How To Rebuild the Adrenal Glands Naturally

Your adrenal glands are two small glands that sit on top of your kidneys.  They produce important hormones that help you buffer stress and adapt to every day life.  Under short-term stress, the adrenal glands make more cortisol and DHEA to help you maintain your health during stress.  They also make adrenaline, which gives you that boost of energy when you need it.

If the stress lasts a short while and then goes away, no harm is done.  After all, that’s what your adrenal glands are designed to do: handle immediate stress.  But if the stress becomes chronic, the adrenals produce too much stress hormones over a longer period of time, something that the body wasn’t designed to handle.  These hormones have “side effects”, such as poor immune function, abdominal/belly weight gain (due to water retention), and excess blood sugar (which can lead to insulin resistance and diabetes).  In addition, you may find it very hard to get to sleep at night and your short-term memory may begin to slip.  Over time, these blood sugar and nervous system effects can lead to insomnia, diabetes, fibromyalgia, obesity, mood disorders such as depression, irritability, anxiety, and more.

Eventually, if the stressor(s) continue further, the adrenal glands begin to get tired and wear out.  This is known as adrenal fatigue.  They begin to produce lower amounts of stress-management hormones because they simply don’t have any more left to give.  People with adrenal fatigue often experience low energy, great difficulty getting going in the morning, and afternoon fatigue.  If the adrenal fatigue advances, so does their feelings of fatigue, and often the person begins to crave salty foods.

Stress comes from three separate sources…

1) Emotional/psychological stress.  Most of us are aware of this type of stress.  This can come in many forms – the death of a friend or loved one, a long city commute to work, a demanding boss, an unhealthy marriage, uncooperative children, aging relatives, the loss of a pet, a career you don’t enjoy, difficult co-workers or in-laws, and the list goes on.

2) Physical trauma or injury.  Believe it or not, even a physical, non-emotional injury can cause your adrenal glands to work overtime.  This can include anything from a sprained ankle to a serious motor vehicle accident, and anything in between.  This holds true even if you don’t perceive you’ve been injured.  Many times, my patients will have gotten into a minor fender-bender 10 years ago, maybe felt a little stiffness the next day, and that was it.  Guess what?  It can still kick the adrenal glands into high gear, many years later.

3) Chemical stress.  This can include anything that alerts the body’s immune defenses or interferes with the body’s chemistry.  Examples are many, and may include any kind of bacterial/yeast/fungal/viral/parasite infection (such as Helicobacter pylori, Clostridium difficile, Candida, pinworms, or Epstein-Barr, etc), heavy metals (such as Arsenic, Aluminum, Cadmium, Mercury, and Lead), an autoimmune disorder, a household or industrial chemical (such as paint thinners, pigment colorings, etc), a problem food (such as wheat gluten, dairy, MSG, soy, or artificial flavorings, colors, preservatives, sweeteners, or flavor enhancers), or environmental allergies (mold, cockroaches, grasses, pollens, animals, dust mites, trees, nuts, etc).

Wow, that’s a long list!  And how many of us have these?  How many of us have ALL THREE?  And how long have we had these issues?  It’s mind-boggling to think about.

These stressors throw a monkey wrench into your health into all aspects of your health and thus need to be evaluated and dealt with effectively.  Only then can a person can heal fully.

Evaluating adrenal function…

Evaluating adrenal gland function is the first step.  After all, the effectiveness of the remedies used will depend on exactly what’s happening with the adrenal glands, and at what time of day.  When we evaluate adrenal glands, we are checking for several things, each of which has clinical significance beyond what is immediately visible on the test:

• The amount of adrenal hormones produced throughout the day
• The timing of the hormone production at different times of the day
• The robustness of the adrenal response
• A cross-reference of each hormone to the others
• Additional markers that give more information about the chronicity of the situation and additional impact on other body systems

The above markers also give us information about various parts of the brain and nervous system and whether these parts are over- or underactive, how chronic the stress pattern is, how advanced along the adrenal dysfunction continuum the person is, which other systems are impacted, and the extent of that impact.

No two people will look exactly alike, so there is no one set protocol that fits everybody.  Some people will need to prolong the presence of cortisol in their bodies, while those with adrenal stress will not see any improvement with supplements that preserve cortisol.  So it’s important to evaluate your adrenal function thoroughly, and take sample readings throughout the day so that you know the full state of your adrenal function; this is because remedies for adrenal overactivity are *not* the same as those used for adrenal fatigue.  Some people are in a transition from one stage to the other, and may need a combination.

