Your adrenals are key to your overall success! Your adrenal gland physiology can cause a series of issues in the body that can negatively impact your training. You can not blame your glads but rather they are doing their job and have to look at the source of what is causing them to fire!
You have a pair of triangular-shaped glands sitting on top of your kidneys called the adrenals. Their primary function is to help your body manage and survive during stressful situations.
When you get in a stressful situation what happends is your brain sends a nerve impulse directly via the preganglionic sympathetic fibers to your adrenal medulla to secrete adrenaline, otherwise known as epinephrine (or aka adrenaline).
Epinephrine increases blood pressure, respiration rate, heart rate, increases glucose, and dilates the pupils, all for the purpose of enabling you to quickly and safely get out of a potentially life-threatening situation. This was is an automatic reaction that comes straight from your brain.
At the same time your brain sends a nerve impulse,and releases a hormone — corticotrophin releasing hormone (CRH) from the hypothalamus — which tells the pituitary to release adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which then tells the adrenal glands to produce cortisol.
Cortisol’s primary role is to increase blood glucose levels to provide fuel to your muscles and brain during a stressful situation.
Now a third hormone is released from the adrenal glands called aldosterone, a mineralcorticoid, which helps regulate sodium and potassium levels in the body.
Abnormal cortisol levels will wreck your efforts in the gym. Chronically elevated cortisol causes a number of issues including suppression of pituitary function which can lead to low Testosterone levels.
The adrenal glands release hormones based on inputs from other areas of the body. In other words, if someone is having symptoms of low cortisol, perhaps it’s not the adrenal glands that need help, but rather something in the body is actually telling the adrenal glands to produce less cortisol. Everything is being caused by something else!
High cortisol can be a real problem!! Below are a few examples of their negative impact:
-Suppression of TSH, decreased conversion of T4 to T3.
-Increased blood glucose levels.
-Suppressed pituitary function, leading to low luteinizing hormone and low Testosterone.
-Decreased liver detoxification
-Decreased immune system function, leading to increased risk of infection.
-Insomnia.
How do you know if your adrenals are shot or your cortisol levels are up?
Below are symptoms to watch out for:
-difficulty falling asleep, allergies, excessive perspiration, and gastric ulcers.
-difficulty staying asleep (waking up during the night), dizziness when standing quickly, blurred vision, shakiness or lightheadedness between meals, and relief of fatigue after eating.
When trying to achieve your ultimate goals and minimize anything that can halt your progress, it is essential to support your adrenals! Other than the unavoidable everyday stressors of life, be sure to keep yourself in a place where you can avoid certain sitations and take control over things you have control over! Start with a positive attitude and avoiding negativity and that is a start to supporting those adrenals!
Hi Gina, just wondering what else I could do to support my adrenals if I have a few of these symptoms? I’m not positive it’s adrenal fatigue, but from what I understand there’s no way to actually diagnose it. I’ve had some stressful situations as of lately and have had time off from the gym, but it’d be nice to make sure my efforts in the gym aren’t being wasted (since I am just getting back into it.)
Any other advice you have on this topic would be great! Thank you!!
Rach– Great question. If you have some of these symptoms, here are a few things to check first before confirming it is adrenal fatigue. First of all, being that you have been in stressful situations, I could bet your cortisol levels are up and adrenals are being tapped but here are a few things to note.
is your water intake up to where it should be?
—dehydration can cause fatigue!
are your salt levels up?
—salt can cause dehydration and therefore fatigue!
are you taking your EFA?
—low fat levels can be an issue!
what about sleep? possible over training? (don’t think so in your case, as you are just getting back into the swing of things)
How are your carbohydrate levels? Have they been low for a period of time?
These are things to think about and to play around with so you can start to eliminate what it may be.
Keep me posted.
Ok thanks Gina, I feel like there are so many mis-matched symptoms going on here that I don’t know really where to even begin assessing things!
My water is not where it should be– and my EFA’s are just being re-introduced. My sleep patterns are weird like you mentioned in your article. It’s definitely not over training (which I thought was the only way to get “adrenal fatigue”) but when I stress– I am a complete mess!! So looks like I need to pay closer attention to my body and put things in check!
Thanks again for all of your helpful insight!
wow, yes Rach, sounds like there are a few things going on but I suggest you get in your water, watch sodium and be consistent with your EFA’s and let me know how you feel in about 2 weeks! I think this will make a big difference.
Of course, do what you can to get your rest and if you are able to, naps are key!
You will get it, promise. It is a learning process and you are listening to your body, the fact that you inquired about it. Keep me posted.