How To Repair Adrenal Fatigue

Your adrenal glands are two nickel-sized glands, just above your kidneys. Adrenals produce and control cortisol, the stress hormone.
Adrenal fatigue comes from chronic stress. When you push your body and mind too difficult, your adrenals cease producing cortisol the manner they should.
Signs of adrenal fatigue are low energy, trouble sleeping, weight proceeds, mood swings, depression, anxiety, brain fog, and autoimmune problems. Get an adrenal fatigue exam to know for certain.
The best adrenal fatigue treatment is stress management. Some of your best biohacking tools are the Impenetrable Diet, sleep hacking, anti-stress supplements, meditation, and perchance changing your caffeine intake.

Balanced adrenal glands are a fundamental part of being Bulletproof. Your adrenals create and regulate cortisol, which makes them essential for hacking stress. When your adrenals work the style they should, you become more resilient, and you have a much easier time taking on life'due south challenges.

Simply if you're overwhelmed by chronic stress, your adrenals can get burnt out from constantly producing cortisol. The effect is adrenal fatigue. Your natural cortisol rhythm becomes irregular — sometimes you produce too much cortisol, sometimes not enough — and you lot can struggle to make other hormones, like androstenedione (the precursor to testosterone).

I dealt with adrenal fatigue before I developed Bulletproof. It was hard to figure out what was wrong considering a lot of doctors didn't (and still don't) recognize adrenal fatigue as real. Ane big reason is that when your stress response is messed up, information technology affects then many parts of your biology that it's hard to place equally adrenal fatigue, and even harder to study.

Adrenal fatigue is real, and it's something you tin treat.

Let'southward talk almost the signs of adrenal fatigue, what causes it, how to stop it from happening, and how to treat it.

Related: Download a free 20-minute guided meditation that's equivalent to a total night's slumber

What are the symptoms of adrenal fatigue?

First things first, check to encounter if yous take signs of adrenal fatigue. They include:

Feeling tired; struggling to wake up in the morning
Trouble falling asleep
A mid-afternoon slump
Anxiety, or feeling on edge
Mood swings
Depression
Weight gain
Autoimmune bug
Encephalon fog
Body aches
Hair loss
Lightheadedness

You might observe that a lot of these symptoms are pretty general. This is one of the challenges with adrenal fatigue — imbalanced hormones affect your entire trunk so much that it's hard to pin information technology downward to your adrenals.

Get an adrenal fatigue exam

Yous tin just follow the advice at the bottom of this article (it's adept advice for stress management, even if you lot don't have adrenal fatigue), but if you want to be really sure that you accept adrenal fatigue, I recommend getting a cortisol test from a functional medicine doctor.

Standard doctors often dismiss cortisol test results because they fall "within the normal range" of cortisol. Only feeling similar crap isn't normal, and you shouldn't accept information technology. It's similar with testosterone: 300 ng/dL is "within the normal range," and and then is 900 ng/dL. But if y'all triple your testosterone levels, I promise you lot'll feel a lot different.

Information technology'south the same with cortisol. In the morning, "normal" cortisol is anywhere from 7-28 ug/dL; in the afternoon, it'south two-18 ug/dL.^[]That's a huge range, and the reason I don't suggest a standard doctor for a cortisol test. You don't want normal; y'all want optimal.

A functional medicine doctor will wait more carefully at your cortisol levels and be able to tell you if yous have adrenal fatigue.

What causes adrenal fatigue?

Ultimately, adrenal fatigue comes from long-term stress.

When you're stressed, your adrenals release cortisol. If y'all're constantly stressed for a long fourth dimension, you're constantly producing cortisol, your adrenals get less sensitive to how much cortisol they brand, and your stress response and daily cortisol rhythm become irregular.^[] ^[] That's when you start to run into swings in your mood and energy.

Hither are some mutual causes of adrenal fatigue:

Poor nutrition
Lack of sleep
Working too hard
Emotional trauma
Lack of exercise
Also much exercise
Mold exposure

All of these things stress you out and tax your adrenals.

Adrenal fatigue treatment and prevention

If you want to prevent or become rid of adrenal fatigue, you have to manage your stress.

Fortunately, stress management is a skill, and with a little practice, you tin can larn information technology like annihilation else. Here are five of the best hacks I apply to manage stress and treat adrenal fatigue.

Make clean upward your nutrition

Cut out sugar, refined carbs, booze, and other inflammatory foods, and replace them with skillful fats, antioxidant-rich veggies, and grass-fed or wild-caught meat. If yous haven't seen it yet, accept a look at the Bulletproof Diet Roadmap. Information technology's a depression-toxin, low-inflammation diet that'south costless and easy to follow.

