, but to use the body signs and symptoms to gauge how weak your adrenals are and what you can use the lab testing specifically for.
Mistake number two in adrenal fatigue recovery is the improper use of nutritional supplements and medications.
Many natural compounds have different dose-dependent behaviors. How they behave at one dose can be very different from how they behave at a different dose. So, for example, if you take an herb or a glandular at a low dose, it may behave positively, but at a higher dose, it may behave negatively.
This kind of backlash is very common, but without understanding when to stop, how to stop, and what dosage to intervene with, or when to titrate the body, most people will self-navigate and tend to just keep going on because it worked when they were using a lower dose or in a certain stage of adrenal fatigue. Their interpretation is that it will work better when a person is weaker, which is not true.
The RDA, for example, which is the Recommended Daily Allowance, is what the government recommends to guide healthy normal people. It’s not necessarily the optimum dose. So, for example, with vitamin C, the RDA may only be about 18 milligrams, but that’s hardly sufficient for a person who has adrenal fatigue because, in adrenal fatigue, you need more vitamin C as a building block for hormones.
However, you cannot just use a lot of vitamin C. There are, for example, 20 different forms and delivery systems. So which one do you use? Each one has its own characteristics; it's own bioavailability.
So, without understanding all these forms, people will say, “Well, I’m taking vitamin C,” but they can actually crash themselves with vitamin C. Without understanding these nutritional supplements, they can unintentionally misuse them. This is a very sad case, because most people come to us asking for help by telephone and they think that everything’s the same, but it’s not.
In addition, excessive use of prescription drugs often also makes adrenal fatigue worse.
We live in a world where symptoms are often classified as diseases, and we want to control the symptoms as this is considered to be a cure. But really, all you’re doing is controlling symptoms instead of going to the root cause of the problem. All that many physicians have been trained to do is treat the symptoms because they aren’t able to get to the root cause sometimes.
It’s important that we respect the body’s signs and symptoms, especially in adrenal fatigue, as they are valuable, sensitive indicators to help us guide in the recovery process. Just as pain is a warning signal from the body that says something is wrong, suppressing pain with a painkiller might not be the same as finding the cure of the condition or the root cause of what is actually causing the pain. Pain suppression is, therefore, only masking and is not really helping.
In the case of adrenal fatigue, it will not work long-term, to just mask the symptoms. The body will continue to punish us by coming up with worse and worse symptoms. The logical approach is to give the body the tools to heal itself. While monitoring the symptoms and using them as a barometer of the body’s healing efficacy.
The following common prescription drugs, for example, are used to relieve adrenal fatigue. They can include antidepressants, antianxiety, sleep medications, blood pressure medications, hormones including bioidentical hormones or synthetic hormones, or steroids of one form or another.
There are many medications that are useful at certain times, but if you don’t understand when and how to use them, then it can be problematic. In particular, this is because prescription medications often have multiple side effects, and you have to be healthy enough to deal with it, and not everybody does well.
For example, the one common thought process is that, “Well, if you have adrenal fatigue, steroids should be prescribed,” but not everybody can tolerate steroids. Some people, in fact, do worse. It’s not a standard rule that one must go by, but it has to be individualized.
Also, the more medication is given, the more side effects should be expected. The more metabolites will build up after the inert medication. Metabolites are generated by the body after the biological effect has occurred.
So, the whole medication process itself is a kind of a quick fix system. Yes, it puts you to sleep, but it doesn’t last long, and oftentimes, you will have to have more medications. Yes, it will control the heart palpitations, but oftentimes, you may need more as time goes on, and of course, you have the side effects.
Now, we’re not saying here that medications are not important, because they are very important depending on exactly what’s going on with your body, but they should not be discriminately used. Unfortunately, because many professionals in this field lack an understanding of what the signal is, the kneejerk reaction is to prescribe medication. So, this is one of the very common recovery mistakes.
Mistake number three is the failure to recognize paradoxical and unusual reactions.
So, what is a paradoxical reaction? It usually happens when either medical treatment or a drug has the opposite effect to that which you normally would expect. An example would be when you give a pain relief medication, but it actually causes an increase in pain. This can happen with supplements too.
Some sedatives prescribed for adults actually cause hyperactivity in children. So experienced clinicians know this and are on high alert for these abnormalities. Paradoxical reactions are generally more prevalent in natural compounds. The reason for this is not known. The more decompensated the body is, as in the case of advanced adrenal fatigue, the more frequent such paradoxical reactions will occur.
So nutrients that are suitable for one body may not necessarily be good for another person. In fact, it can actually be toxic to another body. And toxic and paradoxical reactions can surface after a period of time of ingesting a substance.
So unless the clinician is really on the alert and understands the ramifications, it’s so easy to just pass over as if this is something that’s one-off. But actually, it’s not.
The failure to recognize paradoxical and unusual reaction is a very common mistake because basically, you are ignoring the body’s whispers.
They can include, for example, a sense of fatigue or malaise or a state of anxiety when you take steroids. This is the opposite reaction of what you expect, because steroids are supposed to calm the system down. So it’s paradoxical.
You can have a sudden onset of anxiety from taking just magnesium, which is supposed to be calming, for example. You can have heart palpitations even though your heart workup can be totally 100% normal. You can have dizziness or some kind of lightheadedness when you rise, even though your blood pressure can be normal, and your heart workup is again normal. You can have fluctuating blood pressure for no reason. You can have a sense of being kind of beaten up or slumpy that can last for hours or days after excessive exercise.
Now, these are hard to interpret because they affect multiple systems. Basically, it’s generated from the body to warn us of what’s going on, but seldom do we understand what they really mean.
These are just some of the common adrenal fatigue mistakes we see. Uncover the secrets of your adrenal fatigue stage, optimal supplement use, beneficial foods, and suitable exercises with Dr. Lam's Adrenal Fatigue Recovery Program! Embark on a transformative journey designed to empower you with knowledge, helping you make informed choices and avoid the challenges Dr. Lam overcame during his recovery. Don't miss this opportunity to regain your vitality and wellness—enroll in the program today!
