Adrenal Fatigue

[Guest guest]

Before going into more detail on adrenal fatigue, I want to post

some more about the concept of " missing ingredients " .

 

One thing that frequently is heard from people with CFIDS (Chronic

Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome, aka CFS, aka ME) is that such

and such treatment worked at first but quit working. It's not that

the treatment stopped working but that something else is needed.

Enough of a co-factor or co-factors no longer are available in the

amounts needed, or haven't been available in the amounts that the

person needs in order to reach a higher level of functioning. Please

believe me when I say I have found out several times the hard way

that such and such really was working after stopping it. Problems

returned. But I needed something more to reach a higher plateau of

health and functioning.

 

Part of the reason for this " it quit working " mindset is the way

scientific research is conducted in the West. All too often, one

variable is tested at a time. For example, this group took drug x

while the other group (matched for age, etc.) did not. (I'm

simplifying greatly here.) While there is a lot to be learned from

this approach, it does have limitations. The main limitation being

that the real world often does not act like this. For example

(simplifying greatly again), in order to heal from infection, the

body needs among other things enough vitamin A and C and enough zinc

and magnesium. If one of these substances is missing, healing is not

going to take place. There's a missing ingredient. An even better

example is vitamin C. When researchers isolated vitamin C and were

able to manufacture it in a lab, it was believed that vitamin C

alone was responsible for certain things. As it turns out, it's not

just vitamin C but substances called " bioflavonoids " . In natural

sources of vitamin C, these substances usually occur together.

People who got their vitamin C from natural sources also got the

bioflavonoids that were needed. People who relied just on synthetic

C did not.

 

When a treatment works at first, it is because all the necessary co-

factors are present. When a treatment appears to stop working, it is

because some necessary co-factor is no longere present. It's been

used up. It needs to be replaced. In the meanwhile, the ingredients

that are present still are performing other things they do. For

example, if vitamin A is deficient, the magnesium is not able to

help bring about recovery from an infection, but the Mg is still

performing its jobs of helping muscles to relax and easing breathing

as well as other things. (Warning: Too much Mg like too little can

be fatal.)

 

It is vitally important that all that the person needs to heal be

present. No where is this better seen than in the case of adreanal

fatigue. In the case of adrenal fatigue, it's not only that certain

vitamins and minerals need to be supplied in adequate amounts, other

things like getting enough rest also are going to be needed.

 

" Adrenal fatigue " is still a controversial diagnosis in the West.

The way things are done in allopathic medicine is that if certain

hormones and other substances produced by the adrenals fall below a

certain cutoff point, the person is given a diagnosis of Addison's

disease and there is treatment. But, if the person is one point on

the other side of that magic number, then there is no diagnosis and

no treatment in allopathic medicine. Folks, adrenal insufficiency

is not like being pregnant - you either are or you aren't and

there's no such thing as being " a little pregnant " . Adrenal

insufficiency is very much a range and continuation. Problems

related to insufficient adrenal function start to appear before that

magic cutoff number is reached. While it's true that people with

adrenal function below that number will die fairly quickly if

something is not done to supplement those hormones, that doesn't

mean that the people on the low normal side aren't experiencing

problems. Problems that eventually can play a role in their

premature deaths too. They won't die from Addison's (not unless the

number dips below that cutoff point), but the adrenal insufficiency

will play a role in their declining health and eventual premature

deaths. A lot of things in the body depend upon the adrenals being

healthy.

 

Readers may want to Google for " adrenal fatigue " or " adrenal

insufficieny " in order to learn more about this subject. One book

which is available in the US is Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century

Stress Syndrome by Dr. James Wilson. There are other books on the

subject, and there is a lot of info about it on the Internet.

 

http://www.adrenalfatigue.org/whatis.php

 

" What is Adrenal Fatigue?

 

" Adrenal Fatigue is a collection of signs and symptoms, known as

a " syndrome " , that results when the adrenal glands function below

the necessary level. Most commonly associated with intense or

prolonged stress, it can also arise during or after acute or chronic

infections, especially respiratory infections such as influenza,

bronchitis or pneumonia. As the name suggests, its paramount symptom

is fatigue that is not relieved by sleep but it is not a readily

identifiable entity like measles or a growth on the end of your

finger. You may look and act relatively normal with Adrenal Fatigue

and may not have any obvious signs of physical illness, yet you live

with a general sense of unwellness, tiredness or " gray " feelings.

People suffering from Adrenal Fatigue often have to use coffee,

colas and other stimulants to get going in the morning and to prop

themselves up during the day.

 

" This syndrome has been known by many other names throughout the

past century, such as non-Addison's hypoadrenia, sub-clinical

hypoadrenia, neurasthenia, adrenal neurasthenia, adrenal apathy and

adrenal fatigue. Although it affects millions of people in the U.S.

and around the world, conventional medicine does not yet recognize

it as a distinct syndrome.

