Adrenal stress: Diagnosis and Treatment
If you answer ‘yes’ to four or more of the questions, then you likely have some level of adrenal stress. The more yes answers, likely the worse your case.
One hallmark of adrenal stress is low blood sugar or hypoglycemia. It is the opposite of diabetes, high blood sugar, or hyperglycemia. And no, since your blood sugar will tend to be low, the treatment is NOT to eat more sugar!
But, even if you don’t have any yes answers on the questionnaire, you could still have a problem if any one or more of the following tests positive: 1) 6 hour glucose tolerance test, 2) adrenal cortisol blood or saliva test, 3) Dr. Campise examines you for signs of adrenal stress at his office (the best way to test for it).
Adrenal stress usually comes on very slowly over many years, though the symptoms of it may appear suddenly once the body reaches a tipping point.
Adrenal stress is often overlooked because it can cause almost any symptom, or it can make any chronic symptom, injury, or illness worse than it would otherwise be. Usually adrenal stress is not the primary diagnosis but instead a complicating factor of another symptom, injury, or illness. Adrenal stress patients usually don’t do well in the traditional medical system because their symptoms tend to come and go or migrate around the body, confusing the doctor. The doctor is often tempted to think the patient is a hypochondriac, faking it, or to be more politically correct will say, “you need to go to Stanford to see a specialist.”
Technically, adrenal stress is not just about the adrenal glands, it is about the entire body, brain, and endocrine system. But to keep it simple we’ll just call it adrenal stress.
Treatment:
1) Get rid of the stresses that caused it in the first place.
Any combination of stressors or any single stressor can cause adrenal stress when severe enough. For example, exposure to high levels of heavy metals from contaminated drinking water could cause it suddenly, or low levels of heavy metals that accumulate in your body over a long period of time could cause it slowly. In either case, eliminating the heavy metal exposure would be the first step in correcting the adrenal stress, in this example.
Many of the common causes of adrenal stress could be: lack of sleep, chronic or severe pain, food allergies (that you aren’t aware of like gluten or casein), sugar, alcohol, caffeine, junk food, energy drinks, too much or too little exercise, too much or not enough sun exposure, dehydration, parasites, yeast, or fungal problems, mold exposure, heavy metal exposure, emotional or mental stress, moving your residence, changing relationships, divorcing a spouse or family member, stressful job, legal or tax trouble, being abused or attacked, watching the news, getting upset over politics or religion, street drugs even marijuana or CBD oil, and any medications can cause or contribute to adrenal stress.
You must make an honest assessment of yourself and figure out what is causing your adrenal stress and get rid of all the stresses that are possible to get rid of until your condition stops getting worse.
2) Rest
Your body expends energy during the day to accomplish the stuff you do. This causes your body to sustain wear and tear. At night when you sleep, your body puts energy into repairing the wear and tear from your day and hopefully even make you stronger so the next day the wear and tear is minimized. For those with adrenal stress, they have torn down their bodies each day more than they can repair at night. Over time, this over extended energy output leads to aches and pains or illness. Now that you know that you’ve been doing this, you need to stop over extending yourself each day. Because you are in pain or ill, the amount of energy you can expend each day will be even smaller. You must accept the fact that right now your body can only handle about half of what you think you can accomplish without continuing to dig deeper into the pit of adrenal stress.
On top of slowing down and doing less (for now), you likely need to sleep more. At least 9 hours per night is needed to heal. Going to bed by 9 pm in the winter or 10 pm in the summer is extremely helpful as this is the time of day that the adrenals can recouperate the fastest if you are sleeping.
If you can’t fall asleep this early, that’s ok. Just lie in bed and do breathing exercises until you either fall asleep or until it has been at least 9 hours, then you can get up and start your day. Doing 9 hours of breathing exercises will actually help your adrenals heal faster than sleeping for 9 hours.
3) Exercise (180 formula only)
Once you are largely out of pain where you can walk, bike, or swim without causing extra pain, you need to start 180 formula exercise.
Click here for detailed instructions on this.
