Adrenal Fatigue

[kurite]

I keep seeing everyone on all the raw websites saying I have adrenal fatigue. I feel like its almost made up or something. I never hear any SADers saying I have adrenal fatigue blah blah blah. Can someone please explain this, I feel like until 5 years ago it wasn't even a thing?

[technosmith]

Adrenal fatigue is a condition where your adrenal gland is working less than optimally. As the performance of your adrenal glands also has an effect on other glands, the knock-on effect is that they start to work less than optimally as well. They all still function, but less than ideal.

The SAD diet aggravates the condition by requiring more cortisol production from the adrenals (it stresses the body more), and people with adrenal fatigue struggle to match the required cortisol production.

There are many causes or triggers, however it is likely to be prolonged stress on the body from some source (bad diet, over-exercising, medication etc), or an intense short term stressor of the body.

[TylerDurden]

Actually, it is notorious that cooked food consumption affects the glands in particular. That's why so many old people on SAD have some sort of glandular malfunction.

As for the appearance of the condition, one should remember that until very recently, doctors, for years, pretended that chronic fatigue syndrome was all in the mind and did not really exist - now, they grudgingly accept that with CFS, the immuune system is somehow compromised etc.

[PaleoPhil]

Adrenal fatigue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenal_fatigue) is a nonclinical name for low levels of hormones, primarily cortisol, and resulting symptoms. The clinical term is adrenal insufficiency (aka corticoadrenal insufficiency).

DurianRider is an example of someone with low (below range) cortisol blood test numbers. In this video he reports Cortisol 170 nmol/L (“normal” laboratory range 190 - 610):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk9gBRMqhRY&feature=related

DR engages in both an extreme diet and extreme endurance exercise, so either or both could be contributing to his low cortisol levels.

Symptoms of low cortisol include:
muscle weakness
weight loss
changes in mood and personality
irritability
and others (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenal_insufficiency and http://www.livestrong.com/article/227036-cortisol-level-symptoms/ for more)