7 Causes of Adrenal Burnout
Adrenal burnout is common in most of our patients, but is also prevalent in over 70% of the adult population.
Strong adrenals are vital for your health and longevity, however many people have poor adrenal health which is behind almost every chronic symptom they experience such as fatigue, sleep problems, migraines, acid reflux, hostility, anger, fears, phobias, hypertension, hypotension, arteries hardening and blood pressure issues, arthritis, bone problems, and especially chronic low back pain.
There are many factors that contribute to chronic symptoms, but at the root of the problem are weak adrenals.
Here are 7 common causes of adrenal burnout
Nutritional deficiencies
Understanding nutritional deficiencies is key to healing your adrenals.
For example, if you don’t have selenium, you won’t be able to convert inactive thyroid hormone to active T3 hormone.
Another example is zinc, which sends a signal to your hypothalamus, so without zinc, the hypothalamus starts to lose its mechanism of sending signals.
Nutritional deficiency, antioxidant deficiency, protein deficiency, and hydration deficiency are all areas of focus in a patient’s mineral rebalancing program.
Excessive stress
Stress is a good thing for the body, but your coping mechanisms of how you deal with stress are what you should pay attention to.
Do you act too aggressively or do you not act enough?
There is a fine line on how we deal with stress.
If you are taking hit after hit after hit, and you are not dealing with something, then your body will pay the price subconsciously.
Emotional and psychological stresses play a huge role, so if you go into burnout, then you physically will not be able to handle important parts of your life like children, your spouse or loved one, coworkers, or friends.
It is very important to understand how emotions play a role in adrenal exhaustion.
Toxic metals and chemicals
It is not just about ‘getting lead out’, but it is about getting all toxic metals out like cadmium, mercury, biounavailable copper, bad iron, etc.
All of these metals and along with chemicals in the environment such as petrochemicals, xenoestrogens, etc. are destroying human health, so we have to address these in order to fix the physiology.
One must always be detoxing intelligently to get these out of the body to clear pathways.
Chronic infections
If you are plagued with chronic infections, all of your energy will go into dealing with them because your body goes into survival mode.
It leaves you with slow oxidative levels of energy because your body is always fighting off the infections, for example tooth infections, gut infections, yeast infections, etc.
Our society is plagued with infections, so it is something we always test for.
Stimulants
One begins to crave sugar, carbohydrates, coffee, and other stimulants due to low energy.
This becomes a vicious cycles as these stimulants give you a temporary boost, but in the long run weaken your adrenals even more.
Once we fix the biochemistry, then the need for the sugar, carbohydrates, and stimulants will start to diminish.
Unhealthy response to stress
One must fix the biochemistry to have the fortitude to deal with the emotional highs and lows of life.
It is a complex system that involves seeing things from a holistic point of view and learning how to respond to stress in the best manner for your physiology.
Congenital weak adrenals
This is something one is born with–including myself.
I’ve made a point to study everything there is to know about the subject as it has become a priority in my life and because no one wants to go through life with no energy.
In burnout, one begins to wall themselves off because he or she does not have the energy to deal with relationships, work, and other emotions in life.
Energy is so low that one loses coping mechanisms, and this is worse for those with congenital weak adrenals, so I make sure to test appropriately.
Watch my video here for an introduction to adrenal exhaustion and learn about the importance of adrenal health, causes of adrenal exhaustion, and common symptoms associated with the problem.
