If you’re new to the blog, welcome! This is a space where I freely share articles, tips, and words of inspiration related to up-leveling our lives from stuck patterns and old behaviors that don’t necessarily serve us anymore. As an Integrative Life Coach I use mental meta-models to change habituated patterns that no longer serve. In today’s blog post, we re-visit a debilitating illness that is a growing issue among many stressed out individuals – adrenal fatigue. As someone who’s experienced deep adrenal fatigue here are my best tips for a healthy recovery.
What is Adrenal Fatigue and Tips to Manage It
Do you ever find yourself so exhausted you are unable to follow through on your daily activities with the same energy you used to have? Or perhaps you find yourself feeling blue, anxious, and unable to sleep for long periods of time. Maybe you’re reaching for another cup of coffee when really, historically you only needed one? And worse yet, you notice yourself gaining a bit of weight but sugary sweets or salty foods are the only thing that give you a boost?
Depending on the prolonged presence of these symptoms in your life, they could be early warning signs of adrenal fatigue. (Note: while there can be many other auto-immune illnesses that can cause these symptoms please follow up with your primary doctor if symptoms persist to identify the root cause and a path to recovery)
In a nutshell, adrenal fatigue, or what few are now starting to call HPA Axis Dysregulation, is the inability to adapt to the chronic stressor appropriately, which then has a cascading effect of dysregulating other hormones in the body such as DHEA (a parent hormone). Adrenal fatigue can either make you extremely lethargic due to low energy or extremely “wired but tired”. Other symptoms include:
- Weight gain or loss
- Depression
- Anxiety
- PTSD symptoms
- Insomnia
- Brain fog
- Inability to find words quickly
- Hypoglycemia
- Hair loss
- Digestion issues
- And more.
So what does cause this hormonal dysregulation? One word: STRESS.
Believe it or not, the body doesn’t know the difference between emotional, mental, or physical stress. Dutifully, the body receives a signal and starts to produce cortisol under any circumstance that requires it. Got a work deadline? Produce cortisol. Working out too much and not fueling properly? Produce cortisol. Going through a major life transition? Produce cortisol. Traveling too much and not giving your body enough rest? Produce cortisol.
What can worsen adrenal fatigue is, depending on how many stressors and how long major stress has been prevalent in your life, in order to produce the necessary hormones to actually DO the job, your brilliant body will often take from other hormones such as DHEA, pregnenalone, testosterone, etc. in order to survive, often leaving you imbalanced even further.
It’s no wonder our bodies are so tired. It can’t seem to keep up! What’s likely made it even worse in this day and age is how we are continuously bombarded by a never ending barrage of notifications from our phones. We are on constant alert.
Which is why we must take care of our body, mind, and heart all the more. If you’ve noticed yourself feeling any of the above symptoms for a prolonged period of time, adrenal fatigue or not, here are some all-around key tips in preventing and/or managing YOUR health and body.
- Find good practitioners who can champion for your health
- Depending on the area of focus you need in your life, it’s always a great idea to be surrounded by a holistic set of practitioners in various fields who can help manage your recovery. Whether it’s:
- Naturopathic care
- Nutritionist
- Acupuncture
- Body work
- Therapist/Coach
- Get deep
- Find ways to get deep. This can be any way in which you find time for yourself and have time for introspection. Most of our day is spent planning mode, preventing mode, or taking care of others. Spending some time to take care of your physical and mental health is the best investment you can make. Here are some ways you can start making an investment:
- Yoga – Most of you reading this blog post understand very well how yoga’s ancient practice and philosophy help to calm the central nervous system by way of asana, discipline of the mind, and meditation to name a few.
- Meditation – Taking time to notice without judgement the thought, patterns of thought, and the voices in our head is a great way to better understand how your inner world operates. Meditation provides a way to understand and transform our mind.
- Read good books – There’s nothing better than winding down from a hard day’s work to a good book that instills deep wisdom and truths. Not only do you benefit from the golden nuggets within each page, you give your body and mind a way to relax the central nervous system and prime yourself for bed.