To address adrenal health, it’s only useful to use remedies for adrenal support after you’ve eliminated–or at least minimized–the cause(s) of stress (see the list of 3 types of stress above).  Otherwise, your efforts to rebuild your adrenals may not be as effective.  Again, we must eliminate the cause of the problem in order to begin to heal fully.

One thing I recommend for almost all of my patients is a quality of B-complex.  Some people require larger doses than others.  I’ve had people come to me with lab work that says their B12 levels are high but when I evaluate the cellular level B vitamins, they actually show up with a deficiency, despite supplementation. These people may either need larger doses to make a positive impact, or they may need an alternate form of B12 that is more easily absorbed and utilized.

B-complex alone doesn’t fully regulate the adrenal function, but it does provide a nice foundation because it has such a positive impact on so many aspects of healthy function. I will say that most people will not use the B-complex very well, usually because of an intestinal infection or lack of good bacteria. We absolutely must deal with that first so that you can absorb the B vitamins.

For help with adrenal dysfunction, chronic fatigue, poor blood sugar regulation, or the evaluation of adrenals, cellular functions, vitamin absorption and utilization, please call Dr. Sweeney’s office at (210) 340-2150.

 

“My lab tests are normal” (…or are they?)

Cindy* sits across my small round table during our first visit together.  She has hit a brick wall.  Last week, she submitted to my office her intake forms and previous medical records, which consist of lab test after lab test.  These are isolated individual tests, taken on different days (or even months), never all at the same time.  Some of the tests are repeated several times.

Cindy shrugs, throwing her hands in the air.  “I don’t know what to do.  They look at me like I’m crazy.  They tell me my labs are normal.  And yet–well, you’ve seen my questionnaires.  I’m a mess!”

So her lab tests were “normal”, eh?  Let’s see about that….

First, let’s talk about the blood test process.  After the doctor or nurse takes your blood, they send it to a lab, telling that lab to run various tests on it.  The lab analyzes the blood sample and determines the results of the tests ordered.  These test results are reported back to the doctor in the form of a number.  Some of those numbers are familiar–for example, a cholesterol of 183, triglycerides of 132, or a blood sugar/blood glucose of 94.  If you have a thyroid issue, you may also know your TSH level.  The lab will compare your number results with what is called a “reference range” – a “normal” range.

Next, it’s important to understand what “normal” means.  The conventional medical system only recognizes two states of health: either you have a disease or you don’t.  If they can’t establish the presence of a disease, the doctor tells you you’re “normal” or “fine”.

The problem is, the regular definition of “normal” (and the “normal range” used by the labs to determine whether you’re sick or not) isn’t based on good health or healthy function.  It’s based on that “normal range” we talked about earlier.  How are those ranges determined?

By statistics.  The large national lab companies are responsible for setting their own reference ranges.  To do this, they compile the test results of the samples submitted, established an average, and compare the results to the corresponding patients. Every so often, as the general health of the population shifts and the average number values change, these laboratories will adjust their average ranges accordingly.

Look around you; 60% of the population is overweight and 20% of the population has developed diabetes.  About 73% of the population is taking at least one medication.  Cholesterol problems, hormone imbalances, and digestive issues abound.  Alzheimer’s Disease and autoimmune disorders are skyrocketing.

Do you really want to be compared to those around you?
Do you really want your “normal” range to be based on those people?

Also, it’s important to understand that these labs do this on a regional basis.  This means that a patient in South Carolina and a patient in Utah may have the same fasting blood sugar levels, but get labeled “normal” in South Carolina, while the lab in Utah would “flag” the result as abnormal.  The South Carolina patient’s doctor would tell that patient he or she is “fine”, while the Utah patient’s doctor will make recommendations for preventing diabetes.

One huge problem is that in gathering these statistics, labs fail to take prescription drugs into account when establishing normal ranges.  Medications, by definition, artificially manipulate the body’s function, altering its chemistry.  Because of this, it’s important to consider their effects when determining what’s “normal” and what’s not and yet, this is not done.  As a result, people undergoing thyroid testing get lumped in with people taking thyroid medications, and people undergoing a blood sugar screening get lumped in with those taking insulin.

