Adrenal Fatigue–Culturally Fashionable?
It is our belief that adrenal fatigue is prevelant in a large population of our country and our culture..it’s almost fashionable.
Because of the depth and importance of this topic we will be giving this to you in 2 or 3 parts.
Adrenal fatigue, one of the most under addressed health imbalances, practically ignored by the allopathic medical system, has broad ranging ill affects to your health.
The adrenal glands are two little glands that sit in the region atop of the kidney’s. They are the glands that keep us alive and get us out of trouble in times of stress.
The issue is that we were “designed” to handle stress in a fight or flight response. Take for example long ago, hunter gatherer, foraging for food and hunting animals. But there comes that tiger ready to pounce, we need these little glands to orchestrate the chemical equation to get us the heck out of there.
But then we get away, tiger is gone, and we can re-equilibrate ourselves and our adrenals get to kick back out of hyper mode. Nowadays though, the tigers are always on our backs; responsibilities, bills, over-committing, etc. Because of this our adrenals get overworked and depleted in the important hormones that they produce.
What hormones am I speaking of? Cortisol and DHEA. As our bodies go through an initial element of stress both cortisol and DHEA increase in response. As the stress continues the body does all it can to protect cortisol so cortisol begins to steal from DHEA and DHEA begins to decrease. Finally the body has exhausted its sources from DHEA and possibly other hormones such as progesterone and testosterone and it can rise no longer. Cortisol then finds itself in the basement. This is when you cannot peal yourself off the sheets to get up in the morning, lack of energy, stamina and motivation.
In the next additon we will speak of what other symptoms there are for adrenal fatigue and the impact that it has on ones health.