Chronic stress & ageing

Feel­ing fatigued and can’t cope with life’s demands, you may be suf­fer­ing from adrenal fatigue syndrome.

BY: Dr Karen Soh

Do you have dif­fi­culty wak­ing up in the morn­ing? Do you sleep with­out get­ting rest? Do you crave car­bo­hy­drates or salty food? Is your sex life suf­fer­ing? Do you fly off the han­dle eas­ily? Do you yell at your kids all the time? Do you take a long time to recover from the flu? Do you feel sleepy until it is about 10am and then again in the late after­noon? Do you have a ‘sec­ond wind’ till 2am or 3am if only you can stay awake past 11pm? Do you feel run down and unable to cope with life’s demands? If you have answered in the affir­ma­tive in any of the above ques­tions, then you may have adrenal fatigue syndrome.

Adrenal fatigue is caused by a defi­ciency of the func­tion­ing of the adrenal glands. Adrenal glands are small organs sit­u­ated on top of the kid­neys and are respon­si­ble for secre­tion of minute, pre­cise and bal­anced amount of steroid hor­mones, includ­ing cor­ti­sol. Cor­ti­sol is an impor­tant hor­mone that reg­u­lates blood sugar lev­els, con­trols inflam­ma­tory processes in the body, and con­tributes to the opti­mal func­tion­ing of the heart and the blood ves­sels. Adrenal glands are also respon­si­ble for the ‘fight or flight’ hor­mone – adren­a­line. Chronically-​fatigued adrenal glands decreases the body’s abil­ity to deal with addi­tional or sud­den stress. Adrenal fatigue syn­drome is a dis­or­der often missed out by doc­tors because its symp­toms are not spe­cific – chronic fatigue, vague mus­cu­lar aches, low energy lev­els, reduced sex drive and weight gain (espe­cially around the middle).

What causes your adren­als to under­per­form? What causes it to crash and burn? In a sin­gle word – stress. Stress comes in many forms: Phys­i­cal, emo­tional, social, finan­cial, infec­tious and envi­ron­men­tal. In today’s fast-​paced soci­ety, it is not dif­fi­cult to iden­tify some or all of these stresses in our lives. It is impor­tant to note that the body does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the dif­fer­ent types of stress. And the dif­fer­ent stresses add up. The num­ber of stresses, the inten­sity of this stress, the fre­quency with which it occurs, and the length of time it is present, all com­bine to con­tribute to your cumu­la­tive stress load. It only takes the last straw to break the camel’s back.

If this sounds like you, then you are at risk of adrenal fatigue:

1. Lack of sleep.

2. Eat­ing nutrient-​deficient food.

3. Using caf­feinated or sug­ary food and drinks as stim­u­lants when tired.

4. Stay­ing up late even when fatigued.

5. Being con­stantly in a posi­tion of powerlessness.

6. Con­stantly dri­ving your­self to achieve more and better.

7. Being a perfectionist.

8. Lack of leisure and reju­ve­nat­ing activities.

Do you know that you can be born with weak adren­als to start with? 

The mother may be suf­fer­ing from exces­sive stress dur­ing preg­nancy, or the foe­tus may be exposed to var­i­ous chal­lenges in the womb (eg: trauma, pla­cen­tal insuf­fi­ciency, mater­nal drug and alco­hol abuse). These peo­ple tend to be born with a lower ‘adrenal reserve’ and have less capac­ity to deal with stress in their own lives and so are prone to adrenal fatigue through­out their lives.

Do you know that a poor diet reduces the abil­ity of the adren­als to respond to stress?

Exces­sive intake of refined starches and sug­ars causes blood sugar spikes and dips, and stim­u­lates the secre­tion of insulin. Other than pre­dis­pos­ing the indi­vid­ual to overt dia­betes mel­li­tus, it stresses the already burnt-​out adren­als to main­tain cor­ti­sol lev­els in an attempt to main­tain blood sugar lev­els. Drink­ing more than three cups of cof­fee or caf­feinated drinks daily puts already over-​stimulated adren­als into overdrive.