Gentle easy whole body exercise with a proper warm up and cool down will begin to rebuild your adrenal and metabolic function. It will gently stimulate the production of hormones that will calm inflammation and stimulate tissue repair. WARNING: if you exercise too hard or without warming up long enough, you will make your condition worse! It is imperative to follow the 180 formula precisely, especially using an accurate heart rate monitor.
4) Stress relief
Whatever you know that works for you to lower your stress levels, do that. Additionally add one of the following into your daily routine on top of that:
Deep slow breathing exercises (best is Ki-Breathing)
Meditation
5) Special Diet
DO NOT SKIP MEALS. On top of this, eat a healthy snack between each meal. Essentially eat every 2 hours. Animal protein really helps. Patients with adrenal stress have a hard time keeping their blood sugar levels high enough (the opposite problem of diabetics). The body has to work hard, especially the adrenal glands and the liver, to keep your blood sugar normal between meals. If you snack every 2 hours, it alleviates this body stress so that more energy can go into healing your body. Animal protein helps your liver keep your blood sugar stable more easily than fats and carbs can. Of course avoid junk foods, processed foods, fried foods, etc. Eat animal protein, vegetables, and greens. Fruit juice is a junk food because it’s high in sugar. Most fruits are high in sugar so avoid them while healing.
6) Support your joints
Adrenal stress tends to weaken the ligaments for various reasons. Weak ligaments can lead to inflamed and painful joints as well as poor biomechanics. To rehab your ligaments while healing from adrenal stress, tape your ankles, knees, and SI joints. The test for whether you need to do this is to brace the joint with tape or other support and then walk around. If you feel better in any way with the support on, then you need it. If so, wear it daily until uncomfortable or until you feel as good without it as you do with it on. You may need to wean off the support as you are improving. Don’t sleep with these on unless directed to do so by me at one of your office visits.
7) Supplements
Taking extra vitamin C, B complex, manganese (not magnesium), protein, and lithium (the trace mineral, not the drug) can help your body rehab from adrenal stress faster. There are lots of herbs and glandulars and hormones that can help sometimes too, but it’s best to only use these as a last resort, and you should wean off them within six months.
For more info on kids vitamins click here.
8) Blood pressure
If you have lightheadedness upon standing up (or if your blood pressure fails to rise 10 points), this is a sign of sluggish adrenals. It means you have temporary low blood pressure and can’t supply your brain with enough blood and oxygen to function normally upon raising the elevation of your head from seated to standing. This can be dangerous because in severe cases it can make you pass out and you could fall and hit your head or break a bone. If you are taking medication to lower your blood pressure and you routinely experience lightheadedness, you need to immediately tell your doctor so he can either switch types of medication or wean you off.
Lightheadedness is a sign of LOW blood pressure and lowering it further with medication is very dangerous and medically contraindicated. Having your blood pressure taken at an MD’s office is often not a complete picture of your blood pressure health. You need to have a cuff at home and take it weekly while lying down after resting completely still without talking for 10 minutes. Then check it again immediately after standing up.
For example, if your pressure is 138/90 while lying down and then 120/70 when you stand up, you have two problems: 1) your pressure is a bit high while resting, 2) your pressure is relatively low when standing up. Normal pressure goes up 10 points on both the top and bottom numbers right after standing up, so it should have been 148/100 when you stood up to keep you from being at risk of falling. So in this case your pressure was 30 points too low when standing up! But it was only about 10 points too high when resting.
Mildly to moderately high pressure is only a problem if you have it for many years in a row, it is not an immediate danger. But falling down from lightheadedness is an immediate danger. If you hit your head on a hard or sharp object it could immediately kill you. If your doctor won’t address your orthostatic hypotension (blood pressure that drops when standing) then you need to get a new doctor who will. It is an adrenal problem that needs to be treated, as outlined in this article.
9) More Salt
Adrenal stress often causes you to pee out your salt. Low salt can cause low blood pressure, especially the kind that causes lightheadedness. But it can sometimes also cause high blood pressure. If you have overall low blood pressure and adrenal stress, then take some extra salt up to 1 tsp daily.
