Adrenal Fatigue Treatments

People always ask me what treatment I would recommend for a full adrenal recovery. My answer is always: it depends. What treatment you need to undertake to heal your adrenals depends on your current stage of adrenal fatigue. However, the basic steps for treating adrenal fatigue are as follows:

Once you have tried an adrenal fatigue treatment, please be sure to come back and tell me about your results. I love hearing from readers and would love to answer any questions or simply celebrate your successful recovery from this nightmare we call adrenal fatigue.

Self Test Questionnaire

The Self Test Questionnaire is pretty simple in that you can have your results within about 10 minutes. It requires you to answer questions about your health habits, the symptoms you are experiencing and how long you have had this condition. It helps to classify the severity of your adrenal fatigue symptoms and gives you general guidelines about what you need to do to recover. You can find the self test here.

Baseline Testing

While the self test questionnaire is indeed useful, we recommend doing more advanced and less subjective testing to confirm suspicion of problems with the adrenal glands. Its interesting that most doctors will rely solely on blood tests and compare those results to a standardized “range of normal” to check for hormone issues. Unfortunately blood testing has become the standard for testing by western medicine. I say unfortunately because standard blood tests are inherently flawed in at least 2 ways:

Problem #1 – Hormones don’t really perform in the bloodstream. Without getting too technical, you should understand that hormones perform at the tissue level. What this means, is the amount of hormone in the bloodstream isn’t a very accurate sample of what is at the tissue site. For this reason blood testing is often inaccurate.

Problem #2 – Range of normal. In medical school, doctors are trained to compare test results against whats considered a normal range. The problem exists in that these ranges are huge and only the polar extreme edges of the scale are considered problematic. In the case of the adrenals, if you have extremely low adrenal function, you may have Addison’s disease, while if you have extremely high adrenal function, you might have Cushing’s disease. The issue is that you may in fact have low adrenal function, but because you are in the “range of normal”, you doctor will say that according to your test results you are fine. The only problem is, you feel anything but fine.

While blood tests have their uses and are great for diagnosing many ailments, it in particularly fails to diagnose sub-clinical hormone conditions like adrenal fatigue.

So what does work?

Saliva testing is much better to diagnose adrenal fatigue. As discussed in my book, The Adrenal Fatigue Formula:

“Saliva test kits measure the amount of certain hormones in your saliva. In my experience, saliva test kits are possibly the best way to diagnose adrenal fatigue. Saliva testing has the advantage of being less invasive than either blood or urine tests, and has the great distinction of being a more accurate method of detecting adrenal fatigue. As an added bonus, you don’t even need to go to a physician to complete them, these tests can be ordered online. Unfortunately though, many physicians undervalue the results of this test. But many others are beginning to catch on and will conduct very similar saliva hormone tests upon a patient’s request.”

Saliva tests have many benefits including:

they are less invasive. In most cases all that is required is that you spit into a test tube several times a day. You then simply mail the test tubes into a lab where they can read and interpret your results.
they measure only the active portions of your hormones which can lead to a faster diagnosis
they are a more accurate tool to measure and monitor your hormone levels

We call this baseline testing because it allows us to access your current adrenal hormone levels so we can accurately measure against it to determine whether the adrenals are improving or whether their function is diminishing overtime. Without this, it is very difficult to determine the efficacy of any treatment.

We recommend ZRT’s Hormone Level Imbalance Saliva Test Kit -Tests for 5 Essential Hormones

Cleanse/Detox

One of the most overlooked steps in treating adrenal fatigue is a cleanse/detox. The benefits of cleanses, in particularly colon cleanses are just becoming known. As it turns out, the “father of modern medicine” Hippocrates was right when he said that “All diseases begin in the gut”. Especially for those of us in industrialized countries, our diets are introducing more and more toxins to our bodies. Our bodies don’t know how to deal with them, so they build up overtime in our colons, which then leads to a whole host of medical conditions including adrenal fatigue.

While most marketing about colon cleanses focuses heavily on the weight loss benefits, it also can drastically boost your energy levels. This gives you the energy you need in order to implement the next steps for an effective adrenal fatigue treatment.

The other major benefit of colon cleansing is that it allows you to absorb vitamins and minerals more readily. If you’ve tried taking adrenal fatigue supplements but haven’t experienced the results you expected, it could well be because you are not absorbing the vitamins and minerals in the supplements, literally flushing money down the drain. As a step of any adrenal fatigue treatment, make sure to do a colon cleanse first to gain the most from any type of supplementation.

Interestingly, those with mild cases of adrenal fatigue sometimes find that they feel much better just after colon cleansing. It is an important step in adrenal fatigue recovery.

