Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome is at the center of medical debate. The central question surrounding it being “Is Adrenal Fatigue real”? It certainly feels real to anyone experiencing it, but if your Allopathic practitioner isn’t convinced, then how can you begin to reverse it? 

As a Naturopathic Doctor, looking past your exhaustion and deeper into the root causes, here’s my take on whether Adrenal Fatigue is real and what you can do about it without blindly spending thousands of dollars on potentially unhelpful practices. 

What is adrenal fatigue syndrome?

The condition’s idea is that constant stress puts an undue burden on the adrenal glands to produce hormones — primarily cortisol — and the glands burn out. 

The lack of adrenal hormones leads to a host of symptoms. 

Symptoms of Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome

No two people are the same. Adrenal fatigue can present differently in everyone....

How often do you push through?

No one is looking, so if you can be honest, how often are you just pushing?

The women I talk to every day tell me that this is how they live, some sort of blending of obligation, should, have to and must, and they tell me it is killing them.

I ponder a lot how we get here, having lived in push through much of my own life, through grad school and two degrees simultaneously, having my oldest child in my last year of med school and my masters program in oriental medicine.  Building a practice, having more kids, grocery shopping, cooking, being a wife, friend, daughter, sister.

Then, taking the little bit left and turning it on myself by way of “I am not enough” “If I only looked better” “If I could just be thinner, I could feel better about all this stuff” on and on, turning what I had left into a toxic stew of diminishing return.

I would take my tired self and push to exercise because I was supposed to, or because...

Those Supplements you keep buying, the special herb formulas for “people just like you”, even the Thyroid meds you might have been given aren’t what your body really needs.

So much of the health industry isn't looking at what is really happening in people’s bodies, not considering if the body can even use nutrients, not considering if the organs are actually too tired, burdened and weak to respond to those herbs, not considering if there is enough support in the cell and system to do much at all with hormonal messages, and yet, that is the major dogma.

I know you are concerned about your health, wondering why your body holds so much inflammation, why it is so tired, why your sleep, mood, digestion, skin, libido and mind have been impacted when for the most part everyone says there isn’t anything big to give attention to.

I know how you have been lured by FB posts for the super greens, the diet teas, the mushroom powders and more,...

Fats are a big topic in health and healing, and much of what is out there isn’t great, reality is, we need fat, in particular saturated fat, but not in massive amounts like some would claim, and running our body on fat is a rather perilous path.

First, you use saturated fats and cholesterol to make your hormones, so you need them in your diet in order to maintain hormonal function.  However, if your metabolic furnace is running slow, you cannot put them to use very easily, and consequently, adopting a high fat diet with cells stuck in slow motion is a recipe for disaster.  

If we add to this the reality that most of the fat consumed by Americans is in the form of PUFA oils like sunflower, safflower, soy (soy oil is the most widely used oil in the restaurant industry) and canola.  In 2016 nearly 80% of the fat in American diets was from these fats.

Many facing exhaustion and hormonal issues read that switching to a diet high in butter,...

I watched a pair of ducks fly over my house yesterday, they were mere feet apart, headed together to their next destination and I wondered...how do they tell each other where they want to go? 

Is it a particular quack or the way they bend their wing or is it even more subtle than that...body communication or even mental communication?

It got me thinking about animals, how they sleep when they need sleep or eat when they need to eat, how they don’t obsess over food, or how they know what plants will serve them or what foods are ideal right now.

Their body communication and awareness is awesome, beyond awesome, never hung up on little stuff that in the end doesn’t matter.

Is it any wonder then that we rarely see sick animals in the wild? Think about it, you don’t see them hardly ever.

Did you know that when bears wake up, one of the things they do is search out OSHA or bear root and eat it because it is anti-parasitic and will cleanse their body after being in a...

We want our problems to be one thing, one little tweak, one supplement, one food change, but I would like to give you a dose of reality, in my 20 years in clinical practice, NEVER has it been one thing.

That one thing model negates our deep DIVINE nature as a human, as a biological miracle, it is the mantra of the medical world which has duped us into believing we need one pill for that one problem.  Transferring that one pill model into a one food, one supplement, one herb, one glandular doesn't make it better, it is quite sadly, the same.

There are no just hormonal problems, or just gut or just thyroid, or just adrenal, or just metabolism...it is all of you, every single time.

Chasing that idea of one thing…

If I eliminate gluten, I bet it will all be ok

If I take the perfect probiotic

If I meditate daily

If I really get in my 10000 steps

If I just solve my Thyroid issue, or if I could just get someone to prescribe me thyroid medication

It won’t work....

The health world has gone mad, all the focus is on nutrients, but not on impact, on the small bits but not the big picture.  We are assessing people to death, running crazy in depth blood panels, saliva test, stool tests, toxicity assessments and all manner of micro evaluations, meanwhile, people are still suffering.

We are seeing more and more “alternative” docs just collecting data, as if they will somehow find the needle in the haystack if they just put enough little pieces of data on the board, and yet, too many have had all those evaluations and still are sick.

This is the crisis.  One might expect if everyone just said yes to every pharmaceutical offered that illness and chronic illness might be common.  But, I am seeing chronic illness perpetuate in those who have been diligently taking those vitamins and swallowing the herbs, eating “clean” and “keto” and “plant based” for years...and they aren’t growing in...

We put so much responsibility on our body.  Have you ever really thought about what it takes on?

Every insult, external and internal, every bad day, bad mood, outburst of anger, all the times you feel fear, all the sadness that there wasn't time to feel, the scary movies, the terrible news stories, that argument with your mom, the fight with your best friend, the time you looked in the mirror and said the image there was ugly, or unworthy….not to mention the days you drank a coke and had a cupcake for lunch, or the really crappy truck stop coffee, or the days you never slept or drank any water.

All those things are currently stored in your organs...seriously.

The other day, While getting an abdominal therapeutic massage, I laid there, breathing through the discomfort, imagining my organs,  saying hi to each one as the therapist opened up the restrictions, smiling into them, thanking them, and witnessing just how much pain was in these small places...small intestine,...

Do you use eating well as a way to avoid giving your body the attention it deserves?

I used to base my “health esteem” on my “Good” eating patterns, on my diligence to choosing the cleanest foods, the pastured meats, the freshest and most accessible local foods.

I know that doesn’t sound like a bad thing, but I was using my logical brain to cajole my emotions and my body experience into being right even when there were issues.

I hear this all the time….BUT I EAT SO WELL…

A call from the logical brain to say...we did a good job, why won’t everything in our body just act like we did?

Funny enough, our body doesn’t function by the rules of the mind, and the logic we have built up so well into our fortified walls of internal justification just don’t work in the flow and movement of our internal systems.

In fact, logic fails to account for the way our body really works. Let's take salad, I hear about 10 times per week women...

Are you going beyond exhausted?

A few weeks ago after a massive project and tons of family obligations, I found myself beyond exhausted.  As I tried to rest, finding that even laying down felt like it took effort, I reflected on how I used to live in that place.

Where everything made me feel guilty…

My kids wanting to do a museum day and all I could think of was how will I make it through..maybe they have benches

My husband wanting a date night and I couldn’t imagine holding my attention long enough to pretend to take part in a conversation

My friends wanting to meet for coffee and I was wondering if I could bow out easily

So tired that I wanted to cry and yet, not having words to explain to everyone just how tired I was, and feeling like they wouldn’t get it anyway, after all, what did I have to show for just how exhausted I was.

Sure, like everyone, I worked, and shopped, cooked food and did household things, but it's not like I moved...