Tired? Stressed? Trouble Sleeping? Is It Adrenal Exhaustion?

Are You Tired of Feeling Tired? You're Not Alone! 

To say the symptoms such as fatigue, exhaustion, stress and sleep trouble are common would be a grave understatement. Closer to the truth is that such symptoms are bordering on epidemic and we certainly see that in our medical and nutritional patients. 

Living in a medical, drug-based society, such symptoms are often “treated” with advice to take it easy, receive a prescription for a sleeping pill and an antidepressant, along with a hefty dose of self prescribed caffeine and sugar to try to lift the fog of low energy.

What’s wrong with such advice? 

It doesn’t get to the root cause of why the body is feeling poorly. If a drug addressed the true root cause, you wouldn’t have to keep taking it, and for it to be beneficial for you, it certainly wouldn’t have dangerous side effects. And that’s a claim no drug can make, let alone antidepressants with the known side effect of suicidal tendencies.

You Need to Know WHY You Don't Feel Well 

I'm not trying to be negative, but let’s really get a grasp of what it means when your body gives you a symptom. Does your body make you have little to no energy because it’s mad at you? Is your body vindictive in some fashion? The good news is “no”. 

The body gives you a symptom as a simple means of communicating that it is having difficulty adapting to some stress that’s coming its way. And when I say “stress” I don’t just mean mental stress. A stressor could be anything from a poor diet or eating foods you are reacting to, to poor digestion and hormonal imbalance. It could be the reaction to a drug or it could be an infection of a chronic nature.

The point is that once the true stressor(s) are identified and removed, the body can revert to the healthy state its designed to have.

How Does Root Cause Medicine Work? 

 

Getting back to masking symptoms with drugs – taking a drug that makes you “not feel” a certain symptom (but does nothing to address the real root cause) is akin to taking a pain reliever because there’s a rock in your shoe causing you pain. Wouldn’t it make more sense to remove the rock?

The example is simple and you may think the human body is complex, but surprisingly, identifying the root cause of a problem is fairly easy when you’ve been trained where to look.

Let’s look at sleep problems as an example. A person complains of poor restless sleep. They may take a long time to fall asleep or have trouble staying asleep. They may be tired all day and get a second wind at night, making it difficult to “turn off”. A sleeping pill might knock them out for a while, but in my experience with patients, the sleeping pills rarely work for long before the patient is looking for a new pill.

What should be known is that the same system of the body involved in making healthy energy during the day is involved in creating deep, restorative sleep at night. Further, what allows that healthy energy to be produced is a good diet and digestive tract that turns good fuel into utilizable fuel from which to make energy.

It’s not complicated. It’s almost like wondering why your car doesn’t move when there’s no gas. The energy that creates motion in your car requires fuel. Your body is very much the same.

Look at Digestion First and Move on to Adrenals Nest 

It shouldn’t be surprising to learn that the first system we begin with is the digestive tract and the patient’s diet. If the food being eaten is of low quality, it won’t turn into good fuel. If the food is good, but the digestive tract isn’t working properly, again we have a fuel delivery problem. And of course if you're eating a food you're sensitive to such as gluten, again we won't have good fuel.

Once that is addressed, which isn’t at all difficult, we move on to the system that makes that energy, theadrenal glands. You may not have heard of them--but you likely know the word adrenaline, something the adrenal glands produce.

While the adrenal glands are responsible for making effortless levels of energy during the day, they also tie into creating the balance with the sleep hormone at night. In other words the adrenal glands insure great energy when you are awake, but they also feed into the creation of deep, restorative sleep at night--sleep that would be uninterrupted and allow you to bounce out of bed in the morning ready to greet your day.

Why have most people never heard of their adrenal glands? 

Why do doctors never mention them to their patients who are complaining of such symptoms as fatigue, brain fog, stress and poor sleep (to name a few)?

The answer lies in our medical model that asks a doctor to take a symptom, discover if there is a disease process and then treat that disease with a pharmaceutical drug.

The adrenal glands, fortunately, do not fit into this model. The reason is that they disease rarely. There is a disease they can manifest, but it’s thankfully rare, though serious. The downside of this rarity is that doctors are disease-oriented and because adrenal disease is rare, they assume their patients won’t often have a problem that is adrenal related.

And they’re not wrong – they don’t see many patients with adrenal disease, but what they do see is a multitude of patients with adrenal fatigue. Their training doesn’t look for it or even provide a treatment protocol. Remember, it’s not a disease state. What we are describing is a malfunction of the adrenal glands.

What Do the Adrenal Glands Do? 

 

The malfunction of the adrenals can create the following symptoms:

Fatigue

Weakened immune system

Trouble sleeping

Weight gain

Thyroid problems

Hormonal imbalance

Anxiety, depression, mood swings

Hormonal imbalance such as PMS, menstrual cramps, infertility, etc.