Do I have adrenal fatigue?

Iden­ti­fy­ing risk fac­tors and symp­toms is the first step to a diag­no­sis of adrenal fatigue. There is a sim­ple ques­tion­naire avail­able in your anti-​ageing doctor’s office which will score the prob­a­bil­ity of a pos­i­tive diag­no­sis. Your doc­tor will also order a saliva hor­mone test, with sam­ples of saliva col­lected through­out dif­fer­ent times of the day. This will show the amount and the trend of impor­tant hor­mones such as cor­ti­sol and DHEA, and your doc­tor can use this infor­ma­tion to cus­tomise a treat­ment plan for you.

So how can you improve your adrenal func­tion? Here’s some ways:

• Lifestyle: Remov­ing stres­sors in your life, whether it is a sit­u­a­tion at home or at work, or even peo­ple around you. You can either change the sit­u­a­tion, change your­self to bet­ter cope with the sit­u­a­tion, or as a last resort, leave the situation.

• Slow down: Take time, lit­er­ally, to smell the flow­ers. Set aside a half hour of ‘me-​time’ every­day to do the things you truly enjoy, whether it be putting brush to can­vas, lis­ten­ing to jazz, doing deep-​breathing exer­cises or yoga, or sim­ply in prayer.

• Take a vaca­tion: Tak­ing time off work and every­day stres­sors once a year to rest, renew and reju­ve­nate your mind, body and spirit does won­ders to your health.

• Sleep: Make sure you get enough sleep. To ensure the body has time to heal, it is impor­tant to have at least seven straight hours of deep, rest­ful sleep. For peo­ple already suf­fer­ing from adrenal fatigue, you should aim to get to bed before your sec­ond wind hits at 11pm. In fact, if pos­si­ble, sleep in till 8.30am or 9am. This will allow the nat­ural spike of early morn­ing cor­ti­sol to occur before you wake up.

• Exer­cise: Do an exer­cise that you enjoy and that you can fit into your every­day rou­tine. While you are recov­er­ing, do not take part in sports that are stress­ful or demand­ing or highly com­pet­i­tive. What you want is some­thing that improves lung capac­ity, car­dio­vas­cu­lar func­tion, mus­cle tone and flex­i­bil­ity, while you are hav­ing fun.

• Eat well: Good qual­ity lean pro­tein, com­plex car­bo­hy­drates and a bal­ance of essen­tial fatty acids such as those found in sar­dines, soy­beans, wal­nuts and flax seeds. Buy organic when­ever you can to reduce the pes­ti­cide load to the body. Also, get tested for food aller­gies. You may not be aware that you are aller­gic to some of the most com­mon foods around. Chronic aller­gies stim­u­late the release of his­t­a­mine, which in turn causes inflam­ma­tion and the stim­u­la­tion of more cor­ti­sol to con­trol the inflammation.

• Get good sup­ple­ments: Con­sult a doc­tor trained in anti-​ageing med­i­cine or a cer­ti­fied nutri­tion­ist for the appro­pri­ate and good qual­ity sup­ple­ments that are impor­tant for opti­mal adrenal func­tion. Other than vit­a­mins C, E and B, cer­tain herbs like licorice root, ash­wa­gandha root, Korean and Siber­ian gin­seng and gingko biloba have been shown to sup­port the adrenal heal­ing in chronically-​stressed indi­vid­u­als. Doc­tors are also able to pre­scribe adrenal cell extracts, DHEA or other hor­monal ther­apy as needed.

Dr Karen Soh from Pacific Well­ness Cen­tre spe­cialises in health screen­ing, gen­eral med­i­cine and age management.

(PHOTO CREDIT: RELAX­ING GIRL © Gin­ger­girl | Dream​stime​.com)