Ane note: I normally suggest Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting equally a way to heave fat loss and mental clarity. Information technology's awesome — just intermittent fasting is a stressor that makes you release cortisol.^[] While that'due south fine in most people, if your adrenals are recovering, y'all're probably better off eating throughout the day until yous're back to normal.

Improve your slumber

Slumber is peculiarly of import with adrenal fatigue, because when your cortisol is all over the place, you can take trouble falling asleep and staying asleep — which, in plough, stresses you out even more than. Information technology's a vicious wheel.

Fortunately, there'south an fine art and science to sleeping, and it'south really quite easy to hack. A lot of people think sleep is virtually getting eight hours a dark, but slumber quality is far more than important than sleep quantity, especially when it comes to balancing your cortisol.^[] In fact, people who sleep less than eight hours a nighttime tend to alive longer.^[] I've been sleeping for 5 hours a night for the past several years, and my performance has only gone up.

The trick is to become into deep sleep rapidly and stay in that location as long as possible. Check out this guide to slumber hacking for a breakdown of all the best sleep hacks. Nearly of them are free and accessible enough that you tin can commencement them this evening.

Pay attending to your coffee intake

Java is misunderstood when information technology come to adrenal fatigue. The standard communication is to avoid it entirely because it spikes cortisol. The reality is a little more complicated than that.

Java does spike cortisol — if yous only potable it occasionally. If you drink it every morning, though (never in the afternoon unless it'southward decaf!), you build tolerance to the cortisol release, but non to coffee's wakefulness boost.^[]

Simply in order to build tolerance to the cortisol, yous have to drink coffee every morning. If you simply potable it occasionally, your body won't suit, and the java volition cause a big cortisol spike that isn't proficient for adrenal fatigue.

Basically, when it comes to adrenal fatigue and java, you should accept an all-or-nothing arroyo:

Potable coffee every morn, or
Cut out coffee entirely (or drink decaf)

If you do decide to drink coffee, I suggest Bulletproof Java for extra mental clarity and effortless focus, which is crucial when dealing with adrenal fatigue.

Have anti-stress supplements to care for adrenal fatigue

The right supplements can make a huge difference in adrenal fatigue past improving the way you handle stress. There are a few dissimilar aureate-standard supplements for stress:

Magnesium on its ain is slap-up for promoting calm. Stick to 400mg a day or fewer, otherwise you risk gastrointestinal trouble, like diarrhea

Related: How to Choose the Best Magnesium Supplement for Your Torso

Adaptogens are unusual because they modulate your cortisol in both directions: if your cortisol is low, adaptogens bring information technology up, and if your cortisol is high, they bring it downwardly. This makes adaptogens especially valuable for treating adrenal fatigue, where yous frequently deal with both highs and lows. Ashwagandha is my favorite. Exist warned, though: ashwagandha is Sanskrit for "smell of horse," and it lives up to its name — don't chew information technology, and get it in capsule class if you can.
L-theanine decreases both your physiological and psychological stress responses.^[] Information technology'southward a powerful style to promote calm clarity. You tin can as well pair information technology with your morn coffee for nootropic (aka brain-boosting) benefits — L-theanine and caffeine work synergistically.
Zen Mode has all the to a higher place and more than: magnesium, L-theanine, GABA, ashwagandha, vitamin B6, and several other calming compounds. It'southward great if you want to get all your anti-stress supplements in ane place.

Get serious about meditation

Meditation of any kind is 1 of the most powerful ways to deal with stress, and information technology can go a long manner toward normalizing your cortisol levels and treating adrenal fatigue.^[]

If you want to take your meditation to the adjacent level, I suggest forty Years Of Zen. It uses advanced neurofeedback engineering science to give you the encephalon of a lifelong Zen monk — in v days. Yous tin likewise cheque out this Biohacker's Guide To Meditation for other ways to ameliorate your meditation and notice more than inner calm. If you're new to meditation, first slow, with just 5 minutes a mean solar day, and work your way up.

Related: Use This Guided Meditation to Clear Your Mind and Observe Happiness

Stress direction is the all-time adrenal fatigue treatment

No matter who you are, you're going to face major challenges in your life sooner or after. Learning to bargain with stress and get more resilient is 1 of the near valuable skills you tin can develop. It'southward a core office of being Bulletproof, and it'due south essential to keeping adrenal fatigue at bay.

This guide should help y'all, and if you want more than tips, check out these other articles: