Low Cortisol,hormones And High Dhea, Cholesterol, Blood Sugar?

[Steven Mesita]

Hey Everyone,

Newbie here. My naturopath ran a cortisol test and I was diagnosed with stage 3 adrenal fatigue. I’m a 32 y/o make. In general I’ve been a very active athlete and l would life weights/play basketball a lot. Went through a stressful period in life and then years later developed fatigue, weight gain, brain fog, panic attacks/anxiety, and more. Come a long way since then. Couple symptoms I’m trying to figure out is after I play basketball ( , I feel good for a couple hours and then hours later I crash. Also it seems like I gain weight instead of lose it, my stomachs fat increases .

Would be thankful for any insight you all have!

Symptoms/Treatments:

Low coritsol all day:

Morning 7.2
Noon 2.2
Evening 1.3
Night >0.33

Taking Adrecore and Adrenal Complex with Licorice Root.

Neurotransmitters on the low side:

Glutamate. 10.0
Epinephrine. 2.0
Norepinephrine 11.7
Dopamine 113
(PEA) (65) little high

Taking Balance D, travacor,vitamin c, zinc, vitamin D, choline, l-phenalyine, Acetyl Carnitine, COQ10, amino acids, collagen peptides

Border line pre-diabetes

Taking metabol complex, cinnamon with chromium. Having a hard time fixing this.

High cholesterol. Also not sure where this came from or if it has to do with my hormones being out of whack?

Cholesterol, Total 256

Triglycerides 204

HDL Cholesterol 51

VLDL Cholesterol Cal 41

LDL Cholesterol Calc 164


Always have had hyper sweating during exercise. (taking magnesium, Calcium, 1 tsp of salt, potassium, Electrolyte drink)

Hormone imbalances:

DHEA: 363 High
Testosterone: 56 pg/ml (says suboptimal)
Progesterone 26
E1. 11.4
E2. .90
E3. 27.9
PG/E2 ration. 28.9 (says ratio in line with estrogen dominance)

Just started progesterone cream 5mg and pregnolone 2.5 mg per day. Pregnolone at night makes me anxious and wired.

Any insight would be great! The insulin resistance/high cholesterol part has been hard to beat and I wonder if that’s why I feel so bad after exercise? The strange thing is it’s always a delayed reaction either a few hour later I feel bad if I play ball in the morning or if I play at both I get the delayed fatigue the next day.

Asked for them to test me for hypo also, but they only tested a couple markers :/ .

t4 free , 1.12
TSH, 2.310

Not sure where to go from here, I’ve been trying to beat this thing for a couple years now.

 

[Frankdee20]

Neurotransmitter tests are useless unless they come from a spinal tap

 

[morgan#1]

It seems like you’re body is shutting down with all the exercise. I was running 7-8 miles a day, doing hot yoga, weightlifting, etc. and my hormones just evaporated,lol. I’m not sedentary at all now, but I was beating myself up for the adrenaline high. It felt so good. And why shouldn’t a body feel that good.

But I pushed it way too far. Initially I lifted 2-3 weekly and only did cardio once. I think that was really good, to go from hardcore 6days weekly to doing cardio 1 day out of the week. For about a month or so I hardly did anything extremely raising my heart rate. I took it as my cheat month. My body was so fragile.

Now I lift weights 2-3, and I do about 30 of biking or stair stepper or short sprints 3days a week. I check my heart rate even while doing free weights, and usually it’s around 130-140. So for me rest between sets is a big deal. If it stays up there too long your body will think it’s under stress. I’m sure I’d be further along physiologically if I didn’t do as much cardio but my body needs to move and be active or I would really suffer depression. I have a better body now than I did before, muscles and leanness. I just didn’t overdo the fat.

And your talking about how you gain weight after you workout. That’s probably lactic acid maybe, or water. You’ll lose that. I was in the same spot as you. I was really nervous to back off on exercise, it takes a few weeks for your body to get used to this. But it’s like taking the leap of faith. I take walks on my days off from the gym. Sometimes I just completely take a day off, that’s hard. You can get there, just read Ray Peat’s articles. Especially about adrenal fatigue, I believe he says that if you scoop out all of the matter of an animal, rats?, it can regenerate very fast. I believe this is why he thinks the adrenal fatigue is a fad. I think he says that you need to fix your thyroid and maybe a little tweaking on your hormones and the right kind (for you) of diet, and all will be well.

