Adrenal Fatigue 101
by Jimmy Smith
You know those days when you feel like your training legs are being cut
out from underneath you? You'll hear multiple reasons explaining why
your training failed, but nothing explains how mentally and physically
exhausted you are. We often fail to realize one basic
physiological truth: Our adrenal glands influence all of the major
physiological processes in our body. That's an undeniable truth. Our
adrenal glands control everything that happens and affects us in
training. In fact, controlling adrenal fatigue could help you achieve
that physique transformation you've been striving for. The
What Glands? Leading
adrenal gland authority, Dr. James L. Wilson, has estimated that 80% of
the world's population will experience adrenal fatigue at one point.
I've even seen current estimates which state that 96% of the world is
currently suffering from it.
The
adrenal glands sit on top of the kidneys close to the spine and just
underneath the last rib. They're about the size of grapes. Their
location is very strategic since their purpose is to allow for a rapid
response to hormonal messages. Everything we do, from drinking coffee
to training, causes a hormonal rise in our body. The hormones
signaled by the adrenal glands strongly affect the utilization of
carbohydrates and fats, the conversion of fat and protein into energy,
the distribution of stored fat (in particular around the waist and
face), blood sugar peaks and valleys, and healthy cardiovascular and
gastrointestinal function. If that's not enough, the adrenal
glands control the anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant hormones to
reduce allergic reactions to alcohol, drugs, medication, supplements,
food, and environmental allergens. Once you enter the age group of
about 35 to 50 and beyond, the adrenal glands eventually become the
major source of sex hormones that circulate in the body in both men and
women. Every little stressor, unless properly managed,
reduces healthy adrenal function. Changes occur in protein, carb, and
fat metabolism. In addition, fluid and electrolyte balance, heart
function, and sex drive all experience modifications at the biochemical
and cellular levels. To hammer home the point, adrenal
fatigue often lays the groundwork for respiratory infections,
allergies, rhinities, asthma, frequent colds, fibromyalgia, chronic
fatigue syndrome, hypoglycemia, type II diabetes, autoimmune disease,
and even alcoholism. To sum it up, the ability to have sex, add muscle,
burn fat, and live healthy are acutely affected by the adrenals. That's deep, right?
10 Signs of Adrenal Fatigue More
or less every negative thing that happens to you contributes to adrenal
fatigue. It could be a death, loss of a job, or some other major
happening. The main issue, however, lies with the simple everyday
things that get us really annoyed: a toothache, a strained romantic
relationship, an ass for a boss, a chronic cold, and even training. When
these little things go from acute to chronic, the accumulation starts
to quickly matter. Any time we burn the candle at both ends we cause an
over-stress to our body. I've seen test results of people who seem
happy, yet they have elevated cortisol levels of 200-300%. Yeah,
they're storing some pretty stubborn lower ab fat!
Adrenal
testing is the first thing I do with clients. I do this before a
movement evaluation or anything else. I want to see how healthy their
adrenals are since the results are going to dictate everything from
their program design to specific nutritional recommendations. Here are some of the more accurate signs of adrenal fatigue:
Sign #1: Difficulty getting up in the morning. It doesn't matter the time, you just don't feel awake enough.
Sign #2: Continuous cravings for salt or salty foods. You always need more salt than you're getting.
Sign
#3: Increased effort to do every day tasks. You love training, but now
it seems like everything from your warm-up to the deadlift sucks.
Sign #4: Decreased sex drive. It just isn't happening. Enough said.
Sign #5: Decreased ability to manage stress. The littlest things seem to set you off.
Sign
#6: Increased recovery time. Any cuts you have take longer to heal,
swelling stays around, that cough you've had is still there after a
month, and your biceps still hurt from loading the bar when you were
squatting.
Sign #7: Light-headedness from
standing too quickly. You feel like you're going to pass out and you
see bright images when you stand up.
Sign #8: Less overall life happiness. Nothing makes you happy: training sucks, your job sucks, and the weekends suck.
Sign
#9: Increased symptoms with skipped meals. You're always hungry, every
hour. If you miss a meal, you're craving something and every meal
becomes a cheat meal.
Sign #10: Less
productivity. Overall, you just can't get things done, you're
distracted easily, and you can't work as efficiently or as quickly.
Training Impact All
of the above stuff doesn't mean much unless it's relevant to getting
jacked or ripped, so here's why it matters. We've all heard of that
nasty thing called
cortisol that eats up muscle tissue, right?
One of the main functions of the adrenal glands is to regulate cortisol
secretion and not allow too much to be released. Unfortunately
for most of us, under both acute and chronic stress situations we
over-secrete cortisol since our adrenal glands are too fatigued to
perform properly. Any little increase in cortisol will cause fat to be
stored preferentially around our waist — say good-bye to your lower abs.
As
if that isn't bad enough, adrenal fatigue also has an effect on our
blood sugar levels. If cortisol helps to keep our blood sugar at
appropriate levels to meet our energy demands, then once cortisol drops
due to adrenal fatigue, our body can't maintain adequate blood sugar
levels. A quick drop in blood sugar then affects our ability
to store nutrients where we'd like and creates a state of insulin
resistance in the muscle cell. Now we're storing nutrients as fat, and
since we have a rapid state of hypoglycemia, we're more likely to cheat
on our diet and eat whatever we crave. To throw more fuel on
the fire, 80% of individuals suffering from adrenal issues also suffer
from some type of decreased thyroid function. Most people who have a
low thyroid are unresponsive to thyroid medications, and in order to
get better the adrenals have to be supported. We'll also see a sudden
increase in allergies and joint pain since cortisol is the most
powerful anti-inflammatory in the body. Cortisol drops and our response
is an inflammatory reaction that increases the severity of our
allergies and joint pain. Remember that one of the signs of
adrenal fatigue is a craving for salt. Well, we're more than likely
going to resort to some type of salty food to curb the craving. It's
worth repeating again that insulin controls everything and all of our
other hormones follow insulin's lead. You'll often see advice
from armchair experts telling us to just eat unrefined carbs, but it's
not that easy. We literally can't eat that food because our body
doesn't allow it. I'm not trying to make adrenal fatigue a scapegoat
for the laziness in the failed diets out there, but we need to treat
the underlining issue.
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