Anyone ever had/have adrenal fatigue? How did you deal with

Ask my sister how her ND was helping her with her diet and hair loss and scleroderma. She will tell you she is healed from it. She is dead in the ground and died at <80 lbs due to "good advice" as she had oodles of food allergies and sensitivities to everything like all gluten (so all bread and pasta), soy (that meant nothing with soy and soy is in everything) and dairy (so no milk or cheese), she also couldn't have eggs because she was allergic to them, too. So that leaves vegetables, rice, potatoes and meat. I don't think she was supposed to have fish either. The ND she saw came highly recommended and her insurance covered most of it except the excessive allergy testing that the ND recommended. Her ND went to the ND college in Toronto and had a whole list of initials after her name. She recommended supplements and stuff which she sold to my sister as well. I guess if you are desperate to to be cured you may believe anything. My sister had congestive heart failure and advanced scleroderma (CREST) and died of malnutrition as well as a heart attack. The ND did nothing but convince her to starve herself as it would give her a histamine response. (I wish I were making this up...)

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Chiropractic is magical and I swear my chiro gets better every time I see her. She learns something new, uses a different technique or something and I am better in minutes. Yup, she is awesome and we all see her.

So well qualified that they can be licensed in only 17 states!

In lieu of walking around hunched over in pain, I'll continue to see my voodoo medicine man as needed. It works for me and keeps me from ingesting drugs that can damage my liver.

After I had my DD, I had a debilitating amount of neck, back and shoulder pain from my neck all the way down to my hips. DH finally convinced me to go see a chiropractor in his networking group that all of the other members swore by. I was NOT a believer. At all. Until it actually started working. He resolved about 80% of my problems, and I'm working on the other 20% with physical therapy (prescribed by my primary MD) which is also working. I'm just glad I didn't have to take a bunch of prescription drugs or have my spine fused.

Read again. She didn't say cured, she stated "properly managed". So before you get all hand slappy--read!

Geez really?! In one breath you're saying they're so different but then say they are trained the same. No they are not. An ND does NOT go to medical school like an MD or a DO. They go to a naturopathic school, and while some of the coursework may be similar, it is absolutely not the same as a rigorous and highly controlled and board tested MD or DO program. And that's not even including the residency training.

Naturopathic physicians combine the wisdom of nature with the rigors of modern science. Steeped in traditional healing methods, principles and practices, naturopathic medicine focuses on holistic, proactive prevention and comprehensive diagnosis and treatment. By using protocols that minimize the risk of harm, naturopathic physicians help facilitate the body’s inherent ability to restore and maintain optimal health. It is the naturopathic physician’s role to identify and remove barriers to good health by helping to create a healing internal and external environment.

Naturopathic physicians work in private practices, hospitals, clinics and community health centers. NDs practice throughout the United States and Canada. Qualified naturopathic physicians undergo rigorous training before they become licensed health-care practitioners. Visit our Professional Education page to learn about naturopathic education.

NDs treat all medical conditions and can provide both individual and family health care. Among the most common ailments they treat are allergies, chronic pain, digestive issues, hormonal imbalances, obesity, respiratory conditions, heart disease, fertility problems, menopause, adrenal fatigue, cancer, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. NDs can perform minor surgeries, such as removing cysts or stitching up superficial wounds. However, they do not practice major surgery. NDs are trained to utilize prescription drugs, although the emphasis of naturopathic medicine is the use of natural healing agents.

A licensed naturopathic physician (ND) attends a four-year, graduate-level naturopathic medical school and is educated in all of the same basic sciences as an MD, but also studies holistic and nontoxic approaches to therapy with a strong emphasis on disease prevention and optimizing wellness. In addition to a standard medical curriculum, the naturopathic physician also studies clinical nutrition, homeopathic medicine, botanical medicine, psychology, and counseling. A naturopathic physician takes rigorous professional board exams so that he or she may be licensed by a state or jurisdiction as a primary care general practice physician.

They ARE medical professionals!

They do not attend certified medical schools. That's what you stated. Being a medical professional does not mean they are trained in the same manner or method as MDs and DOs. You make it sound like they go to medical school and THEN go to a naturopathic program, and that is false.

What they are allowed to do actually varies state to state. Not all states allow them to write prescriptions, or limit it to. certain classes.

I do believe there are flaws within our medical model as it stands now. And I'm quite certain an ND works very hard to complete their training. But to say they are the same is disingenuous.