I would suggest you not try to many supplements. I overdid it with a lot of peat-recommended supplements. And now (after about a year) I wish I hadn’t. It seems you do need to focus on the thyroid. I think that Peat says anything above 1 is not ideal.

And the progesterone, that’s a positive step. I used cream before I found Peat, and it worked but I used much more. I’m a woman. Even as a guy you might want to raise that, but I’ve recently heard that Peat thinks that lower doses of hormones are more powerful. Also Peat recommends not cream but orally, if you can find a tincture and put a little vitamin E on your gums and then put the progesterone. Haidut on the forum sells progesterone, so you can find it through his website, idealabs dc. It’s listed as a merchant on here. And obviously many companies sell P. And their is progest-e. Many guys are taking progesterone to handle their estrogens and because it is the most protective hormone around.

I’ve been at this a little more than a year. I’m sure you will go through hard times and great times. You’ll get to know your body, and what it can and cannot handle. Now you just need to be careful with the exercise, and remember it won’t always be this much of a fragility. It just takes time. You’ll be stronger and more able to handle the stresses of exercise.

One other thing is I think some people on this forum don’t eat enough. I’m eating around 2,600-3,000 cals. The body needs calories to repair itself, especially now. My body put on weight, but after a few weeks it let go of it. Muscles take up a lot of energy/calories.

 

[syncronicity]

Hey Everyone,

Newbie here. My naturopath ran a cortisol test and I was diagnosed with stage 3 adrenal fatigue. I’m a 32 y/o make. In general I’ve been a very active athlete and l would life weights/play basketball a lot. Went through a stressful period in life and then years later developed fatigue, weight gain, brain fog, panic attacks/anxiety, and more. Come a long way since then. Couple symptoms I’m trying to figure out is after I play basketball ( , I feel good for a couple hours and then hours later I crash. Also it seems like I gain weight instead of lose it, my stomachs fat increases .

Would be thankful for any insight you all have!

Symptoms/Treatments:

Low coritsol all day:

Morning 7.2
Noon 2.2
Evening 1.3
Night >0.33

Taking Adrecore and Adrenal Complex with Licorice Root.

Neurotransmitters on the low side:

Glutamate. 10.0
Epinephrine. 2.0
Norepinephrine 11.7
Dopamine 113
(PEA) (65) little high

Taking Balance D, travacor,vitamin c, zinc, vitamin D, choline, l-phenalyine, Acetyl Carnitine, COQ10, amino acids, collagen peptides

Border line pre-diabetes

Taking metabol complex, cinnamon with chromium. Having a hard time fixing this.

High cholesterol. Also not sure where this came from or if it has to do with my hormones being out of whack?

Cholesterol, Total 256

Triglycerides 204

HDL Cholesterol 51

VLDL Cholesterol Cal 41

LDL Cholesterol Calc 164


Always have had hyper sweating during exercise. (taking magnesium, Calcium, 1 tsp of salt, potassium, Electrolyte drink)

Hormone imbalances:

DHEA: 363 High
Testosterone: 56 pg/ml (says suboptimal)
Progesterone 26
E1. 11.4
E2. .90
E3. 27.9
PG/E2 ration. 28.9 (says ratio in line with estrogen dominance)

Just started progesterone cream 5mg and pregnolone 2.5 mg per day. Pregnolone at night makes me anxious and wired.

Any insight would be great! The insulin resistance/high cholesterol part has been hard to beat and I wonder if that’s why I feel so bad after exercise? The strange thing is it’s always a delayed reaction either a few hour later I feel bad if I play ball in the morning or if I play at both I get the delayed fatigue the next day.

Asked for them to test me for hypo also, but they only tested a couple markers :/ .

t4 free , 1.12
TSH, 2.310

Not sure where to go from here, I’ve been trying to beat this thing for a couple years now.

Welcome.

It’ll behoove you to read Ray Peat’s articles from his web site and listen to his KMUD radio interviews with the Herb Doctors.

Here’s a good overview: “adrenal fatigue, it’s not what you think” or better yet, it’s not what your ND thinks it is.
8 Lesser known signs of adrenal fatigue

Your elevated cholesterol suggests you are not utilizing the cholesterol to make hormones, which are needed for all things related to good health, namely an energy efficient metabolism, and your TSH backs that up. I believe Ray indicates TSH should be down around 0.0 - 0.4, and that when its elevated it is a sign of inflamation (may have worded that incorrectly, but you want it lower).

