Has Any Body Here Successfully Recovered From Adrenal Fatigue/issues?

[MightyFall]

I'm overcoming an adrenal crisis induced by a severely restrictive low carb diet stint in 2013. I'm about 60% recovered but still have lingering (quite debilitating) brain fog issues, lack of productivity/motivation, out of whack cortisol levels and anxiety. The list is extensive.

I'm a 25 year old male, 5'9, 175 lbs and sedentary. My diet is a combination of Primal and Peat, pastured eggs and chicken, grass feed beef, white rice, potatoes, fruit. I eat probably 2000-2500 calories daily. I have a considerable amount of concentrated abdominal fat, which is common among adrenal fatigue sufferers. My body fat distribution is mostly in my hips and abdomen.

Any suggestions/opinions?

 

[answersfound]

I'm overcoming an adrenal crisis induced by a severely restrictive low carb diet stint in 2013. I'm about 60% recovered but still have lingering (quite debilitating) brain fog issues, lack of productivity/motivation, out of whack cortisol levels and anxiety. The list is extensive.

I'm a 25 year old male, 5'9, 175 lbs and sedentary. My diet is a combination of Primal and Peat, pastured eggs and chicken, grass feed beef, white rice, potatoes, fruit. I eat probably 2000-2500 calories daily. I have a considerable amount of concentrated abdominal fat, which is common among adrenal fatigue sufferers. My body fat distribution is mostly in my hips and abdomen.

Any suggestions/opinions?

I am in a very similar situation to you. I am 25 years old, male, 6', 175 lbs and sedentary. Ever since getting mono in 2011 I have struggled with what is called "adrenal fatigue" aka hypothyroidism. I believe it was only a matter of time for me, because I always felt somewhat weak, very thin and cold growing up. I had occasional anxiety and depression and always had this gut feeling that something was wrong with me. Mono was the straw that broke the camel's back. I have since had chronic/adrenal fatigue over the past 4 years.

I have seen minimal improvement over the past 2-3 years after discovering Peat. I was doing everything right in terms of caloric intake, minimizing puff, etc. so I knew I needed some extra support. About 2 months ago, I finally decided to try NDT (Nutri-pak bovine desiccated thyroid). I started out well, but eventually crashed with violent rejection from my body. From my research, I learned it was a low cortisol issue, so I began to incorporate pregnenolone and now can tolerate the NDT. I think pregnenolone can be used the same way the STTM people use adrenal glandular/hydrocortisone. I am a little bit warmer and have slightly more energy, but to be honest, I haven't made the progress as quickly as I had hoped. But I certainly feel things are moving in the right direction, which is something I have not been able to say in a while. I'm certainly better with it than I am without it. It sounds like you have the dietary foundation down, so I think your next step could be to experiment with these two supplements.

I hope one day I'll look back on my illness as a great teacher that taught me the importance of diet and other health measures. But I'm still not out of the woods, so I'm not sure how much value my recommendations can give you.

I'm seeing a highly regarded endocrinologist who is known to think outside the box on Thursday and hopefully he will have some insight to my situation and get me living a normal life again. I will give you an update on what he tells me I need to do.

 

[tara]

Hi MightyFall,
Have you run your typical daily diet through cronometer to see if you are particularly low on anything?
From what you write, unless you are eating the eggshells too, I wonder if you are getting enough calcium? Peat has suggested calcium:phosphorus 1:1 - 2:1, and I think recommended total calcium ~2000mg.

Do your temps and pulse indicate low metabolism?
Have you got any recent labs showing thyroid hormones?

Also (not directly from Peat), if you've been eating lowish calories like this for a while, I wonder if that could be a factor. Your body may assess the fuel supply as inadequate to sustain a higher/better functioning metabolism.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

I'm seeing a highly regarded endocrinologist who is known to think outside the box on Thursday and hopefully he will have some insight to my situation and get me living a normal life again. I will give you an update on what he tells me I need to do.

Hey lookingforanswers, How did your endo appointment go? An endo that thinks outside the box sounds intriguing....

I like your attitude regarding illness, some of the most powerful lessons stem from adversity.

 

[thebigpeatowski]

I'm a 25 year old male, 5'9, 175 lbs and sedentary. I eat probably 2000-2500 calories daily...

Any suggestions/opinions?

Hi MightyFall, I second the suggestion by tara on making sure to get enough calcium daily, but also it seems like your caloric intake is on the low end for such a young man. Do you drink coffee?

