This is the fourth article in an ongoing series. Make sure to check out the other articles when you’re finished with this one:
- What Causes Adrenal Fatigue? (Part I): An Introduction
- What Causes Adrenal Fatigue? (Part II): Blood Sugar
- What Causes Adrenal Fatigue? (Part III): Sleep
- What Causes Adrenal Fatigue? (Part IV): Inflammation
- What Causes Adrenal Fatigue? (Part V): Stress
- What Causes Adrenal Fatigue? (Part IV): Treatment
Some types of inflammation can cause so much stress on our body that they cause adrenal fatigue. (1)
Inflammation is what happens when we get sick, sprain our ankle, or after we receive a nasty spider bite. While the above are what often comes to mind when we think about inflammation, they’re not enough of a stress to cause adrenal fatigue.
The sprained ankle and the sore throat are examples of healthy cortisol excretion. They occur for a relatively short duration to assist the healing of the injured tissue. In chronic conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, or asthma, the body is unable to keep up with the high demand for cortisol production. This situation can lead to adrenal fatigue.
Cortisol, the hormone you most likely know for its role in your body’s stress response, is also one of our body’s most potent anti-inflammatory hormones. (2)
Have you ever had (or known someone who has had) a cortisone injection? Cortisone is very similar to cortisol in its anti-inflammatory action. Cortisol decreases the inflammatory pathways within the body’s tissue. For a sprained ankle, the body is excreting cortisol to help control the swelling.
In chronic inflammatory conditions, where cortisol is needed in high amounts for long periods of time, there will eventually be a suppression of the HPA axis. (3) In other words, adrenal fatigue will develop. The resulting effect will be a decrease in cortisol production (at a time when the body needs more of it). This is how adrenal fatigue can prevent your body from healing.
Our body has a mechanism built-in to ensure cortisol production is only altered at the site of inflammation/injury. (4) This system works well for conditions like a sprained ankle, where the inflammation is localized. The same system becomes challenged by other conditions where the inflammation is more wide-spread.
Diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, irritable bowel syndrome, and fibromyalgia affect multiple areas. High levels of cortisol are required in order to combat the chronic inflammation. These are the conditions that eventually result in the body’s suppression of cortisol. (5)
Injuries and infections are obvious examples of inflammation. There are other sources of inflammation that are less intuitive.
These include:
- Food allergies and sensitivities
- Intestinal permeability (AKA Leaky gut)
- Dysbiosis – parasites, candida (yeast), or bacterial infections of the digestive tract
- Autoimmune diseases – multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s, lupus etc.
- Allergies
- Asthma
- Sinusitis
- Skin conditions – eczema, psoriasis etc
- Obesity and other metabolic disorders – diabetes, low blood sugar/hypoglycemia, etc.
A hidden source of inflammation could be preventing you from healing from adrenal fatigue. If you’ve been properly diagnosed, but notice that you’re not improving with the treatment protocol you’ve been following, inflammation may be what is stalling your progress.
How to identify potential sources of inflammation
Start with the two most likely culprits:
- Food
- Gut Health
Food
Food allergies and/or sensitivities can be a regular source of inflammation – especially if you’re consuming a food you’re allergic/sensitive to on a regular basis.
Try implementing a 30-day paleo reset diet – you can find out how to properly implement this nutrition plan here. Ensure zero cheating occurs throughout the thirty day period. You need to be one hundred percent compliant during this phase. At the end of the reset, reintroduce suspicious foods slowly in order to identify which items are causing a reaction in your body.
Once you identify problematic foods, eliminate them from your diet while you work to heal adrenal fatigue. These can be reintroduced again after you have recovered. Alternatively, food sensitivity and allergy testing can also help determine which foods create a state of inflammation within your body.
Gut Health
If you’ve already removed food allergens from your diet and still notice a lack of improvement in adrenal fatigue symptoms, I’d recommend exploring the health of your gut. Stool testing is a great method to determine whether you have sufficient numbers of beneficial bacteria in your large intestine. Additionally, stool testing alerts you to any potentially harmful bacteria, parasites, or yeast that may be the hidden source of inflammation.
Ensure you’ve read the other posts in this series that identifies blood sugar imbalance and circadian disruption as other common causes of adrenal fatigue.
