From the Desk of Carolyn Dean MD ND
It’s shocking for my patients, and for people seeking online information about adrenal fatigue, that the first page that pops up in Google is littered with headlines, “Is adrenal fatigue real?” I know that so many people have a freeze response, stopped in their tracks because they’re slapped in the face with the reminder that the medical establishment doesn’t believe that they’re facing an illness of any kind.
Furthermore, there’s no “evidence” that it exists. Endocrine News in its article blatantly called “The Myth of Adrenal Fatigue” states that “A literature review published in 2016 in BMC Endocrine Disorders found “no substantiation that ‘adrenal fatigue’ is an actual medical condition. Therefore, adrenal fatigue is still a myth.”
What Dr. Google might say about adrenal fatigue:
The tone that Dr. Google employs suggests that people who are tired, achy, stressed and foggy-brained are seeking a name for their suffering. In 1998, this conglomerate of symptoms was labeled adrenal fatigue by Dr. James Wilson, a chiropractor who researched the effects of chronic stress on the adrenals. (He’s a doctor that I took Naturopathic classes within Toronto.)
However, typical medical doctors reject this term and want you to continue to address the individual symptoms on their own, (and not bother them with a made-up condition) even if the term adrenal fatigue perfectly describes their symptoms. So, the hamster wheel of undiagnosed symptoms continues for people who are simply seeking solutions.
The fact is, people have been suffering with these individual symptoms for years, pleading with their doctors to find them some solutions. So, when they happen upon information about adrenal fatigue, or their naturopath offers that diagnosis, there is some relief knowing they’re not suffering from something that doesn’t exist.
Dr. Wilson offered up the idea of adrenal fatigue in 1998, and decades later it’s still touted as a myth.
What I say about adrenal fatigue:
Testing the Adrenals
The reason why “weakness” of the adrenals is not recognized is because there are upwards of 50 hormones produced in these teaspoon-sized superglands making it impossible to test one hormone that represents the whole gland. Unlike the thyroid with its 2 major thyroid hormones, T3 and T4, the adrenals produce 4 different sets of hormones. The first three are produced in the adrenal cortex (exterior), the last one is produced by the medulla (interior). For more information, go to my book The Total Body ReSet for Woman.
Science concludes that if you can’t test dysfunctional adrenals, then a dysfunction must not exist.
There is a lot going on in the adrenal glands and with stress a prominent factor in its reactions, these glands are bound to get run down. But allopathic medicine will ignore the fatigue, weakness, irritability, and all the other adrenal fatigue symptoms and medicate them with antianxiety medication, sleeping pills, or antidepressants and wait until the adrenal glands fail completely, which is a condition called, “Addison’s Disease.” Once they make that diagnosis with all the adrenal hormones registering low, they will introduce adrenal replacement therapy.
So, they ignore the warning signs that their patients have been presenting for years and finally pay attention when the adrenal system has essentially failed completely.
A recent article on Medscape in 2024, “Is Adrenal Fatigue a Real Condition?”[1] was just as dismissive of, what I consider, an epidemic of people, especially women, with declining adrenal function. The 2016 review and this 2024 article give allopathic doctors all the ammunition they need to doubt and ignore patients when they describe their adrenal fatigue symptoms. Once again, this dismissive attitude by doctors about anything that they did not learn in medical school leaves patients without any support.
The “Myth of Adrenal Fatigue” claims that stress cannot be causing adrenal fatigue because the adrenal hormone cortisol is actually elevated in people with stress. What they don’t consider is the fact that cortisol is the hormone of chronic stress, and in adrenal fatigue, cortisol levels are erratic. I never learned about hormone saliva testing in medical school, so the article predictably advises against saliva tests that are performed by alternative medicine doctors and naturopaths:
The patients have often been given saliva tests for cortisol…saliva tests are not considered reliable…the standard test is the corticotropin (ACTH) stimulation test…if the adrenal glands can respond to the stimulation by releasing cortisol, it disproves that theory that the glands are burned out.
As it happens, I performed a lot of ACTH stimulation tests in my practice in Toronto back in the 1980s, and I found that most patients could not mount a proper cortisol release response. So, I don’t know what criteria these doctors are using to say the test typically shows that the adrenals were just fine and adrenal fatigue doesn’t exist. It’s probably like most lab tests – they compare your test with the range of the sick population and say you are normal.
