Adrenal Fatigue - Part 2 - Do I have adrenal fatigue?

Now that you know what adrenal fatigue is and its causes/symptoms, question is do you have it? The author of this book has a website and a questionnaire available to anyone who thinks they might have it. See the link below if you think you might have adrenal fatigue.

http://adrenalfatigue.org/take-the-adrenal-fatigue-questionnaire/

I did the quiz directly from the book. Since I am seeing a naturopath and functional medicine doctor, I did a before and now quiz to show the difference. Results were that I had severe adrenal fatigue before and now I have milder adrenal fatigue but it's still there. So your recovery will not always be short. I've been at it for 4 months and still have my days where nothing happens but Netflix and PJs. LOL

Best way to truly find out if you have adrenal fatigue is to seek professional help but there are some tests mentioned in the book and on his site that you can do at home to give you some indications of adrenal fatigue. I was able to do some digging on-line to find an image that had all 3 tests mentioned in the book in one image. See below.

Now that you have some indication that you might have adrenal fatigue, you can take this information to your doctor. Although I wouldn't get too excited there. Adrenal fatigue is not a term that is widely used by everyone in the Western medicine community. I never heard it until I turned to alternative medicine myself and when I confronted my family doctor about adrenal fatigue, she looked at me like I was crazy or talking fairy tales again like I mentioned in Part 1. The reason for this is explained in this book as well. 

You can apply a bell curve to many situations and this is one of them. This bell curve shows the normal bell curve for adrenal fatigue. Anyone that falls within the normal or even weak ranges of this bell curve are considered to be normal. Only those patients that fall in the very high or very low are considered an issue. But at those points it's a disease. Some with extremely low ranges now have Addison's disease and someone in the high ranges now have Cushing's disease. So what this chart is showing is that you have to have a disease to be considered on most doctor's radar which is insane to me!! They should be catching this as it happens and as you are complaining about changes in energy and other symptoms. 

There is an example in the book that describes a patients results which was at a normal range but dropped in between the weak level range. But because this is still within range they were not considered as having an issue. Even a drop like that is huge when dealing with adrenal fatigue. It means there is something wrong and if not addressed you will end up with Addison's or Cushing's disease depending on which end of the spectrum you are heading towards.

My advice from personal experience is that if your family doctor doesn't listen, find another doctor or better yet turn to alternative medicine. In alternative medicine they will treat your body as a whole system and know that when you are not at your optimal functionality that something is wrong. They will know what tests to run and what adrenal fatigue even means.  Sometimes you have to take your health in your own hands which I have done as well. I have been through many doctors over the last 9 years to get answers and I finally have 3 doctors that are in my corner helping me get better everyday. It took a while to find them but was worth the wait. I hope that you find yours. 

I think that is quite a bit of information for today's post. My next post will be addressing lifestyle changes and habits that you can incorporate in your life to prevente complete burnout from happening again. Knowing the signs is key! We just need to start listening to our bodies and not our egos. That's a hard one, as I was guilty of that for many years. Until next time have a great Sunday my journey peeps! :) 

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