One morning in July of 2015 I woke up with a wicked hangover. Too much wine at the dinner party the night before, I surmised. I rarely drank anymore and assumed my body simply wasn’t used to the stuff. I laughed it off and spent a lazy day on the couch. But then the next day I didn’t feel much better- I was exhausted, really couldn’t do ANYTHING and just felt in a fog all day. After a few days of barely being able to get off the couch or carry on normal daily activities, I realized something was horribly wrong. I stopped doing anything non-essential and just laid around feeling miserable.
I’ve always been a health nut. At the age of 11 I swore off candy and soda and even to this day I’ve barely consumed soft drinks in my life (other than some jack-n-cokes in college). I have tried to eat healthy to the best of my knowledge at any given time and have always worked out regularly- even in my mid 30s when this occurred, I was still going strong and could pass for 10 years younger than my actual age.
Now, I knew something was wrong. I wanted to sleep all day yet had developed horrible insomnia at night. I’d always had insomnia to some degree but now, when I was the most exhausted I’d ever been, it was off the charts. The spin classes and bar workouts I’d happily been attending just a week before now sounded like climbing Mt. Everest with no training. I began to consider what could possibly be wrong with me. Then 2 words popped into my mind, I didn’t even really know what they meant but felt like I was supposed to find out: adrenal fatigue.
The symptoms of adrenal fatigue are myriad and can depend on what stage of adrenal exhaustion you’re in (I talk more about the stages here). But I had gone from being an athletic, energetic person to barely being able to get off my couch for months. I was beyond exhausted and completely lethargic. I lost all desire to do anything. And the unexplained weight gain I’d been experiencing already got even worse. And again, to top it all off, I couldn’t seem to sleep, even when taking over the counter sleeping pills.
Symptoms of Adrenal Fatigue can include:
- Mild depression or anxiety
- Multiple food and/or inhalant allergies
- Lethargy
- Weight gain
- Increased effort to perform daily tasks
- Decreased ability to handle stress
- Dry and thin skin
- Low blood sugar
- Low body temperature
- Palpitations
- Unexplained hair loss
- Alternating diarrhea or constipation
- Fatigue: chronic, or often having an afternoon crash around 3-5pm, or overwhelming fatigue.
- Difficulty with focus, concentration, memory and willpower (ADD/ADHD)
- Hyperactivity: this is usually a lack of energy as the body is exhausted and we continue to push it further
- Sleep Problems
- Depression: Feelings of exhaustion get the best of your mood so you focus on the negative
- Difficulty handling stress/anxiety, and even as extreme as panic attacks
- Feeling easily worried, fearful, overwhelmed, and struggling to handle basic life situations
- Major cravings for sugar or caffeine, often uncontrollable
- Low blood pressure, low blood sugars, and difficulty managing blood sugars
- Abnormal cravings for salt
- Weight gain around the middle
- Loss of libido/sexual function
- Allergies, asthma, eczema, and psoriasis from the weakened adrenals inability to properly produce steroid hormones
And more. Because these symptoms are considered “vague” and really because there is no pharmaceutical drug that can address these symptoms (unless you have full blown Addison’s disease), most regular doctors in the U.S. don’t accept that adrenal fatigue is a thing. Even now, in 2020. Women seem to disproportionately experience it for a number of reasons I will address, but doctors don’t give it much credence so millions of women in this country are left searching for a disease they don’t have or feeling like they’re making the symptoms up.
Could it have been depression you say? Well certainly when one puts on a large amount of weight in a very short amount of time (none of my clothes fit and I basically lived in sweat pants), can no longer do any of the things one loves, including go out with friends, that can cause some depression. But that was not the cause, that was the effect in this case.
In fact, a few weeks before this happened I was thinking how amazing my life was. For a number of years preceding this I had gone through the toughest years of my life. I graduated with my second law degree and began studying for the bar in 2008 right as the financial crisis hit (I have a J.D. and an LL.M. in Intellectual Property and Technology Law). There were no prospects for a full time gig as an attorney, or much of anything really, for years. I struggled to make ends meet doing crap temp jobs I hated. The employers were taking advantage of the crisis to pay ridiculous amounts- licensed California attorneys in San Francisco were making $15 an hour and they’d ask us if we would work for $10. My student loans kicked in and eventually I had to choose between paying them and paying rent. I spent a few years “couch surfing” while Airbnb’ing my adorable studio in San Francisco in order to pay both rent and student loans and eat. It was hard. My friends weren’t rich, no one had a spare bedroom. I slept on floors with little bedding, I slept on strangers couches, I went to all night prayer meetings so that at least I wouldn’t be on the streets. I didn’t sleep much during those years. I was in constant fight or flight mode. And I was so ashamed that I’d be wheeling my little suitcase in to whatever temp job I was on because I’d need to figure out a new place to sleep that night. It was stressful. I started putting on weight during this time that didn’t seem to quite work out with calories that I was consuming and burning. It was like anything I put in my body suddenly just had to be stored as fat. But, I couldn’t even really worry about that. I had to survive.
While the job market got better, I hadn’t had much experience due to the timing of my graduation and the temp jobs I’d had to take to make ends meet. So it took years before I could get a decent job, and even then the pay started off shockingly low. I had just finally landed a solid job where I would no longer have to rent my place out and could finally rest. I was so happy, so excited, I thought my life was about to begin again. And then I just crashed.
Things that helped:
- Rest
- Nourishment
- Patience
- Going with the flow of the season- no season lasts forever
Things that did not help:
- Trying to MAKE things happen
- Ignoring my body’s needs
- Doing things the same as I had in the past
- Being judgmental towards myself