To successfully treat adrenal fatigue, all sources of chronic inflammation need to be removed.
If you do not remove the source of inflammation yet continue to supplement with herbals or medications aimed at calming the nervous system, the treatment will be ineffective.
General anti-inflammatory supplements like turmeric may be beneficial in the short term. Though anti-inflammatory supplements will only assist in treating the symptom(s). To achieve complete resolution of adrenal fatigue, the underlying or root cause of the inflammation must be properly identified and removed.
Now, I want to hear from you.
What area of inflammation is obstructing your recovery from adrenal fatigue?
Looking for more information about adrenal fatigue? Check out our other blog posts.
Hey so i have aderinal fatigue from doing 4 Figure Fitness Competation in 8 months. Keeping my body fat as low as 4% and higest was 10%. Also keeping myself in ketoses state with high fats and no carbs
A month later after taking an active rest not doing anything other then relaxing getting my body back to normal. Im struggeling with digesting food. I have servear bloading ,burning, cramping, in my stomic after eating every time. Im only consuming whole foods. No processed foods.
Its so bad at times that im in tears, cramped over grabing my stomic. I feel overwhelmed in my own skin with the emence inflamation i feel not only in my stomic and bowels, its also all over my body as well,puffy eyes and face when i wake up in the am, truoble getting rings off and shoes are tight. There has been days where I have a hard time breathing due to inflamation.
Iv been to so many Dr and they just dont get or understand what im going through. I feel lost and overwhelmed with the way my body is feeling. This is causing depression and anxity.
Just want to say a big thanka fpr the artical it helped me feel less crazy and made me think what my next step should be to release the inflmmimation and get rid of it so I can fully recover from adreanial fatigue. As you say at the end of the artical.
Sorry for such a winded responce im just having a hard time and its nice to hear somone understands whats going on. Hope to hear back from you.
Have a wonderful day
Melissa
Hi, Melissa!
It brings a big smile to my face to hear how this article has helped you 🙂
You’re not alone in feeling overwhelmed. Adrenal fatigue tends to fly under the radar of conventional medical testing.
I look forward to hearing how you’re doing after the inflammation has been removed!
I have adrenal fatigue but gut inflammation is always radiating heat, I do not know what to do as I have to take everything slowly because os CFS/ME . CAN YOU HELP ! Thanks !
Hi, Christina,
Have you had any testing done on your gut?
If you’ve already explored gut stuff, I’d take a moment to familiarize yourself with a condition known as CIRS. More info here – https://fatiguetoflourish.com/whats-the-difference-between-mold-allergy-and-chronic-inflammatory-response-syndrome/
Let me know what you think!
M
Hi mark, what if the suspected inflammation causing the adrenal fatigue is what is helping keep blood sugar balanced?
I was keto for about two years, during a very stressful job, when I developed first signs of adrenal fatigue. I pushed thru cause I felt I had to 🙁 then soon ended the contract. Stress lessened and I got to rest (covid). A couple months ago I decided to add rice back into my diet as a little break from keto. Ate rice for a week and had extreme gut inflammation! So bloated it looked like I was pregnant. Felt horrible. Since then blood sugar has been a roller coaster with chronic hunger. Have to eat ever 4 hrs (even at night). So I cut the grains again and the only thing that subsides the hunger for a few hours is resistant starch (sweet potato, cassava flour). But these things give me a lot of bloating. Two weeks into this chronic hunger blood sugar mess, adrenal fatigue hit.
I feel like I can’t even focus on healing adrenals when I’m constantly fighting off hypoglycaemia/ the hunger.
I’m sorry this is so long, I’m just out of options, do you have any quick suggestions as to what’s going on? Or what I should do?
Hey, Megan!
Such the good question. You’re absolutely right. Cortisol is often released in response to inflammation. Which would also have the effect of raising blood sugar. In the short term, this is fine. But in chronic situations, it most certainly contributes to both adrenal fatigue and blood sugar imbalances.
A soluble fiber supplement could be a big help. There will be a stabilizing effect on your blood sugar and it should lessen the bloat you find with foods high in resistant starches. Look for products containing chickory root, Jeruselum artichoke, inulin, and/or green plantain.
Let me know how it goes!
M