Practitioners of alternative medicine estimate that at any given time up to 80% of those living in industrialised nations suffer from adrenal fatigue. However, while the World Health Organisation recently acknowledged that it should be considered a physical ailment, adrenal fatigue is rarely an accepted medical diagnosis.

Origin

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, chiropractor and naturopath James Wilson uncovered a collection of seemingly unrelated and nonspecific symptoms such as body aches, fatigue, nervousness, sleep disturbances and digestive problems that he eventually named adrenal fatigue (also known as 21st century syndrome).

What do alternative practitioners say?

Proponents of the adrenal fatigue diagnosis claim that it is a mild form of adrenal insufficiency caused by chronic stress. The unproven theory behind adrenal fatigue is that your adrenal glands are unable to keep pace with the demands of perpetual fight-or-flight arousal. As a result, they can’t produce enough of the hormones that you need to feel good. According to this theory, your body is able to detect this small decline in adrenal function while existing blood tests cannot.

What does the medical profession say?

Your adrenal glands produce a variety of hormones that are essential to life. The medical term adrenal insufficiency, or Addison’s disease, refers to the inadequate production of one or more of the hormones produced by your adrenal glands because of an underlying disease.

Signs and symptoms of adrenal insufficiency include fatigue, body aches, unexplained weight loss, low blood pressure, light-headedness and loss of body hair. Adrenal insufficiency can be diagnosed by blood tests and special stimulation tests that show inadequate levels of adrenal hormones.

Whom must we believe?

It’s frustrating to have persistent symptoms your doctor can’t readily explain. However, accepting a medically unrecognised diagnosis could be worse. Unproven remedies for so-called adrenal fatigue may leave you feeling worse, while the real cause such as depression or fibromyalgia continues to take its toll.

Perhaps the solution is to address the cause, which is chronic stress. Eating healthy foods that ensure the proper intake of vitamins and minerals, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, and cutting back on junk foods, sugar and caffeine might help you cope with the stress of daily living, thereby enabling you to avoid adrenal fatigue in the first place.

 

Sources
http://digitaljournal.com
www.mayoclinic.com