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Why so Many
Adrenal Fatigue Symptoms?

Because chronic stress affects much more than your adrenal glands

The name Adrenal Fatigue is not a great name for the condition.

Page Contents:

Stress and your Immune System

Mineral Imbalances from Stress

Stress and Hyperventilation

Toxins and Stress

Adrenal Glands and Hypoglycemia

Dehydration and Adrenal Fatigue

Chronic stress does many things to your body. Much more than your adrenal glands are affected.

It is common for many strange symptoms to appear as your Adrenal Fatigue becomes worse.

This page covers some the affects of long term chronic stress, and many have nothing to do with your adrenal glands.

If you haven't already, please check out the article Adrenal Fatigue Symptoms, which has a detailed list of symptoms.

It is a Chronic Stress Disease, and chronic stress damages your body in many ways.

This page covers some of the ways that chronic stress can result in unusual symptoms.

Immune System and Adrenal Fatigue

Your immune system is suppressed by chronic stress^{1, 2}, which explains many of your symptoms.

Although severe acute stressful life events (less than 1 month long) were not associated with developing colds, severe chronic stressors (1 month or longer) were associated with a substantial increase in risk of disease ¹.

Dr Hans Selye found that the thymus gland (important gland for immune system) actually shrinks during chronic stress³.

A study published in Jan 2014 showed that the stress of training in elite athletes reduces the output of the thymus gland⁴.

Mineral Imbalances and Chronic Stress

If you have been exposed to years of chronic stress, Mineral deficiencies and mineral imbalances develop over time. Symptoms of magnesium and zinc deficiency are common.

Great book on Copper Toxicity

Why Am I Always So Tired?

If you are exposed to chronic stress, your magnesium stores will gradually become depleted^{6, 7}. This will result in many symptoms.

Zinc is lost at a high rate during stress⁸. Your zinc /copper ratio will become unbalanced after years of chronic stress.

As your adrenal fatigue becomes worse, you may experience Copper Toxicity. Here is a hair analysis of mine:
Hair Analysis (2014-03-27). Note the high copper.

A great book to learn about chronic stress, adrenal fatigue, and their impact on your zinc / copper balance is:
Why Am I Always So Tired?

You sodium is also likely low if you have advanced adrenal fatigue. It is very common to crave salt.

There are other mineral imbalances and deficiencies that result from years of chronic stress.

The Nutritional Balancing program directly addresses and monitors mineral imbalances.

Hyperventilation and Chronic Stress

Subconscious hyperventilation may be causing some of your adrenal fatigue symptoms.

Chronic stress leads to chronic sub-conscious hyperventilation^{10, 11}, which can result in many symptoms due cell hypoxia (low cell oxygen).

Do you take sudden gasps of air? Do you spontaneously sigh? Do you have trouble holding your breath for long?

These are indicators that you may have hyperventilation syndrome.

Hyperventilation can also lead to peripheral neuropathy, which can cause lots of strange symptoms such as blurred vision and tingling extremities.

Stress / Adrenal Fatigue and Toxins

Chronic stress reduces your ability to eliminate toxins

Stress exposure reduces Vitamin C levels, as well as Glutathione¹², which are important to help your body remove heavy metals and other toxins.

When you are in a state of stress, your liver focuses on making glucose for energy, and therefore makes less bile¹⁸. Less Bile flow means less toxins removed from the liver.

After many years of being stuck in a state of stress, you will have stored many toxins.

Eventually, these toxins stored all over you body start to cause symptoms. Copper overload often develops from chronic stress and adrenal fatigue, resulting in many symptoms.

Aluminum, mercury and other toxins accumulate as well. Therefore, detoxification is an important part of adrenal fatigue treatment.

It is quiet common for people with adrenal fatigue to have a metallic taste in their mouth.

Toxins are high during this period because it is being pulled out of storage and into the blood stream as part of detoxifying.

The article: Adrenal Fatigue and Liver Issues had more details.

Hypoglycemia and Adrenal Fatigue

Do you have energy crashes that are relieved by eating ?

Cortisol and Epinephrine (adrenaline) are two of your adrenal hormones that are released to increase glucose (blood sugar) ¹³.

If your adrenal glands are not able to respond to low blood sugar by producing enough of these hormones, hypoglycemia can result.¹⁴.

Hypoglycemia can cause many of the adrenal fatigue symptoms you may be experiencing.

See the article Adrenal Fatigue and Hypoglycemia for more information.

Dehydration and Adrenal Fatigue

Do you sweat less than you used to?

Aldosterone is one of the hormones produced by your adrenal glands. Aldosterone is responsible for retaining sodium, which results in fluid retention¹⁵.

If your adrenal glands are not producing enough aldosterone, you will be low in sodium. This is why craving salt is a common symptom of adrenal fatigue.

Dehydration can be responsible for some of your adrenal fatigue symptoms.

Other Causes of Adrenal Fatigue Symptoms

In addition to the reasons described above , there are likely many more ways that chronic stress results in symptoms.

For example, in a survey on this site, 43% said they do not tan as well as they used to. This happened to me as well.

I believe it is because of the non-essential amino acid L-Tyrosine. L-Tyrosine is the precursor to Melanin, which is required for tanning^16,17. Non-essential simply means your body can make it on it's own.

I tried taking the supplement L-Tyrosine for more energy at one point. It created a lot of anxiety. So my hunch is that your body intentionally reduces L-Tyrosine production since you can't handle it with adrenal fatigue. A secondary result is reduced tanning.