Brain fog

Joint pain and muscle aches

Light-headedness - some people call this a "head rush"

Allergies

Inflammation –the cause of most degenerative diseases including heart disease, cancer and diabetes

Premature aging

Asthma

Sensitivity to bright light

That’s quite a list. And for two glands the size of walnuts, it’s a pretty impressive job description that they control all those aspects of your health.

Do you see the problem of missing the adrenal glands as the root cause of your symptoms when they are responsible for so many important jobs?

Imagine you’re tired and have muscle and joint pain and you’re prescribed a pain reliever. The pain reliever seems to do the job somewhat, although it’s temporary. Drinking several cups of coffee or soda gives some relief to the fatigue. But is either "treatment" making the adrenal glands healthier? Absolutely not. So while you may have started with two symptoms on the list above, ignoring the adrenal glands as the underlying root cause will find you in the future suffering from more symptoms or a worsening of the original symptoms… or both.

Would it be worthwhile to find out how to keep one’s adrenal glands happy and optimally functioning? Remember then adrenals also impact aging and inflammation, which is another way of saying that theyextend your life expectancy and fight against degenerative disease.

As an aside, when we wrote our book “The Gluten Effect”, the chapter on adrenal fatigue was the largest chapter in the book, now perhaps you see why that would be.

The exciting news is that the adrenal glands dislike drugs. They thrive on a natural program that is not difficult to implement.

Part 2 Will Tell You What to do Next

In Part 2 of this article, I will review what you need to do and what your doctor needs to do in order to revitalize and rebalance your adrenal glands.

It’s not difficult.

Need Help? We're Here for You! 

If you felt as if I was describing you above, you are not alone. As I mentioned earlier, adrenal fatigue/exhaustion is almost epidemic. If you would like assistance and don’t have a clinician whom you feel can assist you, consider contacting us for a FREE Health Analysis. We are a Destination Clinic and treat patients from across the country and internationally. We would be delighted to help you as we have been doing so for over two decades.

Visit us at www.RootCauseMedicalClinic.com. If you have questions or need any help, I’m here for you! Call 408-733-0400.

To your good health,
Dr Vikki Petersen, DC, CCN, CFMP


IFM Certified Practitioner

Founder of Root Cause Medical Clinic
Co-author of “The Gluten Effect”

Author of the eBook: “Gluten Intolerance – What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You!”

Is Gluten Causing Your Hormonal Imbalance?

What Do Fatigue, Overweight, PMS, etc All Have in Common?

Fatigue is the most common symptom plaguing most patients. Trouble sleeping, weight issues, PMS, headaches, fertility or libido issues, and achy joints are also very common and can all be affected by hormonal imbalance that continues after gluten has been removed from the diet in the gluten intolerant individual.  The trouble with trying to resolve such symptoms is that the root cause can vary. If every patient with fatigue had a thyroid problem, it would be easy to correct because we would know exactly where to look.

If you’re gluten intolerant you may have suffered from some of the complaints listed above prior to discovering your celiac disease or gluten sensitivity. But perhaps now, despite your gluten-free diet, some of these same symptoms continue to plague you.  If so, read on.

Do You Have Any of These Symptoms?

• Fatigue
• Trouble sleeping
• Weight trouble
• PMS
• Migraines
• Infertility or miscarriage
• Achy joints or muscles
• Allergies
• Light headedness
• Frequent illness, weak immune system
• Asthma

While the list is long, believe it or not, there is a common cause to all of them.  I’m not saying it’s the only cause, but I want to discusswhy someone can be found gluten intolerant, successfully institute a gluten-free diet, and yet continue to suffer from many of the above symptoms.

The Problem May Be Your Stress Gland

There is a gland in your body, of which you have two, called the adrenal glands. They sit atop each of your kidneys and they are the master of multi-tasking! If I asked you if one part of your body was responsible for:

• Providing you with strong energy
• Maintaining a healthy weight, 
• Keeping your immune system strong,
• Decreasing inflammation
• Maintaining stable mood, 
• Anti-aging, 
• Controlling sleep quality, 
• Balancing hormones, 
• Handling allergies, and more… 

 What would you say?

You might think to yourself that if there was one body part responsible for all those things then you better start treating it well! You’d be very right in your analysis.

As you’ve probably guessed the aforementioned adrenal glands are responsible for handling that very long job list and, unfortunately, those very same adrenal glands tend to be quite stressed in the gluten intolerant individual.

Gluten Intolerance Can Damage Your Stress Glands

Why? Because adrenal glands are sensitive to, and get very stressed with, unstable blood sugar. Stable blood sugar comes from eating healthy food that your body finds nourishing. As you well know if you’re gluten intolerant, gluten, for you, is a poison. Therefore years of eating gluten created unstable blood sugar and thereby put a tremendous strain on your adrenal glands.