 

[cout12]

I used to be like that I guess. When I'm tired or unmotivated I just eat tons of sugar. Like I'd eat a whole cup of sugar in one sitting. Usually makes me feel better. Ray peat thinks it's safe to do so and I've done it enough time to know it feels amazing and has no noticeable side effects.

 

[sunmountain]

I had been low carbing and running on cortisol and adrenalin prior to Peat about 6 months ago.

I'm now much more resilient to stress, less impulsive, calmer, etc. I have accumulated abdominal fat on Peat and weight gain (from 113 to 130).

Eating more as well as pregnenolone-progesterone-thyroid and fructose have helped me. I am trying various things for the abdominal fat, slow persitalsis, probable fatty liver and insulin resistance.

 

[answersfound]

I'm seeing a highly regarded endocrinologist who is known to think outside the box on Thursday and hopefully he will have some insight to my situation and get me living a normal life again. I will give you an update on what he tells me I need to do.

Hey lookingforanswers, How did your endo appointment go? An endo that thinks outside the box sounds intriguing....

I like your attitude regarding illness, some of the most powerful lessons stem from adversity.

It went great, thank you for asking. He was a really nice guy and suspects a possible Reverse T3 issue. He is running a bunch of labs including free t3 and free t4. He was disssapointed that the other doctors I saw didn't consider me for hypothyroidism because my t3 and t4 numbers didn't suggest it, but my symptoms did. Here is the doctor I saw:

http://youtu.be/bTdyJ80igGg

 

[thebigpeatowski]

Cool! He seems smart!!! I do think reverse T3 can be an issue for some, I hope you will share your labs when you get them...if you feel like it. I also think some people can build up a tolerance of sorts to thyroid medication over time. How is your liver function?

 

[answersfound]

Cool! He seems smart!!! I do think reverse T3 can be an issue for some, I hope you will share your labs when you get them...if you feel like it. I also think some people can build up a tolerance of sorts to thyroid medication over time. How is your liver function?

Yes, I feel like I am in good hands. I definitely will share my labs. The tests are tomorrow morning. I don't really know how my liver function is, but I did test for elevated liver enzymes a couple months ago. Things could be different now.

 

[answersfound]

Cool! He seems smart!!! I do think reverse T3 can be an issue for some, I hope you will share your labs when you get them...if you feel like it. I also think some people can build up a tolerance of sorts to thyroid medication over time. How is your liver function?

Hey, here are my labs below. He confirmed I do have a Reverse T3 issue, as my ratio was 17.6 and ideally, it should be over 20. He has me on 5 mcg of Cytomel, twice per day. He says that will clear out the Reverse T3. I've been taking it for a couple days now and definitely feel better. I experienced a bad crash on day 3, but quickly realized it was due to my cortisol being used up, so I now take a fairly large dose of pregnenolone with the Cytomel. I think it takes 12 weeks for the Reverse T3 to clear, but I'm sure it depends on the person. Prior to this, I was taking desiccated thyroid for several months with little improvement, despite raising the dose extremely high. In hindsight, it was probably creating more Reverse T3, so I learned my lesson. Always get labs if possible.

He says we will retest things in a couple months and the low testosterone should sort itself out as well. To the OP, I highly recommend you get lab work done, and potentially experiment with Cytomel AND pregnenolone if necessary. It sounded like our symptoms were extremely similar.

 

[Bodhi]

You have low Cortisol?

 

[whodathunkit]

I've recovered. According to a 24 hour saliva test some years ago (less than 10 but can't exactly remember), my cortisol was completely flatlined below the normal range for the entire day.

Things that helped me included symptomatic interventions like salt loading and adrenal supplements. I got a lot of good out of Adrenergize by Enzymatic Therapy for a while.

Cleaning up my liver helped a lot. The more consistently better my diet has gotten, and thus the better my liver functions, the further I've moved away from adrenal symptoms.

Working on my thyroid helped, too. Iodine helped me a lot not long after I had the saliva test. I know iodine probably isn't popular around here but it helped me. I had had a bad experience with NDT some years before so wasn't willing to do that. Recently am having a good experience with haidut's Tyromax. Too soon to rave, but so far so good.

If I was to do it all over again and I was still very young I'd probably clean out my liver with a very low fat nutritious diet, being careful not to undereat. Then try addressing various hormone imbalances like thyroid, etc.

Main point being that I beat "adrenal fatigue". It can be done. You just have to find the right combination of therapeutic measures for you.