Back in January, I wrote an article over at Autoimmune Paleo, called “Eight Key Lifestyle Habits to Support Adrenal Healing“. What’s so important about the adrenal glands? They are key for our response to stress. Athletes, adventurers, parents, professionals, even bookish nerds, we all experience stress. When a body is under stress, the adrenals pump out critical hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, that help the body to cope. You might think of stress as only being things like a bad job, a broken arm, or an argument with your honey. But the body sees stress in a much larger context. Chronic worry, a wedding day, a long run or bike ride, even prepping for that big yearly trip to scuba dive in the Caribbean, is registered by the body as stress. No matter what, the adrenals kick in to help you power through it.
So what’s the big deal? In an ideal world, our bodies can rest and recover properly between stressful events, but in our modern western lives, that is not always possible. We end up in a state of chronic stress, with very little time between stress events, and the adrenals can’t restore properly. That’s when we run into trouble in the form of adrenal fatigue, where those poor little almond-sized glands are too pooped to power through and we feel like a Mack truck ran us over – sometimes that means all day long, every day. You don’t have to have a chronic health condition to have adrenal fatigue; just a body that gets pushed too hard and doesn’t have the time to restore. Some symptoms of adrenal fatigue include:
- Ongoing, sometimes debilitating fatigue
- Weakened immunity
- Headaches
- Feeling lightheaded, shaky, or irritable between meals
- Trouble falling asleep
- Insomnia, especially between 3 and 6 a.m.
- Not feeling rested after sleep
- Dizziness moving from sitting to standing
- Afternoon “blahs”
- Sugar and caffeine cravings
Those of us who push our bodies hard physically sometimes experience adrenal fatigue; all that training, working toward our athletic and adventure goals, in addition to everything else in life, can put a lot of stress on a body. In order to support healthy adrenal function and keep our bodies in shape to handle it all, it’s good go adopt daily lifestyle habits that help keep the adrenal glands strong and healthy, as well as helping to heal them if they’re overworked and pooped out. My article over on Autoimmune Paleo goes into more detail on how to do this.
These are habits that I practice in my daily life; they have been key in helping me heal from extreme adrenal fatigue. I know now, looking back at the years before I got sick, when I was pushing my body really hard (trail running above 10,000 feet 1 to 3 hours a day 6 days a week, plus working three jobs and not eating well enough to support my body’s functions), if I had practiced these habits, it’s unlikely I ever would have crashed so hard when my autoimmunity kicked in. Maybe it wouldn’t have kicked in at all… but that’s another conversation! Head on over to Autoimmune Paleo and check out the article. You might find you are even better prepared for your adventures when you take better care of your adrenals!
