Adrenal gland fatigue: A cause of many illnesses

The adrenals are two small glands above the kidneys. They are the organs responsible for managing stress in the body. Stress can be due to physical, emotional, psychological, environmental and infectious factors, or a combination of these factors.

You can become stressed due to the death of a loved one, a car accident, or a serious illness. You can also become stressed from less obvious reasons, like an abscessed tooth, a bout of flu, too much exercise, a bad quarrel with a loved one, pressure at work, an unhappy relationship, environmental toxins, poor diet, bad eating habit such as sugar or refined carbohydrate overload, not getting enough sleep etc.

If these small stressful events happen all at once and are continuous so that your adrenals are not given time to recover between each incident, then adrenal fatigue will set in. When the adrenals are completely exhausted, the condition is called Addison Disease or Hypoadrenia. However, you will experience many symptoms and illnesses between when your adrenals are functioning normally and when they are completely fatigued or exhausted.

People suffering from adrenal fatigue will suffer from many seemingly unrelated symptoms such as low blood sugar, leading to hypoglycaemia, allergies, arthritic pain, decreased immunity, insomnia, respiratory infections, rhinitis, asthma, frequent colds, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, adult onset diabetes, auto-immune disorders, and alcoholism. Women will have many difficulties with menstruation, fertility and menopause.

The adrenals also affect the mental state. You may also suffer from many anxieties, unreasonable fears and depression. You may also have intervals of confusion, increased difficulties concentrating and less acute memory recall. You may also have less tolerance than normal and become easily frustrated.

Anybody can suffer from adrenal fatigue, but it happens most frequently to perfectionists and those who drive themselves relentlessly with little rest and relaxation to enjoy life. Someone who is never satisfied, who is under constant pressure, especially with little outlet for emotional release, who feels trapped or helpless and who feels overwhelmed by repeated difficulties; someone who has experienced severe, chronic, emotional or physical trauma, or illness.

The political leader, the university student, the environmentalist, the farmer, the villager in a war-torn country, the factory worker working shifts, the medical doctor on constant call, the executive waking up at 5a.m. to beat the traffic and coming home after 10p.m. each night after a hectic day in the office, the entrepreneur making business deals, jetting from one country to the next, the mother with more than one child in diapers and insufficient help, the single parent, the middle executive who gets the blame when things go wrong but no credit when they go right, the self-employed with new or struggling business, the alcohol or drug abuser, someone in an unhappy marriage, extremely unhappy work conditions, or stressful family or friends, among others.

Many lifestyle processes also lead to stress, which will really impinge on the integrity of the adrenal glands, resulting in various endocrine-related diseases.

Some lifestyles also lead to adrenal fatigue. For example, if you have unrelieved pressure and frequent crises at work or home, severe emotional trauma, death of a close friend or family member, major surgery with incomplete recovery leading to chronic fatigue, prolonged or repeated respiratory infections, serious burns, including sun burns, head trauma, loss of a stable job, sudden change in financial status, relocation without support of friends or family, repeated or overwhelming chemical exposure including drug and alcohol abuse. Someone with a poor diet such as eating very little vegetables, and not getting enough sleep is likely to get adrenal fatigue. Stressors also add up.

When one or more of the above stressors occur at once or when emotional and physical traumas occur together, they can combine to lead to adrenal fatigue. The most devastating stressors to the adrenals are respiratory illnesses such as bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma, sinusitis and other respiratory infections. It could also happen that your adrenals may be weak from birth, particularly if your mother was stressed while she was pregnant with you or if there is a history of adrenal fatigue in the family.

Food and other things we ingest are supposed to be good sources of nutrients, but they may result in accumulation of toxins if badly prepared, wrongly eaten or improperly digested by the body. All of these may result in putrefaction in the body, which forms toxins.

Toxins in the environment may also get into the body, causing imbalance as well; these toxins form the basis of many illnesses.

Over the last few years, my experience with the management of infertility and other forms of illness through the Mayr medicine has shown that most problems confronting man are mainly due to what we eat or get exposed to in the environment.

A number of therapeutic measures have been recommended for adrenal fatigue. They include vitamin supplements such as vitamins C and B5, and the adrenal support cream called Endosis. Also important is to ensure that all electronic light sources are switched off in the bedroom prior to sleeping. If this is not possible, use an eye pad.

However, the best remedy for adrenal fatigue is to take out time to rejuvenate, reduce stress and relax. Detoxification (a process of total body cleansing) in a medical spa where total stress elimination therapy is strictly practised is recommended. Such spas must be equipped with medical equipment and orthomolecular supplements that will be used to remove toxins in the body, replace lost vitamins and reduce stress.

One signpost I got from a Hollywood director says, “Don’t take life so seriously because you will never get out of it alive.” So, take time to de-stress.