Symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) include malaise after exertion; unrefreshing sleep, widespread muscle and joint pain, sore throat, headaches of a type not previously experienced, cognitive difficulties, chronic and severe mental and physical exhaustion. … Symptoms vary in number, type, and severity from person to person.
The main symptom of CFS is persistent physical and mental fatigue (exhaustion). This doesn’t go away with sleep or rest and limits your usual activities.
Most people with CFS describe this fatigue as overwhelming and a different type of tiredness from what they’ve experienced before.
Exercising can make symptoms worse. This is called post-exertional malaise, or “payback”. The effect of this is sometimes delayed – for example, if you were to play a game of sport, the resulting fatigue may not develop until a few hours afterwards, or even the next day.
People with severe CFS are unable to do any activities themselves or can only carry out simple daily tasks, such as brushing their teeth. They’re sometimes confined to their bed and are often unable to leave their house.
Other symptoms
There are other common symptoms as well as fatigue, although most people don’t have all of them. They include:
- muscular pain, joint pain and severe headaches
- poor short-term memory and concentration, and difficulty organising thoughts and finding the right words (“brain fog”)
- painful lymph nodes (small glands of the immune system)
- stomach pain and other problems similar to irritable bowel syndrome, such as bloating, constipation, diarrhoea and nausea
- sore throat
- sleeping problems, such as insomnia and feeling that sleep isn’t refreshing
- sensitivity or intolerance to light, loud noise, alcohol and certain foods
- psychological difficulties, such as depression, irritability and panic attacks
- less common symptoms, such as dizziness, excess sweating, balance problems and difficulty controlling body temperature
What is the Connection Between Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Adrenal Fatigue?
While CFS and adrenal fatigue are not the same, adrenal function may play a role in it. Those with CFS are often found to produce a low amount of the hormone cortisol, which is produced by the adrenal glands. Furthermore, CFS is a malfunction of the pituitary, a pea-sized gland at the base of the skull, which regulates all our hormones. The pituitary, hypothalamus and adrenals all work together as part of the HPA axis to regulate our health and hormones. Analysis of the data in over 50 studies that assessed adrenal function in CFS and fibromyalgia patients demonstrates that the majority of these patients have abnormal adrenal function due to hypothalamic-pituitary dysfunction.
Deficiencies in hormones like cortisol, DHEA, aldosterone, pregnenolone, estradiol, progesterone, testosterone and growth hormone are often missed or poorly treated because doctors have come to rely on standard blood tests that require an intact pituitary and hypothalamus for diagnosis and dosing of hormone levels. There is, however, severe hypothalamic and pituitary dysfunction with CFS, making the standard blood tests inadequate. Evaluating hormone function, not just hormone levels, can help diagnose CFS and adrenal fatigue; and when properly treated and balanced, tremendous results can be achieved.
Although a concept that is sometimes uncomfortable and foreign to traditional medical styles of thinking, the need for multiple interventions is required for effective treatment of such complex illnesses like CFS and adrenal fatigue. The HPA axis works as the body’s energy and hormone regulator. An imbalance between any part of the axis can affect the entire body system and treatment for such disorders requires a well-rounded approach to restore function. Therefore, adrenal and pituitary dysfunction often require treatment with several hormones. When treatment is received, individuals with devastating syndromes like CFS, adrenal fatigue and fibromylagia can “get their lives back” despite the fact that they were previously told, “there is nothing that can be done.”
Watch this short video with Dr. Kent Holtorf explaining the symptoms, diagnose and treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome:
– Holtorf Medical Group
Dr Mercola wrote:
- When your adrenal glands are overtaxed, a condition known as adrenal fatigue or adrenal exhaustion sets in, which in turn can set a cascade of disease processes into motion. One tell-tale sign of adrenal burnout is feeling chronically fatigued
- Four most common reasons for adrenal fatigue and dysfunction are intense emotional stress, poor diet, chronic inflammation, and underactive thyroid
- The Kalish Method normalizes dysfunctional adrenals and restores normal adrenal function. It’s a clinically validated method that’s been used for a long time, yet most physicians are still not aware of it
- The adrenal protocol calls for carefully replacing just a small portion of the exact level of the missing adrenal hormones including DHEA and the precursor to cortisol called pregnenolone, which instigates your body to begin producing it more naturally
The basis of adrenal fatigue or burnout is stress, which over time can tax your adrenal glands to the point of causing other health problems, such as:
- Sleep disorders
- Weight gain
- Fatigue
- Depression
Four Causes of Adrenal Dysfunction
There are three main reasons for adrenal fatigue and dysfunction:
- Emotional stress, typically related to grief or loss
- Poor diet: Eating too many carbs can disrupt cortisol and a certain group of corticosteroids (a blood pressure-stabilizing hormone), and the Standard American Diet is “a perfect recipe for destroying your adrenal glands,” Dr. Kalish warns.
One of the most important things that cortisol does is regulating secretory IgA in your gut. What this means is that the immune response in your gut is controlled by cortisol. Hence, if you’re stressed, the immune response in your gut suffers, the gut tissue becomes damaged, and good bacteria give way to bad bacteria, causing immune dysregulation that is centered in and around your gut.
Two important components to address this problem are to 1) regularly eat fermented foods, which will dramatically increase the beneficial bacteria in your body (which automatically will help decrease pathogenic bacteria), and 2) to eat a diet low in sugars and carbs, as that will also promote a healthy gut flora.
- Chronic inflammation in your body: Inflammation is the hallmark of virtually every disease you can think of, from diabetes to cancer, and when chronic, it stresses your system, including your adrenals.
One little-known strategy to counter inflammation is grounding or earthing, which requires nothing more than taking off your shoes and walking barefoot outside, ideally on dewy grass or on the beach. Connecting your soles to the earth will massively increase the influx of free electrons into your body, which helps dissipate inflammation due to their potent anti-inflammatory action.
Another common hormonal cause of adrenal fatigue is hypothyroidism or underactive thyroid. Thyroid function is diagnosed by a blood test, but there’s some controversy over what is normal and what’s not. Many alternative doctors feel the conventional reference ranges are far too broad, and opt to treat people exhibiting sub-clinical thyroid symptoms.
“What’s interesting about the thyroid and the adrenals is that as the cortisol levels go up, one of the normal body mechanisms is to downregulate thyroid,” Dr. Kalish says. “So, most everybody with high cortisol is going to have lower than ideal thyroid hormone levels. At that point, it becomes a decision as to if you want to work on the adrenals, work on thyroid, or work on both together…
More than 90 percent of the time, the adrenal program is enough to restore thyroid function. The biggest reason [for doing] the adrenals first is that when you start taking thyroid hormones your internal production of thyroid hormones drop. With the adrenal glands, it’s the opposite. When you start to take these adrenal-support products, your internal production of adrenal hormones comes back. If you can restore adrenal function, you can save the person from having to be on thyroid medications potentially for the rest of their life.”
Reblogged this on Full of Life Community.