adrenals tags

How many doc­tors can I stran­gle with my bare hands?? Grrrrrrrrrrr.

Today, I am once again appa­lled and sad­de­ned by the end­less body of thy­roid patients who con­ti­nue to plum­met into the abyss of adre­nal fati­gue, day after day after day. And it just never needs to hap­pen if doc­tors would simply pay atten­tion and be infor­med.

Belinda is the per­fect exam­ple. She didn’t par­ti­ci­pate in thy­roid patient groups any­more, living her life hap­pily, because she thought her post-RAI thy­roid treat­ment was under con­trol, being on 2 grains of Armour for a year. But sud­denly, she felt the need to return to her groups and seek feed­back. Because she has become more irri­ta­ble and moody, has a hard time falling asleep, and feels fre­quently anxie­tal. Labs are redone, and she finds her­self with a slightly over-range free T3 and a very sup­pres­sed TSH. Her doc­tor deci­des to lower her thy­roid meds, which in turn impro­ves her insom­nia and anxiety, but weight starts piling on. She’s con­fu­sed and won­ders how she can find her balance bet­ween being on too little with unwel­come weight gain and being on too much with uncom­for­ta­ble anxiety and insomnia.

What Belinda didn’t get, and what her doc­tor didn’t get, is that Belinda had now joi­ned the dubious cama­ra­de­rie of those with adre­nal fati­gue, a need­less con­di­tion of over-stressed and under-functioning adre­nals. As a result, T3 in Armour starts to pool in the blood, cau­sing anxiety, insom­nia, and all sorts of low cor­ti­sol symp­toms. Thy­roid patients just like Belinda have to first dis­co­ver what is going on, then face the com­pli­ca­ted balan­cing act of trea­ting adre­nal fati­gue AND hypothy­roi­dism. And it’s a path that never nee­ded to happen.

WHAT IS POTENTIALLY TAKING YOU DOWN THE DIRTY-YELLOW BRICK ROAD TO ADRENAL FATIGUE??

1) Being undiag­no­sed, or being dosed by, the faulty TSH lab test and its dubious “nor­mal” range, which will leave you with lin­ge­ring hypothy­roid symp­toms. (Belinda’s 2 grains tells me she was being dosed by the TSH)
2) Being trea­ted by T4-only medi­ca­tions like Synth­roid, Levoxyl, Eltro­xin, et al, which end up tea­sing your adre­nals to work har­der to take up the slack of an ina­de­quate treat­ment.
3) Lowe­ring your expec­ta­tions of what “nor­mal” is. No, it’s not nor­mal to have less sta­mina than others, to be on an anti-depressant to ban­daid your hypo depres­sion, to feel col­der than others, to require fre­quent naps, to feel the need to avoid peo­ple, to be bothe­red by lights or noi­ses, to be told by those you love that you are too defen­sive or over-reactive…and so on.

I hope anyone rea­ding this comes to an unders­tan­ding that you can­NOT enter your doctor’s office as if you are ente­ring the throne of a god. Your doc­tor, no mat­ter how edu­ca­ted or dedi­ca­ted, may not have a strong unders­tan­ding of the role of adre­nal func­tion in rela­tionship to bad treat­ment via T4-only meds or the TSH lab range. You may have to bring this know­ledge to your doc­tor, or find another one who is either lear­ned, or open-minded. Because your chan­ces of having adre­nal fati­gue are huge if you are on T4, if the TSH is worship­ped by your doc­tor whether on T4 or desic­ca­ted thy­roid, or if you keep wal­king into the doctor’s office and hang your own know­ledge on the hook outside his or her door.

(See Deborah’s story about cea­sing to smoke with adre­nal fatigue)

Who, as a smo­ker, hasn’t heard how dele­te­rious tobacco smo­king is for your health. Not only will you acquire health pro­blems directly rela­ted to smo­king, but your life is shor­te­ned by 10 – 15 years ave­rage accor­ding to sta­tis­tics. My own father died at age 63 directly rela­ted to his smoking.

