Sunday, December 20, 2009

Addy and pregnancy

Friends ask from time to time how my health is doing and where I am in my recovery. Others of you may wonder, especially if you have adrenal fatigue and are considering getting pregnant, how recovering-fatigue and pregnancy mix.

I have to admit I thought I would see more significant progress in my energy level during our first year of marriage, since I was not working, was sleeping in, was out of the city with its pollution and fast pace, and was living a peaceful low-stress life. As I have said, Ageless Xtra had significantly accelerated my progress in the fall of 2008, but time hadn't like I'd thought, since I still needed about 10 hours of sleep a night to function well and not get sick.

Just before we got pregnant in May, I was starting to get up around 9:00 instead of 10:00 AM. This seemed like definite progress, and I think it was. Then at about six weeks pregs, I got slammed with nausea and fatigue. Morning-noon-and-night sickness was a special kind of torture and was pretty debilitating, although I never actually threw up. The fatigue would land me back in bed many days after having breakfast (which was after sleeping in til 10:00), and around 2:00 I had enough energy to get some stuff done. Then around 5:00 I would get tired again and sometimes napped.

However, the acclaimed Second Trimester was a whole new story, as my previously-preggy friends promised. Around 12 weeks the nausea and fatigue started to diminish and disappear completely over a couple of weeks. I didn't have the "superhuman energy" that many women get during the second trimester ("more energy than you've ever had in your life!" said one friend), which I confess I was looking forward to, though not banking on. Nevertheless, I had way more energy than in the first trimester and felt "normal" or "new normal," i.e. how I felt before getting pregnant, which is significant because I wasn't taking all the supplements I had been then, simply my prenatal vitamin. I started taking Juice Plus again (I had been off it for about a year) as my only other supplement, and have seen studies and anecdotal evidence of exceptionally healthy babies born to "JP+ moms" and greatly decreased chance of pre-eclampsia after prenatal use.

I am now 32 weeks and pretty far into the third trimester. I do get tired more easily, but nothing dramatic. Brisk walking (and in the now 30- and 40-degree weather, it is brisk) energizes me and banishes much of the fatigue. But I'm also trying to listen to my body, not overdo it, and lie down when necessary. I have also been able to splurge on sweets during my pregnancy without it affecting me too drastically. I was eating so healthy for the two years previous, that even though I'm eating very healthy now, I'm splurging more so I feel like I'm really indulging, which is of course one of the privileges of pregnancy.

So that's where I am now, and according to our midwives and sonograms, both Peanut and I are quite healthy and on track. I'm curious what my energy level will be during labor and what kind of adrenaline reserves I have. From what I've learned so far, much of labor is staying relaxed and letting your body do the work, though stamina is obviously key, and the most energy is needed at the end to push. My doula suggested an energy drink, and I have one of my own I can try (Univera's Essentials), and we are using a birthing center where they let you eat and drink as needed for this "athletic event."

Something I am finding helpful lately is asking God for the strength and energy for this day, every day (or when I remember). A friend challenged me to do this (thanks Wendy!), and though it seems so obvious, I think it's a new thing for me since the days almost three years ago when I was very weak. The Bible is clear that any strength we have comes from the Lord anyway, and I do want to look to Him primarily for this basic need, over vitamins, diet, advice, doctors, or the elusive magic bullet. If every breath is from Him, how much more the energy to accomplish the things He's given me to do today and be the person He's called me to be. And amazingly enough, when I ask, He answers!

(...Like how I just read this verse the morning after I wrote the above!) "When I pray, You answer me; You encourage me by giving me the strength I need." Psalm 138:3 NLT

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

New life, and brand new life

So I haven't written in a while (before the last post) and I have a very good excuse: pregnancy. God gave us the gift of conception a month before we had even planned to start trying. This is significant in many ways, but especially from a health angle, as a demonstration of God's healing power.

At the beginning of June, I took my third saliva test in three years to gauge where my adrenal glands were in their recovery. When I got the results back, they showed my adrenals in worse shape than last year, and almost back to where they were when most depleted two years ago! I tried not to panic and stay at peace for the 24 hours before my phone consultation with Dr. Taylor in Atlanta. I assumed it might have something to do with my pregnancy, which we had discovered just after I'd taken the test, but I wasn't sure.

