Adrenal Fatigue: Symptoms and Treatment in Women

August 22, 2023

woman head in hands fatigued at desk

Ladies, do you feel like you’re running on empty with no energy? Is it hard to get out of bed in the morning? Do you rely on coffee and naps to get you through each day? Do you feel anxious and burned out? If so, then your adrenal glands could be fatigued.

The Adrenal Glands

Your adrenal glands are endocrine glands located on top of your kidneys. They produce many important hormones, including cortisol, aldosterone, adrenaline, androgens, estrogen and progesterone. The adrenal hormones help regulate several bodily functions including metabolism, immune system, blood pressure and your body’s response to stress.

Cortisol

Cortisol is the natural adrenal steroid that is secreted in response to chronic stress, whether emotional or physical. It is also secreted in the event of injury, infection, inflammation or allergies. Cortisol potentiates the immune system’s ability to fight infections. Cortisol also promotes the assimilation of thyroid hormones and sex hormones by the cells of the body. It is also the body’s natural anti-inflammatory hormone.

What is Adrenal Fatigue?

Adrenal fatigue is a condition in which the adrenal glands, through chronic stress, are unable to meet the body’s demands for cortisol production. Your adrenal glands are worn out, so you feel increasingly fatigued, stressed, and anxious, to name only a few symptoms.

Adrenal Fatigue Symptoms

  • Severe fatigue – the number one symptom of adrenal fatigue
  • Anxiety or panic attacks
  • Hair loss
  • Muscle and joint pain
  • Chronic fatigue
  • Dizziness or lightheadedness upon standing
  • Hypotension (low blood pressure)
  • Heart palpitations
  • Difficulty “bouncing back” from stress
  • Recurrent infections
  • Allergies and/or asthma
  • Headaches
  • Irregular menstrual cycles
  • Infertility
  • Low libido
  • Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar)
  • Cold and heat intolerance

Meet Sherry, one of our amazing and knowledgeable New Guest Consultants, who will shed light on some of the common symptoms of adrenal fatigue, and the right natural treatment.

Video Transcription: Are Your Adrenal Glands in a Fatigued State?

Sherry: “Here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, we’d like to address the high-achieving woman who has just incredible talents, abilities, innate gifts, and yet she has some health issues pulling her back. Possibly her adrenals are in a fatigued state.

“How do you know if your adrenals are fatigued? Usually you feel anxiety, panic, a feeling of running on empty. Some women feel like they’re dying because if you cut the adrenal glands out, we are dead in 24 to 48 hours. We can cut the ovaries out, but we don’t die. We can have the thyroid removed, we don’t die. But the adrenals, there’s a real hierarchy.

“So let’s just say we’re burning the candle at both ends 24/7, and we’re getting burned out, and we’re just starting to develop these health issues, including infertility. Why is that, and what can we do about it? Well, if your adrenal function is not optimized, the body gets really nervous, so it will turn to the sex hormones and literally has the ability to convert sex hormones into adrenal cortisol just to keep you alive, and that’ll shut down fertility.

How do we treat this? Well, when you come to the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, we want to get a baseline of all three: thyroid, the primary sex hormones, and your adrenal cortisol level, and we want to listen to the clinical symptoms you have in each one of those categories, even if you’ve been told that the blood work is “normal” by other doctors. No. We want to hear it from you, what symptoms you’re experiencing in those three groups, where you are symptomatic, and where we can see, with the baseline, this patient, this guest may benefit from a little bit of natural bioidentical cortisol.

“We make it right here in the compounding pharmacy. It’s a very, very low dose designed to revive the adrenal glands. We’re talking three to five milligrams, where the adrenal glands make 20 to 30 milligrams every day when they’re functioning properly.

“So we’re not trying to shut down the adrenal function and bypass it with too high a dose like prednisone or cortisone, which are like 40 milligrams or many, many times more than bioidentical cortisol. It’s like rebooting a computer. We want to give you enough natural cortisol just to kick the glands back into action, because they are revivable. For the most part, they’re very revivable. They’re designed to last a whole lifetime.

“Ovaries are designed to last about 50 years. So we have to keep the adrenals going for our entire lifetime, and if we can just reboot that computer with a little natural bioidentical cortisol until they start to come back on, and you’ll know it, we’ll know it because you’re telling us things like, “I was driving down the freeway and I wasn’t as anxious. Normally when my boss yells at me, I get a panic attack and I have to leave the office. I have to go outside for a little while.”

“You’re going to start telling us, “I’m not having as much anxiety or panic attack. I feel like my bucket is more full instead of running on empty. I want to stay in the game instead of withdraw.” Because it’s fight or flight. If you’ve got good adrenal function, you’re able to get pregnant, you want to stay in the fast lane. That’s the fight. If you have low adrenal function, that’s flight, flee, withdraw.

