Adrenal fatigue is thrown around a lot these days even though conventional medicine fails to acknowledge it as a legitimate health issues. Perhaps conventional medicine isn’t interested in things in cannot treat with drugs. Another major problem is that conventional medicine does not know how to adequately test for adrenal fatigue.
In the blood, sometimes physicians test for steroidal hormones such as cortisol and DHEA. However, it should be pointed out that blood steroidal hormone values are not accurate. This is because in the blood, these hormones get bound to proteins, and consequently the hormones in the blood are not representative of “free-fractioned”, “bio-available” hormones. The preferred biopsy for testing steroidal hormones is in the saliva. Salivary hormones are sampled throughout the course of the day, and these hormones are bio-active.
Adrenal Fatigue Is Classified Through Sum Cortisol Output
On a salivary hormone test, adrenal fatigue is identified by the sum cortisol level. Cortisol is tested during 4 different intervals throughout the day: morning, noon, afternoon and evening. In a normal cortisol rhythm, cortisol is highest in the morning and progressively decreases throughout the day and evening. Abnormalities with cortisol’s rhythm tends to indicate various imbalances, including autoimmune processes, chronic infections and inflammatory processes.
It is the sum total of each of the 4 cortisol rhythms that determines adrenal hyper or hypo function.
When cortisol output is diminished, approximately 23 nM or less, it is a sign of low adrenal output and adrenal HYPOfunction. Conversely, when the sum cortisol level is greater than 40 nM, it is indicative of adrenal HYPERfunction.
Adrenal & Thyroid Activity
Many clinicians believe that low thyroid function (hypothyroidism) is becoming an epidemic. A very important parallel is that excessive, depleted or exhausted adrenal activity is oftentimes the underlying cause of low thyroid function. At the very least, adrenal function absolutely must be taken into account when thyroid issues are present, and the opposite applies as well.
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