Adrenal Balance

I present to you on this page a review about adrenal glands and how to restore your adrenal balance.Adrenal balance is defined as the secretion of adequate amount of adrenal hormones. The adrenals may be over secreting or under secreting.

The adrenal glands are two small glands located on the top of our kidneys. They secrete many hormones; I am going to discuss two of them: Cortisol and DHEA.

Cortisol

Cortisol is one of the major hormones secreted directly as a response to stress: emotional and physical.

Normally, your adrenals should secrete cortisol on steady levels, fluctuating during the day. They are supposed to secrets significant amount of cortisol to protect us against dangers, and resume normal secretions soon afterwards.

Due to your fast paced life, you are probably bombarding your adrenals to over secrete most of the day instead of short episodes.Your body starts over secreting most of the time initially, then it will start over secreting during certain periods of the day and under secrete during the rest of the day.Eventually in severe cases, the adrenal glands cease from keeping up with the demand, and under secrete cortisol and other stress hormones. This state is called adrenal fatigue and exhaustion.

Adrenal fatigue is simply the consequence of chronic persistent stress, that doesn't give the body the ability to cope with it.That's why people feel better when they go into vacations away from work and family issues.

Adrenal fatigue manifests as a lack of energy, intolerance to stress, headaches, insomnia, depression, fibromyalgia, diabetes, blood pressure fluctuations and immune system dysfunctions.

What your doctor may not know about adrenal disease?

Your medical doctor recognizes only extreme diseases of the adrenal glands called: adrenal failure and Cushing syndrome. Those diseases are relatively uncommon.

The blood tests used to detect those extreme diseases are not sensitive enough for minor fluctuations, which may cause significant symptoms.

In order to have an accurate estimation of the cortisol levels variations, you may need to use saliva testing instead of blood testing. Saliva testing is very sensitive to cortisol fluctuations and provides accurate results. There are many labs that provide this service, one of them is called ZRT labs, you may visit their website and they may be able to refer you to a local doctor that works with them.

Saliva testing allows the doctor to detect chronically hyperactive cortisol secretion as well as chronically hypoactive cortisol secretion.

Resuming adrenal balance is achieved through:

DHEA:

DHEA is one of the major hormones secreted by the adrenal glands.It has been completely ignored by the allopathic medical community until recently. Most medical doctors have not even heard about DHEA benefits yet.Even though it is a hormone, you may purchase it over the counter as a dietary supplement.

Optimally, blood or saliva levels should be checked in saliva and replaced accordingly.If you are over 40 years old, you may want to try about 15 mg for females and 25 mg in males.

If you exceed the recommended dose you may suffer from insomnia.

In animal studies, DHEA has been shown to be useful for anti-obesity, anti-diabetes, anti-cancer, anti-autoimmune disease, anti-heart disease, and anti-stress.

Those benefits are awaiting human studies to be confirmed. Some of those benefits have already been confirmed and published in major medical journals.

In my practice, I have noticed that it is useful to increase energy levels, help sugar control and weight.

Nabil Khoury,MD

(712) 792-3222
Questions? Ask me about adrenal balance