Anxiety and Adrenal Fatigue

RSS

This is a guest post by Dr. Jessica Corbeille, ND.

Anxiety impacts your body, and your body impacts your anxiety. It’s a vicious cycle that winds you up and wears you down.

Are you someone who would describe yourself as "having anxiety"? Are there physical symptoms that you feel in your body when you feel anxious?

Do you get headaches, flushing, rapid heartbeats, sweating, angst, trembling, poor digestion, a pit in your stomach, difficulty breathing, diarrhea, and/or insomnia?

Are you also someone who describes yourself as having low energy, being exhausted, or worn out?

You may be experiencing both anxiety and "adrenal fatigue".

You may be interested to learn that your symptoms of anxiety and adrenal fatigue go hand in hand.

The anxiety wears out your adrenal gland, and the resultant adrenal fatigue ramps up your anxiety.

Let's first talk about your adrenal system.

adrenal fatigue The adrenal organs are two small "hats" that sit on the top of your kidneys. The kidneys are located in your low back area, and humans generally have two of them with two adrenal glands sitting on top.

The main functions of the adrenal glands are to produce hormones such as sex hormones, adrenalin, cortisol, and aldosterone (a mineral and water retention hormone). Today we will focus on the production of the adrenalin hormones.

Before we dive into adrenalin and stress further, let's also discuss the nervous system.

The nervous system is comprised of two general states:

the "Fight or Flight" state (Sympathetic Nervous System - SNS), and
the "Rest and Digest" state (Parasympathetic Nervous System (PSNS)

A healthy body can flux between the two states as needed.

When you are getting ready to present a lecture to co-workers, your body is more in the “Fight or Flight” state. Conversely, when you sit down for a meal with loved ones, your body should be in a “Rest and Digest” state.

When in the “Fight or Flight” state, your body produces adrenalin to give you energy and stamina to get through whatever your task may be, large or small. When your body is in the “Rest and Digest” state, the body produces more enzymes in your gastrointestinal tract for digestion as well as neurotransmitters to slow the heart rate and promote sleep.

The problem that many people face today is that they are stuck in "overdrive": they are stuck in the Fight or Flight state where their body constantly feels like it needs more adrenalin to get through the stressful day of events. People rarely sit down for meals and are often reading stressful emails right before trying to go to bed.

When the body is requiring more and more adrenalin to get through the stressful day, the demand on the adrenals to make the adrenalin increases.

The adrenals, like the rest of a human body, do all they can to compensate as long as possible. They try very hard to meet your demands--they produce more and more adrenalin to help you get all the things done in the day that you need to do.

When adrenal pathways are shunted towards making more and more adrenalin, other pathways, like those to make cortisol, sex hormones, and aldosterone start to suffer. We ultimately end up with a very unbalanced system.

That overuse of the adrenal gland causes adrenal fatigue. Your adrenals are fatigued. And you feel fatigued.

Now, let's circle back to see how the nervous system triggering adrenalin production contributes to anxiety.

Imagine going your whole day in the Fight or Flight state.

How does this state feel when you are aware of it? How does it feel when someone turns right in front of you in traffic and you narrowly avoid a collision? What happens with your body?

Most likely, you experience sweating, flushing, rapid heart rate, a stomach ache, etc.

Now, imagine if we are constantly sending that Fight or Flight message to your body.

You may be seeing now how a body under a great deal of stress all day long makes more and more adrenalin and thus causes some of the same symptoms that people experience when they describe their anxiety –angst, sweating, flushing, poor digestion, rapid heart rate, etc.

A body under this amount of stress all day is bound to feel strung out and exhausted, wired and tired, anxious and totally fatigued.

Help for adrenal fatigue.

Although it's usually not an overnight fix, one way to support a person who is experiencing anxiety is to help modulate this stress response in their body.

There are several natural products that help to modulate the body's response to stress and help the body move easier to and from the Fight or Flight and Rest and Digest states.

Supplements that have helped my patients

Although you are always encouraged to speak to your healthcare provider about your individual case, some products that can be especially helpful for anxiety related to adrenal fatigue include:

Herbals geared towards adrenal modulation, i.e. “Adaptogens”, such as: Ashwaganda, Schisandra, Eleutherococcus, Oplopanex, Gingko, Oat, Licorice
Vitamins like B12, B6, B5, C, and D (*see blog post on Vitamin D and anxiety)
Minerals like zinc, magnesium, potassium, calcium, sodium
DHEA
Adrenal glandular supplements

Ultimately, a person given the proper nutrient therapy to support their anxiety and adrenal fatigue should feel like they have more energy to do the things they want and need to do, feel like they are better able to sleep deeply, and, generally, feel less anxious through their day.

---------

Written by Dr. Jessica Corbeille, a naturopathic physician at Elevated Natural Health in Seattle, WA . Dr. Corbeille is a graduate from Bastyr University, WA . She specializes in wellness medicine, chronic disease, anxiety, genomics, and pain management using specific injection techniques. Contact Dr. Corbeille for a free 5 minute "meet-and-greet" phone call or to set up a new patient visit at 206-566-7255 or contact@elevatednaturalhealth.com

Elevated Natural Health is a wellness center in Seattle, WA, specializing in wellness medicine: a proactive approach to health with wellness as the goal. The belief is that health is not merely the absence of disease, it is the presence of wellness. Call today to talk to a physician about how you can begin your journey towards wellness now.