- Tone down technology
- Circadian rythm – Learning to rise and set with the true nature of your own body’s rythm is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Our bodies are hard wired to be in tune with mother nature. What does that mean? That means when the sun rises so should we, and when the sun sets so should we. But how does this work when our bodies aren’t able to due to cortisol disregulation? One day at a time… each morning when you wake up step outside your house or open a window and allow your skin to soak up the sun’s rays for at least 5-10 minutes. This will help your body to become more in sync with the natural rythms of nature. And with that said…
- Dim the lights – When it comes to winding down at night try not to have all your electronics on in the evening. Rather, turn everything off and light a candle or turn on a small lamp. Again, this will help send a signal to your body that it’s time to wind down.
- Get off the socials – Ever had that moment in the car where you were cruising along the highway and suddenly the person next to you turns off the radio and it’s eerily quiet? And the funny thing is you never realized the radio was on in the first place? That’s how it feels when you go on a social media fast. Suddenly you realize just how much space you have to just be. Take a time out an hour before bed and give yourself the gift of spending time with your own mind.
- Put your phone on airplane mode – You know that saying, “nothing good ever happens after midnight?” Well, let’s adjust that to 9pm. Each night at around 9pm put your phone on airplane mode. This will help ease the anxiety of constantly looking out for notifications and will allow you to truly focus on any night time rituals you might have such as meditation, taking a bath, or reading.
- Have fun!
- Spend time in nature – As humans on this earth we are primal beings and nothing can bring us quite to our senses the way nature can. Get out to a park, touch a tree, say hello to the flowers, and don’t be afraid of the bees! Feel the earth energy and if possible, put your bare feet in the rich soil of this earth. There is a deep exchange of energy here that is incredibly healing.
- Connect with your family and friends – Having adrenal fatigue was brought to you by stress and unfortunately trying to recover can be stressful in itself which actually won’t help you to recover – go figure. Instead, focus on your family and friends. Take advantage of this slowness and build deeper relationships with those around you. Get in tune with building a deep and rich community around you. Sometimes, taking the focus off of you and pouring the love into others can be the perfect remedy.
- Let go of the fact that you are “recovering” – Often times our best intention to speed up recovery can be a stressor in itself, and when we focus on “recovery” we end up reinforcing a belief that we’re not OK as is. Acknowledge and accept, apply compassion, and be kind to yourself.
- Deploy gratitude and kindess – While being in any hard situation isn’t easy, we always have gratitude to turn toward. Focus on turning your energy toward everything that is going right for you in this moment. Shower someone with gratitude, buy the person behind you coffee, find a meaningful place to volunteer, or simply give someone a compliment and watch them smile! You have many gifts and ways to make an impact in the world – deploy gratitude and kindess.
- Manage your thoughts
- Once you have the basics down and have a pretty good handle on your new routine, now is a great time to move toward one of the biggest root causes of adrenal fatigue – thoughts.
- Why is it that one person can excited about public speaking while another gets incredibly anxious? After all, it’s the same adrenaline pumping through our body, right? Well, it all comes down to the thought; two different thoughts causing two different experiences. Go figure!
- How we think about something (or someone) and how we choose to give meaning to a thought is everything.
- We grow up with certain beliefs that drive our everyday actions, but what is a belief? A belief is just a thought we repeat over and over again until we believe it.
- What beliefs do you have that have brought you to where you are today?
- Doing the thought work to truly understand the driver behind your actions, goals, or even inaction is the best gift you can give yourself. Because once you understand what core beliefs (or limiting beliefs) are, you get to decide whether or not it’s working for YOU.
- Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to help get started:
- What goals do I have but can’t seem to make any progress on? Why?
- What are some thoughts I have but don’t necessarily like? Why do I choose to believe them?
- What beliefs help to center me? Motivate me? Give truth to me?
And there you have it. If you made it this far, congratulations! You now have a few more tips to help optimize your mind and body. Adrenal fatigue, general fatigue, illness… whatever the case may be, know that you are more than the circumstance – always.
In wellness,
Susan
Please note, this blog post is meant to be for informational purposes only. The evolving nature of science and medicine point to the over treatment of the adrenals itself and not the cause of the “fight or flight” activities that result in overstimulation in the first place. Finding a good practitioner who can champion for your mental & physical health will be a key contributor in your recovery.
Susan is a Life Coach based in Seattle, WA. Her main focus is to coach people build a strong emotional container so that we can experience the fullness of life coming from a place of deep confidence. Susan also coaches clients looking to heal adrenal fatigue by using a mental meta-model aimed at breaking down old mental patterns and behaviors so that we can finally tap into our own personal power.
Photo by elizabeth lies on Unsplash