 

" Adrenal Fatigue can wreak havoc with your life. In the more serious

cases, the activity of the adrenal glands is so diminished that you

may have difficulty getting out of bed for more than a few hours per

day. With each increment of reduction in adrenal function, every

organ and system in your body is more profoundly affected. Changes

occur in your carbohydrate, protein and fat metabolism, fluid and

electrolyte balance, heart and cardiovascular system, and even sex

drive. Many other alterations take place at the biochemical and

cellular levels in response to and to compensate for the decrease in

adrenal hormones that occurs with Adrenal Fatigue. Your body does

its best to make up for under-functioning adrenal glands, but it

does so at a price. "

 

So how does this tie in with some of the recent posts on here? For

one thing, if one has an infection that goes on and on and on, this

is a continuing stress on the body. Also, even though an initial

infection may be successfully treated, the infection may have set

off a series of biochemical changes and changes in organ functioning

in the body. Systems no longer are up to par.

 

I want to caution readers that in CFIDS there will not always be a

specific lab result for some things. For example, testing will

reveal below normal amounts of cortisol in some PWCs (People With

CFIDS), BUT some will have above normal amounts, and some will be

within the normal range when tested. CFIDS very much has phases.

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) hasn't caught onto this yet,

but I know from over 30 years experience and from talking with other

PWCs that there definitely can be phases or even stages in CFIDS.

 

What one looks at is the total picture and a history of symptoms

suggesting adrenal dysfunction. BTW, more and more CFIDS researchers

around the world are looking into the H-P-A axis in CFIDS. That

stands for Hypothalmus - Pituitary - Adrenal. The pituitary is

the " master " gland. It signals other glands like the adrenals to

produce more of a certain hormone because there is not enough or to

quit producing a certain hormone because there is too much. In this

way homeostatis is preserved in the body. But it is a part of the

brain called the hypothalamus that signals the pituitary gland to

signal the other glands. The hypothalamus has a lot to do with

homeostasis in the body. (There are several theories as to why

something may go wrong with the hypothalamus in PWCs.)

 

In the first post I mentioned that people in " less developed "

countries may often have better diets than those in wealthier,

industrialized nations. I want to talk some more about this.

 

One side of my family lived for generations in the Virginia

mountains in the US. Some of the areas they lived in were rather

inaccesable until the middle of the 20th century. They lived under

more primitive conditions than society as a whole, and their diet

was more " primitive " than that of society as a whole. They tended,

however, to be very long-lived and members of my family that I knew

or knew about tended to have a death rate that was lower than the

average for the country as a whole. At least they did until they

started moving out of the mountains or getting more like the country

as a whole. Then life-expectancy when down with each successive

generation and chronic health problems became more prevalent.

 

I can remember my grandfather telling me about things he ate as a

kid in the mountains. I can remember seeing him eat some things that

no one else I knew would eat. Let me put it this way. Very little of

an animal that they raised and butchered or hunted and butchered

went to waste. They ate organ meats, sex organs, and even

chittings. The large bones were cracked open so the marrow could be

used to make soup. What they didn't eat, the dogs and cats ate. The

dogs and cats that guarded them, their livestock, and gardens, and

who caught and killed rats and other vermin that would eat food

supplies if unchecked. The fat of the animal that they or the cats

and dogs didn't eat went to make lye soap.

 

Some of what they ate is very gross by most people's standards, but

they actually had far better, far healthier, and more varied diets

than many people in the modern world have. A part of their diets

being so varied is they ate what was in season. There was no going

to a supermarket and restricting themselves to a few favorite foods

because they are available year round. In the spring they ate a lot

of different greens because when the weather first starts to turn

warm, this is what is available first and for a while until the

weather heats up and other things are avaiable. They didn't limit

themselves to say black walnuts but ate any edible nuts they could

find. There intake of grains was far more varied than is the case

today. Etc.

 

Now I'm not suggesting that we all need to eat all parts of an

animal in order to be healthy. But we all can make an effort to eat

a diet that is more varied than our favorite foods. Also to prepare

at least some meals from scratch instead of opening a can or going

to the freezer. Also to eat brown rice instead of white (unless

white is specifically needed for certain TCM imbalances), and whole

grain bread instead of white bread.

 

It also helped that my great grandmother - my grandfather's mother -

was an herbalist. This accounted for the family as a whole being in

better shape than some of their neighbors were. She very much

understood the difference between medicinal herbs that were reserved

for specific illnesses and conditions and food herbs that can be

eaten more or less regularly in order to maintain health.

 

BTW, one will find bits and pieces of what is called TCM scattered

around the world in various folk cultures. It is in China that the

info not only survived intact, it evolved as more challenges were

met. Some people believe that there are scatterings of TCM concepts

around the world becaue of migrations in history. That may account

for some of it, but a more likely explanation is that at least some

of these things were discovered independently by many different

people. This healing really does work, and it can work very well. It

would not be surprising that faced with survival needs that people

around the world would discover at least some of these things on

their own. It's that China had the social structure to support not

only in-depth studying of healing but ways to train fairly large

numbers of healers. There is a difference between healing lore being

passed down in a family or even a community and learning centers

where large numbers of healers can study things and devote

themselves primarily to healing.