The excessive sweating, I’ve experienced this too, and it may very well be what’s called “flushing” that occurs during night time sweats (you may have experienced this phenomena). Your body is lowering its temperature by “flushing” - opening skin pores to allow heat to dissipate; it feels like you’re sweating because you’re active, but it’s actually a response to not having enough energy to meat the energy demands of the activity, so your body cools itself to avoid expending energy to fast as a compensating mechanism for not having enough fuel (blood sugar). This happens to folks during the night, usually referred to as night sweats. There’s a KMUD cast with this topic in the subject. Next time it happens, become aware of your body temperature, look to find out if you’re actually getting hotter or cooler, likely not warmer.

The crash a couple hours after exercising is likely tied to re-feeding, at which point the stress hormones turn-off when you get your blood sugar back-up - you feel sleepy because the stress hormones are no longer propping you up (adrenaline).

Abdomen fat is from cortisol, which coroberates the above. When you run low on blood sugar, your body releases adrenaline and then cortisol; the adrenaline squeezes out the remaining glycogen stores from your liver and muscles, and the cortisol liberates amino acids from your own tissues to make glucose to fuel your brain and other organs until you refuel. This is the process that keeps you energized until later when you crash. This is common, many folks have found themselves hear through this practice, myself included.

NDs are focused on adrenal fatigue and miss the big picture, thyroid, glucose metabolism, oxidative metabolism and the adaptive hormones progesterone, pregnenolone, dhea, testosterone. The adrenal hormones are the stress hormones, they’re fatigued because you’re relying on them to function, the real issue is the metabolism that makes efficient energy, abundant energy to heal and keep going; treating the adrenal fatigue doesn’t get to the root problem, You don’t want to spend time coddling a blown spare tire, you want to focus your efforts on getting the original tire blown-up (restoring metabolism), not the best analogy, but it was the one that came up. Your metabolism has been impaired for sometime based on your symptoms and you’ve habituated to running on stress hormones. You’ll need to read and listen to more of Peat for this part of the story (as to why the health industry is the way it is). Naruropaths take many pages out of MDs books.

A history of consuming PUFA is central to the stress hormone adaptation. Most folks here are avoiding PUFA, recovering from low-carb paleo diets, avoiding starch to minimize irritation in the GI (and subsequent endotoxin and estrogen), learning to fuel their bodies with simple carbohydrates from fruits, honey, milk, get electrolytes and protein levels-up, etc. You’ll need to learn that your diet is deficient and that you’re relying on stress hormones to shore up the defficiencies, its been going on for a while.

It’s a decent learning curve, but you’ve got youth on your side and more importantly you’ve found the RP Forum which is a great knowledge base of experience with all things you are experiencing. Like I said at the begining, you’ll need to read and listen to Ray Peat, it’ll take time but it’ll eventually make sense.

 

[syncronicity]

Guide To Ray Peat: Simple, User-friendly Guide To Applying Lessons Learned From The Research Of RP

 

[fradon]

Hey Everyone,

Newbie here. My naturopath ran a cortisol test and I was diagnosed with stage 3 adrenal fatigue. I’m a 32 y/o make. In general I’ve been a very active athlete and l would life weights/play basketball a lot. Went through a stressful period in life and then years later developed fatigue, weight gain, brain fog, panic attacks/anxiety, and more. Come a long way since then. Couple symptoms I’m trying to figure out is after I play basketball ( , I feel good for a couple hours and then hours later I crash. Also it seems like I gain weight instead of lose it, my stomachs fat increases .

Would be thankful for any insight you all have!

Symptoms/Treatments:

Low coritsol all day:

Morning 7.2
Noon 2.2
Evening 1.3
Night >0.33

Taking Adrecore and Adrenal Complex with Licorice Root.

Neurotransmitters on the low side:

Glutamate. 10.0
Epinephrine. 2.0
Norepinephrine 11.7
Dopamine 113
(PEA) (65) little high

Taking Balance D, travacor,vitamin c, zinc, vitamin D, choline, l-phenalyine, Acetyl Carnitine, COQ10, amino acids, collagen peptides

Border line pre-diabetes

Taking metabol complex, cinnamon with chromium. Having a hard time fixing this.

High cholesterol. Also not sure where this came from or if it has to do with my hormones being out of whack?