But in spite of strong rea­sons to quit, most smo­kers will tell you it’s NOT easy. Why? Because the nico­tine in tobacco is the addic­tive bogey­man. Nico­tine sti­mu­la­tes those plea­sure cen­ters in your brain, besi­des being a subs­tance which “gets you going” by relea­sing both blood sugar and adre­na­line. The Ame­ri­can Heart Asso­cia­tion sta­tes that “Nico­tine addic­tion has his­to­ri­cally been one of the har­dest addic­tions to break.“

But for hypothy­roid patients, tobacco smo­king pre­sents another whammy. Namely, it stres­ses your adre­nals over and over. And with adre­nal fati­gue being a com­mon side effect of trea­ting hypo with T4 meds like Synth­roid, Levoxyl, Eltro­xin, et all, as well as being dosed by the lousy TSH, you’ve got a third rea­son to fall into adre­nal fati­gue if you are a smoker.

Addi­tio­nally, another fac­tor in the dif­fi­culty of quit­ting is that cor­ti­sol dec­rea­ses when you try to quit. A 2006 research report found that the lowe­red cor­ti­sol after quit­ting is asso­cia­ted with smo­king relapse and with reports of inc­rea­sed with­dra­wal seve­rity and dis­tress. So, when you already have adre­nal fati­gue, and you quit smo­king – a dou­ble whammy against being successful.

What’s the solu­tion? If you don’t have adre­nal fati­gue and want to quit, it may be wise to have a good adre­nal sup­port on hand, such as Iso­cort or any qua­lity OTC adre­nal pro­duct at your health food store. If you DO have adre­nal fati­gue, sta­ying away from cigs may require adding addi­tio­nal cor­ti­sol to your daily amount. Chap­ters 5 and 6 in the STTM book have good infor­ma­tion to help you with cor­ti­sol support.

Are you a smo­ker with hypo? Don’t hesi­tate to res­pond to this post with your expe­rience. (Please note that replies are not for questions.)

READ DEBORAH’S STORY ABOUT HER ATTEMPT to STOP SMOKING.

For 2008, as a hypothy­roid patient: I will:

1) expect that the rela­tionship with my doc­tor will be a TEAM approach to my health care: not just his medi­cal school/continuing education/experience, but also my own impor­tant know­ledge and wis­dom that I have gai­ned (from rea­ding sites like this), plus my sub­jec­tive expe­rience on my medi­ca­tion. My doc­tor does not live in my body or expe­rience my symp­toms; I do.

2) take the time to find a bet­ter doc­tor if my doc­tor refu­ses to res­pect the know­ledge I have gai­ned from rea­ding sites like this, and/or will not lis­ten to my sub­jec­tive expe­rience in my own body!

3) make my symp­toms far more impor­tant than ink spots on a piece of paper called lab results, and will not pas­si­vely allow a doc­tor to treat me ONLY accor­ding to those lab results.

4) give myself impor­tant sup­ple­ments, inc­lu­ding, but not limi­ted to: sele­nium and zinc (helps con­ver­sion of T4 to T3), other mine­rals which may inc­lude mag­ne­sium, etc., plenty of B-vitamins (which are nee­ded as I improve my thy­roid func­tion, besi­des sup­por­ting my adre­nals), Vita­min C (also sup­ports my adre­nals) and more that I feel are sui­ted for my needs.

5) be open to the fact that if Armour or other desic­ca­ted thy­roid pro­ducts don’t seem to be wor­king, I am making one of seve­ral mis­ta­kes in my use of it, and will iden­tify my mis­ta­kes and correct them.

Do you have others as a thy­roid patient? Just res­pond to this post.

I nor­mally don’t write about me here, but more on thy­roid advo­cacy issues. But this time…it’s going to be ME, because YOU need to be aware of what hap­pe­ned to me…because it can hap­pen to you.

I appear to have adre­nal fatigue.

Now unders­tand this: I didn’t have it when I got on Armour over 4 years ago. I rai­sed my Armour without a hitch, except for low Ferri­tin twice that I had to correct. And for approx. 3 1/2 years, I’ve been opti­mal with Armour with a per­fect mid-afternoon temp of 98.6

So why adre­nal fati­gue now?? It helps to explain it this way: Two years ago, in Dec. of 2004, I ente­red serious peri-menopause. My pro­ges­te­rone fell rock bot­tom while I still had a youth­fully high estro­gen. And I’ve had to deal with the misery of severe estro­gen domi­nance for two years. I’ve used com­poun­ded pro­ges­te­rone cream for those two years, but it was often never enough to stop the symp­toms of estro­gen dominance.