Do you want to be lumped in with people taking loads of medications?  Do you think that these “normal” ranges can be fully trusted?

Now…when most doctors get these results back, they scan them, looking for abnormal results.  If any test result falls out of range, the lab highlights it, usually in bold, stating “high” or “low” off to the side.  Most doctors, lacking the time to fully investigate these results, quickly scan each line item.  Anything not flagged in “pathological” (disease) range is passed over without a second thought.

So, back to Cindy.  When she hands me the printouts from her previous lab tests, I, too, scan for the lab’s flags.  However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg; I usually find many more abnormal results that lie outside of healthy range, but not yet far enough advanced for the lab to flag the result as “abnormal”.  It’s not that I run different tests, it’s that I use “functional ranges”, which are much tighter and designed for healthy function.

For example, a good healthy functional range for fasting blood sugar is about 85-100.  The lab’s established reference range is often 65-110. If Cindy has a fasting blood sugar of 77 , she begins to lose optimal function, and yet most doctors will tell her she’s “fine” because the lab won’t highlight her result as “abnormal” until she reaches 64.  By the time her blood sugar falls that far, she has lost a lot of function!  She probably started feeling dizzy and lightheaded around 79.

Is Cindy hypoglycemic at 77?  Nope, she’s what we call “functionally hypoglycemic”, because she falls below the lower functional blood sugar limit of 85.  When she gets to 64, we can officially call it true hypoglycemia.  But why wait until then?  Someone with blood sugar in the 70s can certainly have hypoglycemic symptoms and can still benefit from a blood sugar stabilizing plan.

That’s what Functional Medicine is all about, folks: good function.  It’s about catching health issues early, identifying breakdowns in proper function before they become established diseases.

Of course, once they do, it’s not impossible to turn it around.  But if you’ve got a train starting to travel in the wrong direction, picking up speed second by second, isn’t it easier to get it stopped and turned around before it reaches full speed?  True health works exactly the same way. 🙂

*real patient, but not her real name

What is Functional Medicine?

The short answer is, Functional Medicine is the future of medicine, if we are to get well and stay well as a society.  It’s the direction in which regular medicine should have gone.  It should be used as the primary method of treatment, especially in cases that are not acute, infectious, catastrophic, life-threatening, or other emergencies.

The long answer is, the definition of Functional Medicine largely depends on who you talk to.

• The Institute of Functional Medicine, arguably the leader and Gold Standard of the field, describes a science-based, patient-centered form of healthcare that recognizes biochemical individuality and favors active prevention.
• A talented colleague of mine defines Functional Medicine as a complete lifestyle-modification program that evaluates physiology using extensive diagnostic lab testing and then corrects any imbalances found by applying specific, individually unique combinations of neuro-metabolic therapies.
• Another talented colleague of mine mentions looking at everything (hormone balance, nutrient metabolism, immune system, and a plethora of other categories) all at the same time, leaving no stone unturned

Functional Medicine really is “all that” – in terms of the explanations given above, as well as being Just That Cool.

When I explain it, Functional Medicine can take on a few different personas that all relate back to the same Big Idea.  Various descriptions are as follows…

• A highly-advanced version of Clinical Nutrition, taken to another level as practiced by a doctor, that bases its herbal and nutritional plans on comprehensive lab testing
• A third type of healthcare that is separate from both conventional and alternative medicine branches we’re already familiar with, that utilizes the best of both worlds
• An emerging medical subspecialty that combines conventional testing and natural therapies
• A logical, scientific alternative for those looking for natural or holistic healthcare, perfect for those who don’t know where to turn or who to trust.
• A scientific-yet-holistic of looking at the functions of the body and how they are inter-connected, identifying dysfunctions in key areas using lab tests, and then correcting them with a comprehensive lifestyle modification plan.

That last one is my favorite (couldn’t you tell?)

Functional Medicine really shines with chronic, complex disorders, especially the degenerative and/or mysterious.  I can say it is definitely worth the effort, commitment, and investment!  Most Functional Medicine practitioners know firsthand; many of the best doctors got involved with the field because of their incredible experiences.

We’re a product of the choices we have made every day.  Every day we have another chance to stay on our current path or choose something different.  What are you waiting for? 🙂