“Do you know anyone that’s a shut in that won’t come out of their room and yet they’re in the prime of their life? There is a very good chance that their adrenals are in a very fatigued state, and if we could take a look at all three, thyroid, sex hormones, adrenal, replenish where they’re deficient, and get them all back in sync and optimized, we can get back to good health and achieving those goals.”

Video Transcription: Connection Among Thyroid Hormones, Female Hormones and Adrenal Glands

Sherry: “I would like to address high-achieving women and how we can keep you in your driver’s seat and able to fulfill your innate abilities and enhance them and never lose them. I think it’s so important for you to understand the connection between your thyroid, your female hormones, and your adrenal glands.

“They (the adrenal glands) sit right on top of the kidneys at the lower back. Adrenal, on kidney, that’s what that means, adrenal. Those glands make several hormones. But the ones that you and I know are adrenaline and cortisol. If all of a sudden someone yelled “The house is on fire,” you’re being chased by a bear in the woods, that’s the adrenaline. Boy, it’s coming out full force survival. It’s getting you out of danger, gets the heart rate up, gets you out of danger.

“On the more daily basis, oh, your bank account’s overdrawn, the boss is yelling at you, the kids are just driving you crazy, there’s just so much noise, that’s the cortisol constantly being triggered, constantly being triggered to basically rally you, keep you afloat. It’s fight or flight. If you are running 24/7, you have a full-time job, you’re going to law school at night, you’ve got three kids, you have a very demanding husband, and oh my goodness, the in-laws and just the dogs and the yard and all these things on your plate, it’s very, very possible for the adrenal glands to fatigue.

“They are not meant to run 24/7. It’s sort of like the caveman analogy where you go out for the hunt, to kill for survival, and you get this burst of adrenaline and cortisol for survival. Then the analogy is you come back to the cave and you have a week or two to rest, and you have all this food to survive on and your body, your adrenal glands, get a chance to revive.

“We don’t live like that anymore. When you’re running 24/7, burning the candle at both ends wanting it all, which you can have it all, you just have to stay in the game to achieve it. One of the main ways is to keep your adrenals revived at all time. When you start to feel anxiety, panic, a feeling of running on empty, or if you ever secretly say to yourself, “I feel like I’m dying,” it’s a good possibility that you need to have your adrenal glands, your cortisol level checked. If we don’t have good adrenal function, like if you just took a little animal and cut the adrenal glands out, or we cut the adrenal glands out of a human, they’ll probably live about 24, 48 hours and then boom. Without adrenals, we don’t survive. It’s survival of self.

“When the adrenals get so worn down into a fatigue state where they don’t revive on their own with rest or vacation, body gets real nervous. It thinks it’s dying, so it turns to the primary sex hormones for men and women, and literally has the ability to convert sex hormones into cortisol. It’s saying, “Forget procreation of future races. We have to keep the host alive.” This is how stress or adrenal fatigue can domino down and blunt sex hormone production.

FREE BOOK GIVE-AWAY

In Dr. Hotze’s book, Hormones, Health, and Happiness, he describes his journey of going from conventional medicine, which uses surgery and pharmaceutical drugs, to a natural, functional, holistic approach of actively listening to his patients and treating the root cause of their symptoms.

In Dr. Hotze’s book, you will learn not only about properly diagnosing and treating hypothyroidism, but also about allergies, yeast (Candida), female and male hormones, adrenal fatigue and cortisol, a nutritionally balanced eating program and vitamin and mineral supplementation.

book cover for Hormones, Health, and Happiness

We Can Help

Are you not feeling well and having symptoms such as low or no energy, difficulty sleeping, depressed moods, anxiety, constipation, digestive issues, weight gain, low libido, joint pain and more? Take our Symptom Checker to find out what could be the cause of your symptoms.

Contact our New Guest Consultants today at 281-698-8698 for a complimentary consultation and let us guide you on the right path to wellness. It’s time to get your life back!

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Ryanne’s Story – Tired of Being Tired

Written By: Steven F. Hotze, M.D.

Steven F. Hotze, M.D., is the founder and CEO of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, Hotze Vitamins and Physicians Preference Pharmacy International, LLC.

 

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Since 1989, Hotze Health & Wellness Center has helped over 33,000 patients get their lives back using bioidentical hormones that restore hormones to optimal levels, strengthen immune systems, and increase energy levels. Our treatment regimen addresses the root cause of hypothyroidism, adrenal fatigue, menopause, perimenopause, low testosterone, allergies, and candida.

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