If you have high blood pressure, then measure your pressure for several days in a row, then add in some salt. If your blood pressure starts to normalize, then continue the salt. If it goes up more (while resting, not right after standing up), then stop the salt. You can also measure your ankle circumference and if it goes down, continue the salt, it if goes up, stop the salt.
For more info on salt and how to know if you need more or not, see my article here.
10) Time
It took many years in most cases to develop your adrenal stress. It is going to take at least 6 months to recover and heal from it, and in some cases up to 2 or more years. So be diligent with the above instructions and be patient.
11) Energy Patience
The hallmark of adrenal stress is feeling like your health, pain, and energy levels are on a roller coaster each week. One day you will be feeling substantially better, then you’ll wake up and feel as bad as ever. Bad days will have you in severe brain fog, depression, and despair, then good days will give you lots of hope that the nightmare is almost over, only to feel bad again the next day.
Know that when you body energy is going toward your outward life goals like work, friends, family, chores, and fun, it is not going toward healing your body. When your energy is low and nothing seems to be working right in your body, the energy is being put toward healing your body. Healing necessitates either not feeling good or sleeping. Not feeling good or feeling tired is the signal your body gives you to tell you to rest more, to reserve your energy for healing. The more you fight this signal, the slower you will heal.
Get used to working at half energy level on any given day, or even taking a day off when feeling your worst. I realize that you think you have real life obligations like a job or children that you can’t get out of, but you can. And you must. Adrenal stress patients are generally the type who put themselves last their entire lives and that’s why you are sick now. It’s time to put your health first before your body gets even sicker.
12) Keep a journal
To help you make sense of the up and down roller coaster process, keep a simple log of your daily symptoms and energy level. Rate things on a scale of 0-10 so that you can compare them over time. After a month or so of entries you will be able to calculate whether you are improving and if so by how much. This will be helpful for your peace of mind since incremental improvements are often not noticed by the brain. Once you see the improvements in black and white, it will help you stay motivated. It may also help you notice any patterns like the fact that you feel worse for two days every time you visit your Mother-in-law, for example. It may be time to avoid her for the next 6 months.
13) Speeding up the process
Light therapy
Both UV and red light, speeds up the healing process for most conditions, especially adrenal stress cases. Our “Combo bed” has both UV and red light in it. It helps to increase seratonin levels in the brain that make you feel good, then the serotonin turns into melatonin at night to help you sleep better.
Even if you feel like you sleep good already, the Combo Bed ensures your sleep is as deep and healing as possible. Anywhere from 2 to 12 sessions monthly can be needed depending on the severity of the adrenal stress.
Our “Red bed” delivers super bright and pure red light for lowering or even turning off the stress response. Anywhere from 2 to 30 sessions monthly may be needed depending on the severity of the adrenal stress. We are finding that 1-3 months of intensive light therapy can reverse the adrenal stress process in cases where 9 to18 months without light therapy would be needed to reverse the adrenal stress otherwise.
Click here to read my article on red light therapy.
And here for red light healing autoimmune conditions.
Hyperbaric
The extra air pressure while in a hyperbaric chamber allows the oxygen from the air you breathe to more efficiently reach your body tissues for faster healing. Acute injuries and surgeries heal up 6 to 10 times faster with hyperbaric treatments. Chronic conditions like adrenal stress also heal much faster with regular hyperbaric use, how much faster is unknown since chronic conditions don’t have a known set time in which they usually heal like acute injuries and surgeries have. Sessions are 30 to 60 minutes each, and 2 to 12 monthly are needed depending on the severity of the adrenal stress severity. About 1-3 months of intensive hyperbaric therapy can reduce the recovery time of most conditions substantially.
Click here to read more about hyperbaric therapy.
Looking Forward!
Yours in health,
Dr. Campise
Fresno Chiropractor
559 930 1034
P.S. If you have the time, kindly give us a review in Google Maps – https://goo.gl/73Kz2R. Thanks!
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