Welcome to the third part of our four-part series on the adrenal fatigue stages.
Today we’re going to talk about stage three, adrenal exhaustion.
I’m Dr. Carrie Lam and I have Dr. Michael Lam the adrenal fatigue expert here.
So, what is our most important stage three here?
Well, stage three is when the body starts really to sort of punish you if you haven’t listened to its whispers
on stage one and stage two.
There are four phases in stage three as you progressively deteriorate
and the symptoms tend to get worse as you progress through this time,
and this is the time that the body’s not going to have mercy on you.
So just to recap, the first video was about alarm reaction.
That’s stage one.
Stage two is the resistance response,
and once your body becomes resistant to everything that it’s trying to do,
then you go into adrenal exhaustion and that’s our stage three.
What are you going to feel here?
A lot of people just feel their chronic fatigue coming on. Their body actually tries to breakdown its muscle.
So some people actually go into catabolic states where they feel weak.
Their muscles get weak also.
In addition to all the bioenergetic symptoms of having to eat every two to three hours
because they feel really low in their sugars.
Their hormones are also off. That’s why your fatigue sets in.
Their neuro-affect circuit goes haywire with the mood instability.
So people with the anxiousness and just like a depressed mood,
they don’t feel like they are themselves.
In addition, their detox circuit pathway—
they’re going to build up a lot of metabolites and toxins and that’s why they feel brain fog.
So those are just some— and also the inflammation that they’re going to be feeling.
Now, remember, there are six circuits and twelve systems comprising the NeuroEndoMetabolic stress response system,
and when you’re in stage three of adrenal fatigue, the whole circuit, all the six circuits are already in disarray.
Now, the symptoms that you mentioned whether it is the mood changes and not feeling well are all a continuum.
They can move from mild to moderate to severe.
When it’s severe it becomes a medical problem,
but when it’s mild, it still can be overcome.
So you have to be very careful to understand that when certain symptoms—
just like sleeplessness in the stage one and stage two, and early part of stage three.
It can be just occasional sleeplessness.
Hard to feel asleep, but not necessarily insomnia that is like chronic
until you get to the later phases of stage three.
So in stage three it’s very classically full of symptoms,
full of warnings, full of unpleasantness,
and unfortunately, this is the time also that people become very frustrated.
They continue to search for answers. They are on multiple hormone supplements.
They’re self-navigating.
They’re doing a lot of tests and most of them come back normal.
When you get further advanced into stage three, they usually even get abandoned by their doctors.
Their doctors have run all these tests.
Sometimes they come back normal and sometimes they don’t.
If the levels are low and they put you on hormones or supplements in order to artificially prop your body up,
you might feel a little more energy in the beginning, but know that those supplements,
those glandulars, those herbs
whatever they may be
could be artificially stimulating your adrenals even more to put out more cortisol,
to put out more of the anti-inflammatory all the hormones that it’s trying to make.
Therefore, it makes the exhaustion even worse.
The take-home lesson in adrenal exhaustion;
this is the body’s loud and clear voice for you to really take some action,
for you not to continue to self-navigate if you have already been doing so,
and to seek professional help to make sure number one, you don’t have medical issues.
Number two is for the nonmedical issues,
you have proper nutrition to help the body to support itself in its recovery
because recovery’s possible.
The body has a built-in mechanism already to help itself, but you've got to give it a chance.
If you don’t give it a chance and don’t know what you’re doing,
you can actually make things work, and because their resilience tends to be more disruptive by this time.
It’s like a rubber band. After stage one it's stretching and it bounces back.
After stage two it stretches and bounces a little less, and stage three you can bounce even higher
and its more intense and you can break it.
You don’t want to be at the breaking point,
but obviously the body is not able to rebound as best as stage one and stage two.
So, definitely find an experienced practitioner who will be able to help you.
This is stage three of adrenal fatigue called “adrenal exhaustion.”
We hope that you liked this.
Make sure you stay tuned for next week’s video which is stage four adrenal failure.
We’re here to empower you to take control of your health.
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