I would strongly recommend going the nutritional balancing route. Take a look at Onward's post and Marie64's. They have both made a lot of progress from being very far down the road of adrenal fatigue.

I did the T3 thing a few years back and let me tell you..I wish I hadn't. Messing with your hormones like that can actually spin you further into adrenal fatigue. It will rev up your system even further and tax your adrenals. It can be quite dangerous.I had some pretty bad symptoms from taking that. And guess what? My hair analysis did show that my thyroid was slow. But I'm having better success fixing it slowly with nutrition and a few supplements.

I think the majority of us on NB would fail the adrenal tests you mentioned. But that doesn't mean your adrenals have failed entirely. I had days a year or so ago where all I could do was get dressed in the morning and I was exhausted. I have come a long ways from that and can handle so much more now on most days.

I would encourage you to find a good practitioner to work with and don't go it alone.

All the best to you!

Hi - I'm sorry to hear you are having such a challenging time recovering from your AF. I know what that can feel like. I was diagnosed with a very severe case of AF about 18 years ago, and spend several months trying treatments that didn't work until I found some that did.

You might want to try consulting my Dr. Her name is Rose Mary Camren, and she recovered from a very severe case of AF before she became a Doctor of Natural Medicine years ago. She helped me recover from my own very severe case, and my adrenals have been fine for several years now. She is based in the Seattle area, which is where I live. She does phone and e-mail consultations, and mails out supplements twice a week. Her website is http://www.thenaturaldr.com.
Her e-mail addresses are [email protected] and [email protected]. Good luck to you.

Tom

Hi,

I am no professional but I feel for you deeply. The truth is the HC maybe making your adrenals worse. Google it and you will soon discover why your adrenals are so bad. I don't think Dr. Lam's and Wilson's Adrenal protocol is too weak, it's just that they are not addressing the digestive issue brought on by the possible mineral imbalance. In the beginning, I had a bad case of adrenal fatigue, bacterial overgrowth and I was Mercury Toxic. But once I improved my digestion and eliminated the pathogens I feel great.

The natural approach is much better i.e. adrenal glandular. But be very careful in treating your endocrine system by natural means. Although, natural medicine works better because that is what our bodies are genetically predisposed for, during the initial healing stage, you may be in for some more adverse reactions. There are 4 reasons for this.

1) The continued Fight or Flight response you are experiencing may have completely destroyed your digestion. Doctors will tell you that people often have too much stomach acid, hence the burping and heartburn, however, the symptoms of low stomach also mirrors that of high. You've undergone so much stress that all your blood supply, needed for digestion, has been redirected to your muscles so you can survive under highly stressful situations. Digestion needs a rich blood supply in order to assimilate all the nutrients from your food. In addition, your pancreas has stopped producing digestive enzymes.

2) Get your self checked for candida overgrowth, SIBO(Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth) and parasites. The stress that continues to deplete your energy reserves has no doubt killed off all your friendly microflora(probiotics). This allows pathogens to take hold. Incidentally, probiotics also manufacture digestive enzymes

3) You may have a mineral imbalance. When stress occurs, the first mineral to go is zinc. Zinc is needed for making hundreds of enzymes, namely digestive enzymes and, most importantly, stomach acid. When Zinc gets low copper gets high. Zinc is also needed to make adrenal hormones. Now Copper is also known as the emotional mineral because too much can cause aggression and irritability and severe mood swings. It does this by overstimulating the adrenal glands, making them release norepinephrine, the most common neurotransmitter controlling the sympathetic or fight or flight response. Zinc, on the other hand, like magnesium is a calming mineral. When both these minerals work properly, zinc will help balance your hormones and copper is the prime catalyst for energy production in your body.

4) Heavy Metal Toxicity i.e Mercury poisoning

So before you even try natural medicine, experiment first and try to take HCL tablets, pancreatic enzymes and Full Spectrum Digestive enzymes first. Without adequate digestive juices, it does not matter if you are eating healthy and taking natural supplements. All that will be for nothing, as long as you cannot properly digest your food.

A word of advice: Don't be confused by your blood work results, especially for thyroid. It only measures thyroid hormone in the blood but ignores that found in tissues. Thyroid hormone controls nearly every cell in the body! So a blood test is not full proof. Also, modern medicine is growing increasingly indifferent to the patients needs. They are so obsessed with test results that unfortunately they forget to observe the patient's symptoms. In reality the patient always comes first.

SO REMEMBER DIGESTION FIRST. IT IS CRUCIAL, OTHERWISE HEALING WILL BE VERY DIFFICULT.

Please disregard everything I've said if that has made you uncomfortable. I Honestly care for people like you that needlessly suffer.

Merry Christmas to you and a Happy New Year.

Glands2

Hi 160844- See my post above. I was in stage 3(exhaustion) according to ARL when I first started 1 year ago. However there are many things to address if you want a complete healing.

I really started to heal once I effectively treated the sibo and other gut pathogens. I don't think NB alone will deal with these. I have also added probiotics in the last month as my gut flora has been very deranged for a very long time.

Best of health!