In full agreement. My husband suffered from adrenal insufficiency and it was very real. His adrenal glands shut down due to the fact that he was on heavy doses of steroids (treating a tumor). It was 8 painful months of weaning off steroid and then taking cortisol. His endocrinologist told us the adrenal gland can basically "go asleep" as a result of certain medications over a long period of time. 

I'm going to go ahead and stay "hand-slappy". Nutrition and exercise also do not have anything to do with managing Crohn' s disease. Considering we just lost a pea to this disease and another pea' s spouse just had major surgery for it, I find claims like this to be ridiculous and offensive and will continue to do so.

I'm sorry for you that you are not aware of what an ND does, what training they receive. It's clear how you feel about them so you can probably just leave the thread anytime--your insulting rudeness and ignorance isn't productive (your post likely scared off the OP)

I get it. Your generation was "trained" to only believe that prescription pills fix things, that no other, trained medical professional can possibly be real because of your beliefs. You cannot grasp that ND's do use science and their medical training to examine and treat whole/general health for a person. Instead, you lash out and insult and call names to what you don't understand and know. It's people like yourself ( and yes, I'm aware you're a "nurse" of some type) who do a disservice to a persons well being if using a natural course remedies where it works are ignored or the ND's are called names. I certainly have not said that a person shouldn't see specialists where they need to!

You are the one making incorrect assumptions of what a ND does, not I. I'm not the one making assumptions that they cure diseases with oils and flowers, that's completely all on you!

OP - my son's cortisol was very low last year - he had two 24 hour urine tests at our Children's Hospital (that the paediatric endocrinologist ordered) that showed his cortisol was low-out-of-range, but not low enough to be considered Addison's Disease. So, it was just low enough to make him feel like crap - unable to fall asleep until about 2 a.m., sometimes 4 a.m., and his cortisol in the morning didn't get high enough (he had further time of day testing that showed his morning cortisol was the main issue) so it was very hard for him to wake up. This is what I understand Adrenal Fatigue to be. The doctor didn't want to put him on glucocorticoids for it because it wasn't severe enough and those steroids are very powerful, but at the same time, his low cortisol production had very bad side effects, including pain in his genitals (also caused by his hypothyroidism - low cortisol means thyroid hormones are not being used efficiently), insomnia, general fatigue, dizziness, etc. His hypothyroidism just could not quite get better because his low cortisol meant his tissues were not getting the thyroid hormone very well.

My question to the doctor was: what is that grey area called where your hormone (cortisol, thyroid, etc) is just just out-of-range, or even not quite out of range, but not optimal or even normal? So, if the range is .1 to 5 (mmol/L or whatever you're using, this is just an example), and your tests show that you are .09 or 4.9 - does that mean you feel great and are healthy? She said that is the area that many refer to as adrenal fatigue, or subclinical hypothyroidism, or whatever - and they have to wait to treat it until the blood work/urine tests show it got worse, because of the Ministry of Health (in our case) guidelines, etc. They don't push the envelope.

So, then my options were to allow my son to continue to feel like shit because he was low-out-of-range on his cortisol production, but not quite severe enough to treat with steroids, or figure out how to help him on my own. I chose the latter. In his case, I learned about timing his thyroid medication to help ramp up his morning cortisol production. I also found an Internist (yes, an MD) who believes in adrenal fatigue just like I explained, and he gave my son (free of charge, FYI) a bottle of liquorice root tincture to take every day at breakfast and at lunch because it has been shown to help cortisol to be used by the tissues:

Licorice Root increases bioavailability of cortisol

Unfortunately my son's Internist is moving to be closer to his wife's family as they are expecting their first child, so we won't be using him anymore. He did recommend a Naturopath for my son, however, who can prescribe thyroid hormone and help him with his nutrition and hormone production, because things like getting enough fat can absolutely affect hormone production, especially saturated fat. As well, salt is critically important for the adrenals, and many people with hormone issues have low sodium on blood tests, as my son did. So, he gets plenty of sea salt, as well as potassium and other electrolytes now.

I'm writing this for the OP because it doesn't matter to me what anyone else thinks, I just want to help the OP. The licorice root is helping my son quite a bit. I would say it's been just the boost he needed to get that much better. It's a cheap and easy way to start - if you can help your sleeping issues with a $9 product that won't harm you, well, why not try. You can also buy licorice root tea, FYI, and then you can say you're just enjoying a nice cup of tea, and not to have to listen to the opinions of everyone else about it.

the naturopath I worked for went to REGULAR medical school and was a REAL MEDICAL DOCTOR who was also a Naturopath

you ASSUME that naturopaths don't go to a "real" medical school, and I can tell you that some do