All the above may be TMI (too much information), but some of our more avid Googlers may be confused by the contradictory messages they read. Suffice it to say that the adrenals, thyroid, ovaries, and pancreas are irrevocably intertwined, and the best approach is to support them all together. I call this weakening and near collapse of the endocrine system – Total Body Meltdown. I say it seems to be a rude term but totally accepted by my customers as being a perfect description of how they feel.
Treating disease in a linear format, one thing at a time, is not consistent with the way the body works, where everything is interrelated and happens synergistically. I say this knowing that there is an ongoing debate among natural medicine practitioners about what comes first, adrenal fatigue or thyroid insufficiency, and what do you treat first? I think it’s a moot point, because they are often not looking at one of the main causes of both conditions, mineral deficiency, which means you should treat the two conditions simultaneously.
Healthy options for adrenal fatigue
The treatment for adrenal fatigue, as part of Total Body Meltdown, begins with sodium, which is vitally important for proper adrenal function. If your adrenal glands are weak or depleted, as indicated by exhaustion, low blood pressure, and chronic stress, there is combined sodium and magnesium depletion. If you start taking large doses of magnesium without replacing sodium, you may feel even worse. I recommend ¼ tsp of sea salt in every quart/liter of drinking water. How much water? Measure your weight in pounds and divide that number in half – drink that many ounces of sea-salted water daily.
Vitamin C levels in the adrenals are very high or at least they should be. That’s why I recommend extra food-based vitamin C and ascorbic acid (1,000-2,000 mg a day) for people with adrenal fatigue. It’s worth noting here that sugar competes with vitamin C for entry into cells, so an adrenal diet should exclude sugar.
Vitamin B Complex – food-based and methylated – is very important. Picometer magnesium is necessary for 80% of known metabolic functions and at least 800 enzymes. Magnesium provides vital support for the sex hormones. A picometer multiple mineral will give the thyroid 9 minerals to make thyroid hormones that will help support the adrenals.
The best diet for the adrenals is yeast-free or a Keto diet avoiding sugar, gluten, dairy, and seed oils to help cut down on the body-wide inflammation that yeast produces when you are under stress. However, be sure and eat lots of low carb greens for fiber and nutrients.
Note: A highly absorbed, picometer magnesium supplement will also treat inflammation.
Take A Chill Pill
And I don’t mean ice cold plunges.
NOTE: Consider that extreme “therapies” like cold plunges, super hot saunas, and hot yoga create excessive amounts of adrenal stress hormones that deplete your nutrients.
The other key ingredient to adrenal health is plenty of rest. I call it “Lying Down Therapy” in one of my blogs, which you can access at my member site.
Please don’t think you can “take action” to fix your adrenals. You can’t “tough it out” or “muscle your way through” adrenal fatigue. It’s the worst thing you can do. The Type A personality approach will be your undoing. You may require 8-10 hours of sleep and naps to fully recover. It’s extremely important to take care of your adrenals and remember that they are responsible for the production of more than 50 hormones, all of which are essential for proper body function.
Extra sleep, rest, Celtic salt/Himalayan salt/sea salt, high dose picometer magnesium, and vitamin C work to help alleviate adrenal fatigue, but it’s also important to face the cause of your stress and realize your body may be producing physical symptoms as a result of this stress.
Let me repeat that adrenal stress causes a loss of minerals, across the board, which have to be replaced. I recommend highly absorbed, picometer magnesium, picometer multiminerals, and picometer potassium to supplement these minerals. As noted above, I also recommend ¼ tsp of a good sea salt in each quart/liter of drinking water for the 72 trace minerals that it contains.
Additionally, you need cholesterol to make hormones and for cholesterol, you need to eat good fats, such as olive oil, coconut oil, and avocado oil, not inflammatory seed like sunflower, safflower, soy and canola. The third requirement for making your own hormones is properly functioning enzyme systems, and we know that, in order for enzyme systems to function properly, you need lots of picometer magnesium.
De-stress with EFT tapping
What better way to empower yourself to decrease the effects of stress, reduce your cortisol levels, and get ahead of fatigued adrenals, than to include Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) tapping in your daily routine. There is enough information in these three blogs to get you launched into a great self-care routine using this self-applied stress reduction technique.
Carolyn Dean MD ND
The Doctor of the Future
[1] https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/adrenal-fatigue-real-condition-2024a100047a?form=fpf
