What factors cause Adrenal Fatigue?
Adrenal fatigue occurs when the adrenal glands become overworked due to the cumulative effects of stress factors. As the human body senses stress, whether it is psychological, physical, or emotional, the adrenal glands react by producing adrenaline and norepinepherine in response to combat the stressor. The cumulative effect of non-stop stressors and strain from stimulant intake causes a compounding effect on the adrenal glands. At a certain point, the adrenal glands "give up" and stop functioning at full capacity. This can lead to depression, weight gain, fatigue and many other side effects.
What is Adrenal Fatigue?
Adrenal Fatigue is the result of the declining Adrenal Gland function as they no longer have the ability to adequately meet the demands of stress. While over looked by most, the Adrenal Glands provide an absolutely essential and often overlooked function. They are fully responsible for responding to every form of stress, whether it is psychological, emotional or physical, through the release of complex hormones that regulate energy production & storage, muscle tone and heart rate.
When our Adrenal Glands become weakened, their response to stress becomes inadequate and Adrenal Fatigue begins to set in. The end result often manifests itself as deep fatigue, loss of strength & endurance, weight gain and chronic depression.
In order to compete within our fast-paced lives, we often compensate for fatigue and depression by heavily dosing stimulants such as caffeine (coffee, soda, energy drinks, diet pills), nicotine (cigarettes), or using amphetamines for depression or ADHD issues. What very few of us realize is that overexposure to stimulants exacerbates the weakening function of the adrenal glands. Many of us also tend to consume fast-foods and other highly processed foods, while these do offer nourishment and leave us feeling full, they often offer little in nutrition. With high fat and sugar contents, many of these foods can actually significantly stress the Adrenal System and force it to work harder.
Your body’s energy receptors, known as A1 and A2 receptors, become severely desensitized from stress, poor lifestyle choices, and especially from using stimulants like caffeine, ephedra, amphetamines and nicotine. This is the reason why the first time you drank coffee, the caffeine had that much more of an effect of you. After prolonged consumption of caffeine or other stimulants, you find yourself needing a larger cup of coffee to get the same energy effect. The A1 and A2 receptors are essential to your health because they regulate Adenosine levels, an ‘energy’ nucleoside that is every living cell in the human body.
Adenosine (comprised of DNA, RNA, ADP, ATP, AMP) plays an essential role in biochemical processes, such as energy transfer ( as adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and adenosine diphosphate (ADP)) as well as in signal transduction as cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP). Adenosine is also an inhibitory neurotransmitter (decreases neuron activity), which plays a vital role in promoting deep refreshing sleep and suppressing restless sleep. As you can see, without proper Adenosine levels, your body’s natural energy is compromised and your quality of sleep may be questionable. Without proper Adenosine levels and A1 and A2 receptor functionality, you are more prone to waking up feeling tired and groggy.
Stimulants such as caffeine or nicotine can put a significant strain on this process as they compete with natural Adenosine reception. For example, caffeine’s stimulatory effects are primarily credited to its inhibition of Adenosine by attaching to the same receptors (A1 and A2). By doing this, caffeine effectively blocks adenosine receptors i n the central nervous system. This reduction in adenosine activity leads to the fatigue, lack of energy, and the depression one experiences from Adrenal fatigue.
View all comments | Leave Comment