When I finally got to speak to him the next day and we were going over my results, I mentioned that I was pregnant and had been when I took the test. He was so relieved and said, "I didn't know how I was going to break it to you that your hormone levels are post-menopausal!" (uh, or pregnant). We had a good laugh of mutual relief, and he went on to say that my test results were basically awash since I'd been pregnant at the time and pregnancy is the biggest stress you can put on your body.

However, he said that ironically the biggest proof that my adrenals had rebounded and were in good shape was that we had gotten pregnant at all, and so fast. He said if my adrenals were still too weak to handle pregnancy, they would have stopped my body from getting pregnant. So the very thing that skewed the test was the true test.

What proof of God's lovingkindness and redemption that He would give not only new life to me, but a new little life to me and Steve to incarnate His grace!

Sunday, October 4, 2009

In a nutshell (er, a big one)

I was talking to a friend recently who suspects she has adrenal fatigue, and in writing her an email outlining the steps I took to get well, I realized I should probably reiterate it on my blog for anyone else looking for similar advice. Here's my attempt at being concise.

1. Figure out if you could have adrenal fatigue, through perusing the website www.adrenalfatigue.org and/or reading Dr. Wilson’s book Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome. This is the book that helped me the most. It lays out symptoms of adrenal fatigue, why your doctor can’t seem to help you, and exactly what to do, eat, drink, etc. to get well.

2. If most of the symptoms Dr. Wilson talks about match up with yours and everything he says resonates, the next step, as he suggests, is to take a saliva test. This is the best way to measure your cortisol levels throughout the day (my blood tests were completely normal; but my saliva test showed my cortisol levels to be way under the normal range). I recommend my doctor in Atlanta, Dr. Eldred Taylor, who specializes in women’s hormonal issues and wrote the book Are Your Hormones Making You Sick? His office will send you the saliva test in the mail, you take it over the course of a day, send it in to the lab, and three weeks later Dr. Taylor can fax you the results and do a phone consultation (if you don’t live in Atlanta as I didn’t) to interpret the results. His office number is 678.443.4000.

3. No matter whom you go to for your diagnosis, you will end up having to be your own doctor for the most part. By eating healthy, cutting out all sweets/caffeine/alcohol from my diet, exercising to exhilaration but not exhaustion, making lifestyle changes like working part-time and moving out of the city, figuring out that I had low thyroid as well and taking thyroid supplement, and taking excellent nutritional supplements religiously, I have rebuilt my adrenals and feel more “normal” than I have in years. As long as I get plenty of sleep (I still need 10 hours per night), I feel basically normal during the day. This is a LONG way from where I was two and a half years ago. But I had to make my health first priority, be willing to make big changes, spend lots of money on supplements and good food, and be “weak” before my friends.

4. For diet changes, I refer you to Dr. Wilson’s book, which is very thorough. Basically, your diet should be “real” food: whole grains like whole wheat bread and brown rice, unprocessed meat, unprocessed everything!, veggies, fruit later in the day (when I could handle the fruit sugar better because my cortisol was higher), dairy products but milk in moderation because the lactose (milk sugar) would make my head cloudy. For example, for lunch almost every work day I treated myself to salmon and brown rice from my favorite restaurant. For dinner I might make a stir-fry dish on brown rice, with dessert as plain yogurt, toasted almonds, and strawberries. If you’re like me, you can tell immediately when you’ve put something in your mouth that drains rather than supports your energy. Listening to your body is the best way to help it.

5. For supplements, I took a lot of different things at different times (Reliv, JuicePlus, green food, licorice tea at least once a day, vitamins, dessicated liver, whey protein, etc) and it all helped. But to maximize your time and money, here’s what I recommend: I would take Dr. Wilson’s “adrenal rebuilder” and “adrenal C” for longterm repair, Univera’s Ageless Xtra for short-term and longterm energy and repair (use my associate number 1344420 when you order or I'm happy to order it for you), and Univera’s (or somebody’s absorbent) multivitamin for general health.

6. Keep educating yourself on your adrenals, thyroid, hormones, and general health. There are all kinds of good books out there, including the books listed here on my blog, The Metabolic Plan: Stay Younger Longer by Stephen Cherniske, and Jordan Rubin’s “Maker’s Diet” books. This is going to be a long journey back to optimal health: if it took years to get sick, it will probably take years to get better. And once there you're gonna want to take better care of your body than you did before. Hang in there. God has some pretty amazing surprises for you on this journey, if your story is anything like mine!