Due to the many, many jobs that the adrenal glands are responsible for, simply removing gluten as a stressor is typically insufficient to restore them to normal function. They need to be ‘re-set’ with a nutritional and dietary program, to restore their good health. This explains why many who are gluten intolerant continue to suffer with the symptoms mentioned above.

Therefore, even if your gluten intolerance has been diagnosed and you’ve instituted a strict gluten-free diet, if you haven’t also found a clinician who understands and specializes in restoring health and function to the adrenal glands, you may very well continue to suffer with the symptoms associated with adrenal stress.

Treatment is Easy and Drug-Free

The good news is that the treatment to normalize adrenal function is not at all difficult.Here at the Clinical Nutrition department of HealthNOW we utilize a natural program that involves no dangerous drugs or surgery. There are lab tests to determine the level of adrenal malfunction occurring, and these are called functional specialized lab tests. They differ from traditional adrenal lab tests that only look for disease, not malfunction. I mention this because I want to ensure that there is no confusion created when I mention adrenal function lab testing. We are measuring 'function' and therefore are looking for signs of malfunction rather than only looking for disease, which in the case of adrenal glands is quite rare, although dangerous.

If you ask your traditional medical doctor to test for adrenal malfunction he or she will test for adrenal disease – once again a rare occurrence – and will likely pronounce your adrenal glands ‘fine’ because they are not diseased. While adrenal gland disease is rare, adrenal gland malfunction is extremely common. It is this latter condition that we are speaking of here.

This is an important distinction because I want to make sure that if you are suffering from adrenal fatigue that you aren’t given a ‘clean bill of health’ incorrectly. Unfortunately this happens often. If it took you a while to receive a diagnosis of gluten intolerance then you understand this phenomenon. Sadly this area of health is fraught with misunderstanding and it is the patient who ultimately suffers, unnecessarily.

We Can Help!

If you need any help finding a clinician to help you, feel free to contact me. Normalizing adrenal function is one of our areas of expertise and patients visit us from across the country as well as internationally at our destination clinic to receive this treatment. If we cannot find a clinician close to you that specializes in this then we are more than happy to see you here. The good news is that the treatment is natural and inexpensive.

Visit us at www.RootCauseMedicalClinic.com. If you have questions or need any help, I’m here for you! Call 408-733-0400.

I look forward to hearing from you.

To your good health,

Dr Vikki Petersen, DC, CCN, CFMP


IFM Certified Practitioner

Founder of Root Cause Medical Clinic
Co-author of “The Gluten Effect”

Author of the eBook: “Gluten Intolerance – What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You!”

Gluten Intolerant? Don’t ‘Fall’ for Peer Pressure!

Is Peer Pressure 'Forcing' You to Cheat?

As adults I believe we would all like to think that peer pressure went the way of high school. While for many that may be true, unfortunately peer pressure seems to be alive and well in many of my patients who are gluten intolerant and their health is suffering as a result.

Here Are Some Real Life Examples

 Just this week I’ve run into the following patients:

• A gentleman who had been suffering for years with severe IBS (Irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea and discomfort multiple times per day) whom, after learning he was gluten intolerant and making the necessary dietary and nutritional changes, had been feeling great. His bowels had normalized and his pain had resolved entirely. I hadn’t seen him for several months but he contacted me and confessed that he had been eating some gluten and wasn’t feeling well again. Someone had offered him some a few months prior and, in a moment of weakness, he had given in. When he didn’t 'seem' to suffer terribly as a result, he started cheating more. Time passed and now he’s ill again.

•  The second example is a young woman who had been off gluten for several months and doing well, who accepted a protein bar that her brother handed her before they went out to exercise – she was hungry and didn’t bother to read the gluten-containing ingredients. The result? She went into anaphylactic shock and had to be rushed to the emergency room.

•  Lastly, a middle aged gentleman who had noticed great improvement in his health since removing gluten from his diet, called in to say he needed help. After initiating a gluten-free diet several months ago he’d lost weight from his prior bulging abdomen, his joint pain disappeared and his energy rose significantly. When he came into the clinic this week he was complaining of fatigue and insomnia. It turns out that he started sneaking in some gluten at a memorial dinner after a family member passed away and he was feeling ‘blue’ – someone offered him some and he said it was easier to eat it than explain why he couldn’t.The result? He felt terrible and it wasn't resolving.

What do all these patients have in common?

1. They are all gluten intolerant and have experienced great health improvement as a result of a gluten-free diet, while also receiving treatment for the secondary effects of gluten as individualized for each patient. 
2.  They have ‘cheated’ on their diet and experienced a variety of symptoms. In the case of the young lady, her anaphylactic shock could have killed her if she hadn’t gotten to the ER fast enough.
3. Statistically they have increased their risk of developing autoimmune disease because they are again exposing their immune system to a known toxin – gluten.
4. If they continue cheating they increase their risk of dying from all causes to 4 times over their non-gluten intolerant counterparts.

