After a major life stress such as a death, job loss, birth of a child, financial crisis or major illness, adrenal glands can become sluggish and fail to function properly. Smoking, drugs, poor diet, and excessive chemicals or toxins in the body can also wreak havoc on the adrenals, causing them to limit production of essential hormones.
When the adrenals fail to work as intended, the body no longer receives the essential doses of hormones that it needs and may begin to malfunction in important ways. This is referred to as adrenal fatigue.
Do you Have Adrenal Fatigue?
There are several symptoms of adrenal fatigue that may alert you to the fact that these little glands are not doing the work they used to do. If you feel that you’ve experienced any of these following symptoms, then you may suffer from adrenal fatigue.
- Fatigue: This is a huge complaint among sufferers of adrenal fatigue. Individuals describe waking in the morning feeling tired, even after sleeping for a full eight hours and taking hours to fully wake up. In addition, they note feeling exhausted again in the afternoon hours. And while a normal level of energy may return briefly in the evening hours, many patients admit to being back in bed by 10 p.m.
- Body aches: Often associated with the effects of fatigue, body aches are another common ailment linked to adrenal fatigue.
- Weight loss: Sufferers of adrenal fatigue may experience unexpected or unexplained weight loss as another symptom of the condition.