7. Take the saliva test again six months or a year later and measure the strength of your adrenals. If you are not feeling significantly better, you may have another deficiency like low thyroid that is contributing to the problem. I stumbled on a book about six months after my adrenal fatigue diagnosis that said to treat all your issues simultaneously in order to get better. So that’s when I realized I had low thyroid symptoms, Dr. Taylor confirmed my suspicions based on my previous saliva test, and I started taking natural thyroid supplement from a compounding pharmacy, which as far as I know has greatly contributed to my recovery and overall energy.

That was my attempted nutshell. Hope it's helpful!

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

New website!

In seeking to get the word out to other "addy" sufferers about how Univera products helped to dramatically increase my energy level, I just launched this new website: www.adrenal-fatigue-energy.com. I would love any feedback you have on it. Spread the word!

Sunday, February 15, 2009

The secret to a longer fuller life

I am currently reading a fascinating book (now that I'm fascinated with health stuff, finding out how my body works and what makes it work best--so personal and urgent has that subject become, so interwoven with my every day life). It's called The Metabolic Plan: Stay Younger Longer by Stephen Cherniske.

In it he explains his lifelong scientific search for the causes of aging and his discoveries that have come as a result of turning assumptions on their heads: not "oh you are getting stiff joints because you are getting old," but what about "getting old" contributes to stiff joints, and how to prevent the getting old (and thus the stiff joints).

He explains why free radicals cause cancer and heart disease, and what to do about it (e.g. get LOTS of antioxidants). Why oxygen embodies a profound paradox, being both the source of life, and the cause of death (oxidation), and what to do about that (e.g. don't overcook your food). Why caffeine is so bad, keeping the body in a "stressed" state, and that the caffeine headache when attempting to withdraw is actually the blood rushing back into previously constricted blood vessels in the brain! (That information is enough to keep me off the bean, I hope.)

One of his chapters, as you might imagine, in on stress. And, as you might also imagine, that one was of particular interest to me, since I am one of stress's many victims. I was reading this chapter on the plane next to Steve on our way back from skiing in Salt Lake City.

Sitting on the other side of Steve (he's always so sweet to take the middle seat!) was an older woman who seemed to look about her with alertness, had a gleam in her eye, seemed interested in us, and most surprising, sat for most of the 4-hour flight doing nothing but sitting, seeing, thinking, so contentedly. She struck me as wise, and I finally overcame my reluctance to put down my book and began a short conversation with her (yes, across poor reading Steve). It crossed my mind that here was a specimen of a long full life before my very eyes, exhibit A of the book I was reading, and I half planned to ask her what her secret was.

She had been visiting a niece in sunny Phoenix hoping to kick a cold, but ended up hitting some bad weather and wasn't quite over it, though she'd had a good time. When I suggested she go back soon, she revealed that both the going and the coming involved travel upheavals and missed fights and late nights. "But it doesn't bother me," she said. "I take things in stride." She said that a couple times.

We took a break from our conversation (and leaning), and I contemplated asking her what her secret to longevity was. And then I realized that she had already told me. "I take things in stride." I don't get stressed out. Stresses happen--missed flights, clingy colds--but I don't let them get to me. I put them in their proper place. I take things in stride: I keep walking, allowing for life's craziness but not succumbing to it.

Later when I forget the details of my book and have to refer back to remember terms like glycation and alpha lipoic acid, I can bet I will still remember this Lady of Contentment and her lesson for me.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

More exposure

I was doing a google search on "adrenal fatigue" and it seemed to come up with more stuff than I saw a couple years ago. I think awareness is growing...as those of us who get it realize how horrible it is and that we don't want anyone else to experience it. Also, alternative medicine seems to be doing its part to educate people. For all this I am very grateful. And maybe the mainstream medical community will catch on/up someday.

One website I found to be informative, if a little extreme. Or perhaps not. I don't understand all its terms, but the first sentence, "Adrenal Fatigue is reappearing as a major cultural influence in the 21st century," whether true or not, definitely caught my attention. Anyway, this website raises some interesting questions and possible cause and effect, while also adding new information about treatment, or at least new to me.