As I mentioned above, these were just stories from this week. I wish I could say this was an unusual week, but it wasn’t. 

Is it human nature to ‘cheat’?

 I like to have treats once in a while, but I’d NEVER cheat with gluten. Why? I know better.  I might have a couple of extra pieces of dark chocolate, but gluten doesn’t even tempt me. And the reason I'm not tempted is because I know the serious ramifications. I’d no sooner make that mistake than I would sign up for a game of Russian roulette – both can kill you.

If you’re gluten intolerant, please get educated. You’ll know when your education is adequately thorough when you wouldn’t ever consider cheating. Do you need help? That’s what I’m here for.

Need Help? We're Here for You! 

If you felt as if I was describing you above, you are not alone. As I mentioned earlier, adrenal fatigue/exhaustion is almost epidemic. If you would like assistance and don’t have a clinician whom you feel can assist you, consider contacting us for a FREE Health Analysis. We are a Destination Clinic and treat patients from across the country and internationally. We would be delighted to help you as we have been doing so for over two decades.

Visit us at www.RootCauseMedicalClinic.com. If you have questions or need any help, I’m here for you! Call 408-733-0400.

I look forward to hearing from you.

To your good health,

Dr Vikki Petersen, DC, CCN, CFMP


IFM Certified Practitioner

Founder of Root Cause Medical Clinic
Co-author of “The Gluten Effect”

Author of the eBook: “Gluten Intolerance – What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You!”

Making “Light” of Gluten Sensitivity Will Harm More than Help

A patient sent me a response from an “As the Doctor” column hosted by Drs. Oz and Roizen entitled “Don’t buy into gluten phobia by cutting grains”. This response was to a reader’s question who asked: “My family consumes a lot of 100 percent whole-grain wheat products, but I've heard so much about gluten problems that I'm worried we're harming our health. Should we cut back? — Anonymous”

Part of their response was as follows: “Because gluten gets more bad press than Lindsay Lohan, gluten-free foods have become a fad. We're going against the grain and suggesting you keep doing exactly what you're doing.”

My patient was irate and I don’t blame her.  She stated that: “Oz and Roizen are showing their ignorance when they did not even ask the gluten concerned person to look at a family history for autoimmune diseases before dismissing the issue.  Personally, I think these men are doing a lot of damage and are missing the mark.” 

She went on to state: “…the general public does not understand gluten sensitivity and the dangers involved.  After reading this little sound bite over their morning coffee and a bagel, people will be less likely to be checked for gluten sensitivity.  The financially strapped person will be more likely to disregard the issue since it is easy and cheap to fill up a hungry family's belly with bread than nutritious fruits and vegetables.”

In the authors’ defense they made a brief attempt to define celiac disease and how it affects the small intestine and they did include that “Some experts feel that gluten sensitivity affects far more people than the 1 percent of Americans who know they have celiac disease“. But when listing symptoms associated with a gluten intolerance that their reader should be on the lookout for, all they could come up with was the following: “itchy, blistery rash, having really awful smelling poop or even vague symptoms, like feeling unusually irritable”.

Hmmm. What about: 

• Depression, anxiety
• Infertility/miscarriages
• Neurological disorders
• Headaches / Migraines
• Memory Loss
• Unexplained chronic fatigue
• Increased liver enzymes
• Iron-deficiency anemia
• Osteoporosis
• Autoimmune disease
• Craving for  gluten
• Obesity
• Diarrhea and/or constipation
• Gas, bloating, abdominal pain
• IBS, colitis
• Frequent canker sores
• Dental problems
• Psoriasis, eczema or unexplained rash

I know it’s a long list but that’s the point isn’t it?  My patient was exactly right, Dr Oz and Roizen’s dismissal of gluten-free as a “fad” and “phobia” will certainly prevent many people who had been considering looking into it from doing so.  And what a terrible shame that is.

Well, I’m not on Oprah but I am committed to getting the word out.  Let’s overcome any negative influence this article may have had by investing some time and effort into enlightening friends, family and co-workers of the TRUTH about gluten. 

Please let me know what I can do to assist.

Visit us at www.RootCauseMedicalClinic.com. If you have questions or need any help, I’m here for you! Call 408-733-0400.

I look forward to hearing from you.

To your good health,

Dr Vikki Petersen, DC, CCN, CFMP


IFM Certified Practitioner

Founder of Root Cause Medical Clinic
Co-author of “The Gluten Effect”

Author of the eBook: “Gluten Intolerance – What You Don’t Know May Be Killing You!”