What’s the first thing you think when somebody says adrenal glands?

My guess is something like “fight or flight,” or 120 lb. moms lifting cars off their kids, or that feeling you get when you do something extremely exciting like skydiving or being chased by bulls in Pamplona…

You wouldn’t be wrong. The adrenal glands create adrenalin, which is a factor in those scenarios, but there is so much more to these little organs that sit atop your kidneys like cherries on a sundae.

The truth is that your adrenal glands produce more than 50 hormones that are, directly or indirectly, involved in nearly every physiological process in your body, from digestion to processing information in your brain to sexual function to getting out of bed in the morning.

There’s this fascinating group of glands, of which the adrenals are a part, called the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. The involvement of these two glands deep in the brain make adrenal glands crucial for stress management, mood and emotions, and overall mental functioning. This axis of glands must maintain an incredibly delicate balance for all systems to be operating at peak performance.

Along with adrenal hormones, your adrenal glands control hormones like glucocorticoids—which help control immune response and balance blood sugar—mineralocorticoids—hormones that regulate how your body uses water and helps control blood pressure—and your sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone. I hope this really nails down how important adrenal glands are to overall functioning. Because it’s surprisingly common that we suffer from adrenal fatigue. In fact, roughly 80 percent of people will experience adrenal fatigue at some point in their life.

The origins of adrenal fatigue

Adrenal fatigue does have something to do with your diet, but for the most part, it’s a response to prolonged stress. There is a measurable increase in cases of adrenal fatigue after such life events like the death of a loved one, divorce, surgery, financial hardship, a bad work environment, poor relationships or an emotionally traumatic experience. It’s very common among soldiers. When the soldiers underwent an autopsy, 84 percent were found to have adrenal damage.

There’s also a sort of feedback loop involved in illness and adrenal fatigue. When you have a chronic condition (particularly a respiratory condition) like asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, etc., it stresses out your adrenal glands—and when your adrenal glands become fatigued, you have a harder time fighting disease because of the adrenals’ crucial role in your immune responses to disease. Often times, the medications prescribed for these illnesses further stress the adrenal glands. Antibiotics and chemotherapy are particularly hard on your adrenals.

The consequences of adrenal fatigue

Adrenal fatigue comes with links to some of the most pervasive and mysterious conditions of our time.

Fibromyalgia is so mysterious to the medical research community, that some have resorted to questioning if it even truly exists and isn’t actually some psychological pathology rather than a physical ailment. And honestly, you can’t blame them for thinking that when almost all of the symptoms involve things that can’t really be measured, like pain or fatigue, tingling, sensitivity to light, anxiety or brain fog.

However, one measurable thing fibromyalgia sufferers have in common is low HGH, which is made in the pituitary gland, which, if you remember, is part of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. Furthermore, fibromyalgia sufferers almost always have low adrenal function and the symptoms for both ailments have a lot of overlap. But as we learn more about things like fibromyalgia and the endocrine system, it becomes difficult to determine if fibromyalgia causes adrenal fatigue or adrenal fatigue causes fibromyalgia—a chicken or the egg sort of scenario. This is further confused considering that fibromyalgia, like adrenal fatigue, seems to often coincide with chronic stress to the point that it’s often labeled a “stress disorder.”

Furthermore, when adrenal fatigue clears up, symptoms of fibromyalgia generally dissipate as well—calling into question if they’re not, in fact, different variations of the same disease. The same goes for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

Adrenal fatigue also seems to be intimately connected to hypothyroidism—or low thyroid function. The thyroid gland is regulated by the pituitary and hypothalamus glands, just like the adrenal glands. Many of the roles of the thyroid and adrenal glands overlap as well, such as regulating heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, immune response, digestion, cortisol production, and weight gain or loss. Again, chronic stress destroys the thyroid.

When you’re stressed, your adrenals signal the release of the stress hormone, cortisol. To get your attention, when you have cortisol, you store fat. But more than that, when your cortisol levels rise, your pituitary and hypothalamus slow down their overall hormone production and signal to the thyroid gland to slow down as well.

Stress causes adrenals to signal the release of cortisol. Cortisol signals the hypothalamus and pituitary to slow down, which slows down thyroid hormone production.

Healing your adrenals

So if you’re going to heal your adrenals, the first step is to remove what’s damaging them—all too often that’s stress, and that’s something that can be very difficult, vague and abstract to remove from your life. Here are some tips:

• Rest when you feel tired as much as possible.
• Sleep 8–10 hours a night.
• Avoid staying up late and stay on a regular sleep cycle — ideally, in bed before 10 p.m.
• Laugh and do something fun every day.
• Minimize work and relational stress.
• Eat on a regular food cycle and reduce your caffeine and sugar addiction.
• Exercise (even moderate exercise and walking can help).
• Avoid negative people and self-talk.
• Take time for yourself (do something relaxing).
• Seek counsel or support for any traumatic experiences.
• Pray or meditate
• Go outdoors every day
• Exercise—but not to the point of stressing your body.

Once you get your stress levels more under control, you can focus on healing your damaged adrenal glands.

While you decrease foods like sugar, hydrogenated oils and processed foods, add in things like:

• Coconut (including coconut oil, mild and meat)
• Olives and olive oil
• Avocado and avocado oil
• Cruciferous vegetables(cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, etc.)
• Fatty fish (e.g., wild-caught salmon, mackerel, tuna)
• Free-range chicken and turkey
• Nuts, such as walnuts, and almonds
• Seeds, such as pumpkin, chia, and flax
• Kelp and seaweed
• Celtic or Himalayan sea salt

You can assist in adrenal healing by focusing on certain nutrients as well. Consider supplementing things like Vitamin B5, Vitamin B12, Vitamin C, Vitamin D3, Zinc, Magnesium, Fish oil and Ashwagandha.

Lastly, how much coffee do you drink a day? For some of us, it’s like, “Not much.” But when you really start counting, it turns into 3… 5… 8 cups a day. Caffeine overdose is real, and the other name it goes by is adrenal fatigue. Nothing wrong with coffee—particularly bulletproof coffee—but if it becomes an addiction to you, and the amount you drink is growing or sustained at high levels, this is going to put you at a much higher risk for adrenal fatigue. Of course, this applies if you’re drinking a whole lot of Mountain Dew as well—but that also adds to the sugar and additives problem. So don’t do that…