Eliminating Stress from Your Life

Stress is the root cause of adrenal gland fatigue. Every time you become stressed, your body evokes a “fight or flight” response. Your adrenal glands secrete a whole lot of hormones that put your organs and muscles into a super-active state, allowing you to escape danger, or fight off threats. Unfortunately for most people, this response to stress is unwelcome. The main hormone your adrenal glands secrete during stress, is cortisol.

Too much cortisol is bad for your body, since it regulates so much, such as digestion, blood pressure and sleep patterns. Too little cortisol is equally bad – eventually your adrenal glands cannot function anymore and you suffer from adrenal fatigue.

You need to recognize the main causes of stress in your daily life and try to minimize the impact. This may involve sorting out your marriage, getting a different job, or seeking help with your financial management.

How to Treat Adrenal Gland Fatigue: Sleeping and Eating Correctly

After stress, lack of proper sleep is the next big cause of adrenal fatigue. It is not just how many hours you sleep per night, but also when you go to bed that is important. Your body has a predictable pattern of when your cortisol levels are at their highest and lowest. To keep your body in synchronization with its internal schedule, you should try to adjust your sleeping patterns.

If you really want to learn how to treat adrenal gland fatigue, going to bed by 10 PM is vital: if you stay up later than that, your adrenal glands secrete more cortisol to try to keep you stimulated and awake. The effects last until 1 AM. This extra secretion during the time your body ought to be resting, puts more strain on your adrenals and prevents recovery at night. Your body spends the next day trying to recover from the night time fatigue.

Eating correctly is important too: always have breakfast and have an early lunch and early supper. This helps keep your energy levels up during your body’s natural cortisol troughs.

How to Treat Adrenal Gland Fatigue With Supplements

If you are wondering how to treat adrenal gland fatigue by just using supplements, then you will be disappointed. Supplements are a great, natural method of correcting the imbalances that affect your body – however, you need to combine the right supplements with good diet, enough sleep and regular exercise, in order to get good results.

When a person is exposed to a stressful situation, the body produces adrenalin, which evokes a “fight or flight” response. This is response is designed to ensure the best chances of survival to a dangerous situation or confrontation. In modern living, stress is very often caused by circumstances and incidents that are not life-threatening at all. The problem is, our bodies respond to the stress in the same way – whether the source is potentially dangerous, or if it is a by product of working and living in a stressful environment.

The adrenal glands produce a number of hormones that help regulate the body’s response and recovery from stress. The main hormone produced is cortisol. Cortisol is very important and it is responsible for regulating heart rate, blood vessel contraction, digestion, central nervous system response, sleeping patterns and digestive function. Cortisol imbalance can cause a number of bodily ailments, due to the lack of normal regulation. Too much cortisol is bad, as is too little.

Because so many people spend so much time worrying about the pressures and issues of modern living, their stress levels are high. This means that they are almost always in a recovery state from stress. Their adrenal glands thus have to work over-time to produce enough cortisol to get their bodies back into balance. This high cortisol production puts a lot of strain on the adrenal glands and can cause adrenal gland fatigue symptoms.

Common Adrenal Gland Fatigue Symptoms

Due to the lack of cortisol, people who are stressed too much will end up experiencing a breakdown in body routines and basic functions. These adrenal gland fatigue symptoms are broad and could be caused by more serious conditions that are not yet diagnosed properly. Adrenal gland fatigue symptoms include the following: mild depression and the inability to concentrate; low blood pressure, due to the blood vessels not being contracted enough; digestion problems; the inability to sleep properly, or have any proper sleep pattern.

Cortisol regulates how carbohydrates, sugar and protein is digested. Improper digestion and absorption leads to blood sugar imbalances, such as hypoglycemia. Chronic fatigue is common when there is a lack of cortisol. This is felt more in the morning and late afternoon. The body usually has maximum cortisol levels at the end of the day, and minimum levels a couple of hours before waking. Inflammation, impaired immune system and disrupted thyroid functioning, are also common adrenal gland fatigue symptoms.

It is not a simple matter of having an operation, or taking a course of medication to engage in successful adrenal gland fatigue treatment. Because stress is the main cause behind adrenal fatigue, the treatment has to holistic. Every aspect of your life that determines how much stress you are subjected to, needs to be examined and addressed. Exposure to stress needs to be limited and a generally healthy lifestyle needs to be followed, to allow your adrenal glands to heal and start working properly.

Healthy Lifestyle Tips for Adrenal Gland Fatigue Treatment

Once you have dealt with the causes of stress in your life, you need to focus on the little things that influence how your body functions. One of the common causes for adrenal fatigue, is getting too little sleep. You need about eight hours of sleep per night and just as importantly: you should try to go to bed early. 10 PM is the optimal time to sleep. This is due to the adrenal glands using the time period between 10 PM and 1 AM to recover. If you stay up later, the adrenals secrete hormones to keep you awake and active, allowing you to effectively stay awake until after midnight.

To aid your adrenal gland fatigue treatment, you should avoid drinks that contain high levels of caffeine, such as energy drinks. Even coffee should be avoided, unless it is decaffeinated. Most herbal teas are fine too. Caffeine is a stimulant and this interferes with your sleep patterns.

Exercise is a good way to regulate your blood sugar, cortisol levels, growth hormones and thyroid gland. The endorphins released by exercise will make you feel more alive and active. You need to avoid doing too much strenuous exercise, if you are suffering from severe adrenal fatigue. Straining your body with too much exercise has a negative effect on adrenal recovery.

Avoid over-exposure to television and computer screens in the evenings. You may be photosensitive and the constant exposure to bright light can inhibit melatonin production, which then prevent you from falling asleep.

Regulate your meal times. As mentioned before, breakfast is compulsory. Adrenal gland fatigue treatment takes between six months and two years for full recovery, so you need to get used to a proper diet. You should have lunch between 11 AM and noon; in addition, a light snack between 2 PM and 3 PM will keep your energy levels up during the natural late-afternoon dip in cortisol levels. Supper should be between 5 and 6 PM. Avoid food with high sugar content at this time, so that your insulin levels do not rise too much before sleep.