The benefits of colon cleansing include:

Increased energy levels
Clearer skin
Improved concentration
Better absorption of vitamins and minerals from foods
Overall healthful feeling
Prevents constipation
Weight loss (some people flush away anywhere from ten to thirty pounds of toxic fecal matter)

I honestly could talk for days about the benefits of colon cleansing. However, I’ll let leave that to the colon experts. One thing I do want to mention that is of note is that studies have shown that the severity of a disease (such as adrenal fatigue) can often be directly linked to the toxicity of the colon. This is why I always recommend completing a thorough colon cleanse as an early step in treating adrenal fatigue.

There are many colon cleanses out there but not all are created equal. I recommend Bowtrol Colon Control. Its a great 100% all natural colon cleanse and I’ve seen great results.

Adrenal Fatigue Supplements

I’ve written extensively on adrenal fatigue supplements here. I’ll reiterate one more time that many people make the mistake of thinking that supplements in and of themselves will cure adrenal fatigue. Don’t make this mistake. Taking good adrenal fatigue supplements is just one single step to a complete adrenal treatment. Make sure to complete the other steps and implement lifestyle changes to see the best results.

Start by taking the following supplements (more or less might be required depending on the severity of your symptoms:

Energy/Anti-Stress
- Best Energy/Anti-stress supplement

Multivitamin
- Here is one I recommend for men
- Here is one I recommend for women

Adrenal Glandular
- Best adrenal glandular

Vitamin C
- Best vitamin C for adrenal fatigue

In addition to these and depending on the severity of your sub-clinical adrenal insufficiency, you may need to take supplements specifically for the following:

Pantothenic Acid
Ascorbic Acid
Vitamin E
Vitamin A
Vitamin B6

Lifestyle Therapy

“I believe that if lifestyle factors are reversed, patients can recover completely and fully from adrenal fatigue.” – Dr. Jonathan Wright – adrenal fatigue expert

Lifestyle therapy essentially means the treatment of a disease or condition through the change of ones lifestyle or method of living. You might be thinking, “I know I need to make lifestyle choices, but where do I start”?

In considering lifestyle changes, it is helpful to consider a diagram I call the energy pyramid. It is a visual representation of your entire body including the four areas in which we manufacture energy:

The four sources of energy
1. physical (body)
2. mental (mind)
3. emotional (heart)
4. spiritual (soul)

These four areas control how we create and build our energy stores, as well as how we spend this precious energy. Each person is different, and likely you’ll think to yourself that one of these areas is a particularly troublesome area for you.

I go into specific lifestyle strategies for type of to this treatment in my book:

“The term spiritual in this context refers less to its religious undertones, and more to our deeper sense of purpose that relates directly to our meaning of life. Living a life that is not “on purpose” can be a tremendous source of spiritual stress (an incredibly inefficient use of our personal energy), while the converse is true as well. Living a life prioritized around your deep rooted and most important values can be a source of an abundant and continually replenishing reservoir of rich energy. Don’t misunderstand this point and think we are only speaking of religion.”

The trap most people fall into is that they think of only the physical lifestyle choices. Doing this would be a mistake (one that will keep you suffering the symptoms of adrenal fatigue for years to come). Instead, take a holistic approach and make sure that in addition to physical lifestyle changes, you also take time for your mental, emotional, and spiritual areas of recovery. These other areas, in my opinion, are just as or even more important than the physical. The truth is that each part of the energy pyramid affects the other parts.

6 Week Saliva Testing

If you have correctly followed the aforementioned treatment plan for adrenal fatigue, you will begin to feel your energy levels returning. Usually people start feeling better at about the 3-3 1/2 week mark. However I recommend completing the plan out at least 6 weeks.

At the conclusion of 6 weeks go back and test the hormone levels through saliva testing once more. This will tell you conclusively if your cortisol levels have improved. This is most effective when compared to the original baseline test results that were completed 6 weeks earlier. While I’ve listed this step as optional, I recommend completing it to determine whether the treatment was successful. Conclusive proof via improved saliva test results lets you know that your adrenals are healing properly.

More Information on Adrenal Fatigue Treatments

If you have additional questions about beginning an adrenal fatigue treatment regiment, the first place to begin is with The Adrenal Fatigue Formula which can be found at http://www.adrenalfatigueformula.com. It has helped thousands beat the horrible symptoms of adrenal fatigue and get their energy and lives back.

If you have read the book and have additional questions I’m happy to answer any questions you may have about adrenal fatigue. I apologize in advance if it takes me a while to get back to you as I’m often overwhelmed with the volume of email I get on a regular basis. But I promise to do my best.

To your health,
Gerry

Also, I often get requests for personal adrenal recovery consultation. While my schedule is normally full with other clients, I do occasionally have an opening. Enter your name, email, and phone number below to get on the waiting list.

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