Also, Dr. Lam sta­tes the follo­wing and it explains me to a T: In early sta­ges of adre­nal fati­gue, cor­ti­sol out­put is high as the body attempts to neu­tra­lize the stress by pro­du­cing more of it. Howe­ver, when too much cor­ti­sol is pro­du­ced, it will have mul­ti­ple unde­si­ra­ble effects. For exam­ple, cor­ti­sol blocks pro­ges­te­rone recep­tors, making them less res­pon­sive to pro­ges­te­rone. Pro­ges­te­rone nor­mally pro­du­ced by the adre­nals comes to a halt in favor of cor­ti­sol. Insuf­fi­cient pro­ges­te­rone pro­duc­tion leads to an imba­lance of estro­gen to progesterone…(aka estro­gen domi­nance). And voila – I did have high cor­ti­sol in the mor­ning and noon. I had done the saliva adre­nal test just a month after my pro­ges­te­rone had dropped.

Finally, this past Octo­ber, I noti­ced the estro­gen domi­nance FINALLY stop­ped, as did my periods. A huge vic­tory. But in early Decem­ber, after a par­ti­cu­larly busy day on a Satur­day, I majorly crashed.….….and haven’t reco­ve­red since.

And ALL my symp­toms point to adre­nal fati­gue. First, my temps fell. And they were all over the place. My highest would only be 98.3, and one night, I was 97.1. That was VERY wrong for me.

Next, I star­ted waking up EVERY night bet­ween 3 – 5 am. A typi­cal adre­nal symp­tom. Also, if I felt emo­tio­nal about something, my body would get VERY hot. At first I thought it was a hot flash…but it was different.

And I was achy for 1 1/2 weeks. That stop­ped when I rai­sed my Armour and got my temps back up. But even without the achi­ness, I have felt fati­gued all over, and just bad.

Also, I fail the blood pres­sure test in the mor­nings. The other day, my supine blood pres­sure was 135/84. Stan­ding, it was 115/84. A good sign of adre­nal fati­gue. I also have a fas­ter and a poun­ding heartrate.

I have sent off my saliva samples…but have no doubt what the results are going to be. So.…I am going to start the very adre­nal sup­port that I have writ­ten about in so much detail here on STTM. Because there is simply too much stress in my life to think that prac­ti­cing all the other adre­nal sup­port methods are going to help my adre­nals reco­ver, or even help me feel better.

And by the way, for the past year and more, I have always given myself 5000 mgs of Vit. C and high dose B-vitamins, plus E. I have exer­ci­sed regu­larly by wal­king. But it wasn’t enough to stop what a huge female hor­mo­nal change has done to me. I now am using Lico­rice Root daily (which stops some of the break­down of cor­ti­sol in your liver) and 1/2 tsp sea salt, sti­rred in orange juice and my mor­ning yogurt. And I’ll have to start on cortisol.

What can you do to not find your­self in my shoes? For one, if you enter peri-meno, even without the pre­sence of adre­nal fati­gue, I would start on some mild OTC adre­nal sup­port now, which I was never on. Also, do wha­te­ver you can to coun­ter exces­sive emo­tio­nal stress in your life during this time by fin­ding times to laugh and doing what you enjoy. I have been stuck with a job that wore me down, and family issues that stres­sed me terribly, and I’m sure that pla­yed a part.

COMMENTS TO THIS POST ARE WELCOME (I could use pats on the back because this makes me SICK), but if you have ques­tions, this is not the place for them. Go to our forums here: www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/community And by the way, I will update this par­ti­cu­lar blog post when I get my adre­nal saliva test results back…and as I pro­gress in my treat­ment. My fin­gers are cros­sed.

Click here to see the con­ti­nua­tion of my com­ments on my own Adre­nal Fatigue.

UPDATE as of Feb. 2009: for those still rea­ding all the way down here, I became fully meno by 2008 and remar­kably, require no pro­ges­te­rone or estro­gen to feel good.  I did start having cons­tant night­time waking up and pro­bably could use a little pro­ges­te­rone at bed­time. I do use tes­tos­te­rone gel to keep my musc­les healthy and stron­ger.  And my adre­nals are still fine.  I’m on 4 grains Armour plus a slew of good supplements.