If you have symptoms from both lists, your adrenals may have been functioning too high for a while, and may now be starting to fatigue.
7 Stages of Adrenal Dysfunction:
Many websites talk about two or three stages of Adrenal Dysfunction (usually alarm, adaptation, and then fatigue), but there are actually 7 distinct stages:
Normal Response Stage: This is part of a normal response to short-term stress. Both major adrenal hormones are elevated, because the adrenal glands are more active overall. This stage is not a problem.
Excess Cortisol Stage: If stress persists, the adrenal glands start prioritizing the production of their hormones, stealing more of the hormone building blocks from the available pool in order to make more cortisol. These are the “night owls”. They may start to gain a few pounds.
Extreme Cortisol Stage: If stress doesn’t let up, the adrenal glands produce even MORE cortisol; this time, stealing building blocks from OTHER available pools. This starts affecting ALL hormones. At this point, getting to sleep is nearly impossible; these people pull all-nighters and yet they still last through the next day. They also may develop some more serious imbalances in hormone levels and/or the digestive tract. They may gain a little more weight.
Fatigue Stage 1: At this point, the adrenal glands are starting to get tired. These people have been under too much stress for too long and have run themselves ragged, and now they’re in the early stages of burnout. They start to find it harder and harder to get up in the morning, and they rely more and more on stimulants like caffeine. This is usually the stage in which someone decides to seek help in our office.
Fatigue Stage 2: This is a more advanced version of Stage 4; at this point, not only is it nearly impossible to get going in the morning, but it’s also tough to sleep through the night as well. Often, these people wake up feeling slightly “blah”, even nauseated. These people are almost literally “running on empty”. If they haven’t sought help yet, they’ll usually end up in our office at this stage.
Last Gasp Stage: This is sort of a “last gasp”, an odd-ball attempt to compensate and void flat-out adrenal failure. The adrenal glands go all out; since they can barely produce stress hormone anymore, they try to boost levels of the other major adrenal hormone, DHEA in a last-ditch attempt to stay alive.
Adrenal Fatigue/Failure: If that doesn’t work, the adrenal glands pretty much fail. Luckily, people seek help before they get to this point, so we hardly ever see this stage.
Adrenal stress (high cortisol) and adrenal fatigue (low cortisol) are very common; in fact, practically no one has normal adrenal function these days. However, just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s normal or no big deal!