Active Low-Carber Forums - View Single Post - How can you recover from adrenal fatigue?

Quote:

Originally Posted by amandawald

Hi there everyone!

I am starting this thread partly out of personal interest and partly on behalf of fellow forum "Kd did" who posted the following request in another thread:

As the thread this was posted in was actually related to a different topic, it seems only sensible to start a new thread especially for this subject.

I would also be interested in hearing other people's experiences.

I do believe that I have also been suffering from "moderate" adrenal fatigue, but am fairly confident that I am on the way to healing my adrenal glands by following most of the advice in Dr Diana Schwarzbein's book, "The Schwarzbein Principle II: The Transition".

Here are some of the tips I have tried out successfully: reducing caffeine the slow and easy way. Dr S recommends that, if you have adrenal fatigue, that you do NOT go cold turkey on caffeine as you will suffer from extreme fatigue if you do so. I can back this up!!! I tried to reduce my caffeine too quickly and had exactly that problem.

She recommends that you reduce your caffeine intake week by week, but that was too quick for me to adapt to (I have been drinking a lot of coffee, daily, for the last 20 years, so I'm pretty much caffeine-dependent). I have done my system month-by-month, and have just reduced gradually.

Month one: I made up a mix of 75% caffeinated coffee, 25% decaf, then after a month of that, I went down to 66% caffeinated coffee, 33% decaf (i.e. I just plonked in two scoops of caffeinated to one scoop of decaf in a special container with my coffee in it). I am now on a 50/50 mix and doing fine! I had actually intended to go down to a mix of 33% caffeinated and 66% decaf at the beginning of December, but after I had that for a couple of days, I could feel the fatigue beginning to drag me down again, so I decided to stay on the 50/50 mix till after Christmas - right now I need all the energy I can find!!!

I absolutely believe that this is an absolutely essential step to healing your adrenals as your caffeine intake influences so many biochemical processes in your body in very negative ways. It is absolutely central!!! If you have too much coffee, you piddle out your magnesium supplies, which your adrenals need (and so do lots of other body parts!!!). It keeps your adrenaline levels boosted longer than they would normally be, so you are in constant fight-or-flight mode, which - naturally - wears your adrenals out even more.

Even though I am by no means caffeine-free and am definitely still caffeine-dependent, this 50% reduction of my caffeine intake, coupled with taking chelated magnesium, has definitely made me less hyper, less frantic and breathless as I go about my daily housewifely chores. My concentration and short-term memory are also much much better. I no longer have this fuzzy head and feel more focused and relaxed. I am definitely going to carry on with the caffeine-reduction programme for these reasons: life is so much more pleasant these days!!! Not getting wound up and stressed out so much about life's little annoyances is definitely worth the effort!!!

Hope this contribution will get this thread going!!!

amanda

I think you are making a huge mistake diagnosing yourself with adrenal fatigue without proper testing. You simply don't know what the particular medical issue is until you get properly tested. I am with Pam on this one-your symptoms might not necessarily be adrenal fatigue. I thought my adrenals were my problem but were normal on testing-it was my thyroid and perimenopause.