Cholesterol, Total 256

Triglycerides 204

HDL Cholesterol 51

VLDL Cholesterol Cal 41

LDL Cholesterol Calc 164


Always have had hyper sweating during exercise. (taking magnesium, Calcium, 1 tsp of salt, potassium, Electrolyte drink)

Hormone imbalances:

DHEA: 363 High
Testosterone: 56 pg/ml (says suboptimal)
Progesterone 26
E1. 11.4
E2. .90
E3. 27.9
PG/E2 ration. 28.9 (says ratio in line with estrogen dominance)

Just started progesterone cream 5mg and pregnolone 2.5 mg per day. Pregnolone at night makes me anxious and wired.

Any insight would be great! The insulin resistance/high cholesterol part has been hard to beat and I wonder if that’s why I feel so bad after exercise? The strange thing is it’s always a delayed reaction either a few hour later I feel bad if I play ball in the morning or if I play at both I get the delayed fatigue the next day.

Asked for them to test me for hypo also, but they only tested a couple markers :/ .

t4 free , 1.12
TSH, 2.310

Not sure where to go from here, I’ve been trying to beat this thing for a couple years now.

crashing after basketball and lifting could be low cortisol. zinc and mag block acth which the cortisol stimulating hormone. if you keep dosing on these supplements they will block your body's abliity to release cortisol when then no glucose and you crash.

maybe stop the zinc and mag and any other supplement that blocks ACTH. you want your body to make cortisol to give fuel.

over hydration also blocks and lowers cortisol...try going a day without water to let your body dehydrate a little. this can help stimulate adrenals a bit. in chinese med over hydration is called YIN. you want to be a little more dry which is YANG.

you may also need more copper. try eating cashews and turnip greens both high in copper. copper is the fundemental mineral for dopamine and adrenaline and if you have been sweating a lot or supplementing zinc or even drinking a lot of sports drinks you could have low copper.

 

[wintagal]

Thyroid. 1. High cholesterol - a good indicator of low thyroid. 2. low thyroid can cause belly fat, brain fog, insulin resistance.
BUT - With your low adrenal function, you are probably converting your own T4 into reverse T3, which is in the cellular receptors and does not allow your own T3 to be available at the cellular level. You can test rt3 through Life Extension without a Dr order to verify.
The key is cortisol. Even T3 will not be very effective if you can't improve cortisol levels and it will burn up what little cortisol you have, making you worse.

 

[Steven Mesita]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks so much for all the advice, really appreciate the insight. Got a lot of homework and reading to do. I also just got some more test done last week.

Morning Cortisol : 21.6
Total Cholesterol: 279
Triglycerides: 204
HDl : 52
VlDl : 41
LDL: 186
Reverse T3 : 15.6
A1C: 5.7

This time I did the cortisol test by a blood test instead of saliva so not sure if that’s why my results were so different? I could of been stressed from about to get the blood test, Cortisol has almost triple and considered high now. As mentioned above it used to be really really low. I wonder if the supplements Overcompensated?
Cholesterol has gone higher. A1C is still the same.

 

[wintagal]

Old studies show that high LDL always decreased when thyroid was given.
Cortisol is quite variable from minute to minute, but a level of 21 indicates that your adrenals are responding.
You gave free T4 of 1.12 but no range ,so it's hard to interpret. Thyroid might be your issue.

 

[Steven Mesita]

@wintagal thanks for the feedback.

The ref rang for free T4 was 0.82 - 1.77 Ng/dL

 

[Steven Mesita]

@haidut been reading a lot of your posts and about ideal labs products. All great stuff, would love your insight. Trying to figure out what going on with me as doctors haven’t been able to. Any idealabs products you reccomend trying?

 

[haidut]

@haidut been reading a lot of your posts and about ideal labs products. All great stuff, would love your insight. Trying to figure out what going on with me as doctors haven’t been able to. Any idealabs products you reccomend trying?

I would test fasting blood sugar, prolactin, and blood cortisol (both AM and PM in the same day). Since your DHEA is high, I would not use pregnenolone and maybe better to just stay with the progesterone for now. Low T and TSH above 2 suggest low thyroid function, which can sometimes cause adrenal hyperactivity. So, I would do the cortisol, prolactin and blood sugar tests and see what they show. I suspect it the results from those tests will give your doctor more direction in regards to diagnosis.