Welcome to Dr. James Wilson's Adrenal Fatigue Blog

Bad Marriage Raises Stress Levels For Men and Women

Your relationship could be literally killing you, and it may be more important to fix a bad marriage than fix a time with your doctor for that next check-up. A recent study has shown that men and women who are in bad marriages take that stress to work with them, thereby increasing their risk of developing heart disease and diabetes and other chronic complaints stemming from stress.

"What is happening is that marital problems are spilling into the workplace," said Brandeis University's Rosalind Barnett, one of the study's authors, in a news release. "And if these tensions persist over time, there could be serious health problems."

In the study, which was published in the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine, Barnett and colleagues looked at 105 middle-aged married adults -- 67 men and 38 women -- to determine the relationship between the quality of their marriage and several physical and mental stress indicators.

Participants' feelings about their marriage were assessed using a standardized scale. Then, their blood pressure and levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol, determined from saliva samples, were checked throughout a working day. Those who expressed more marital concerns had higher blood pressure during the workday. They also had higher morning cortisol levels, with fewer changes in levels over the course of the day than those with fewer marital concerns. People who scored worse on the marital quality scale also reported feeling more stress.

Over time, high cortisol levels can increase your risk for obesity, diabetes, depression, immune problems and more, while high blood pressure raises the risk of heart attack and stroke. Contrary to what some may expect, these effects were seen in both men and women.

"It's generally assumed that primary relationships are more critical to women's psychological well-being than men's, but this is not the case," Barnett said. "When there is marital concern, men and women are equally affected." Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 2009

Comment by Eric Bakker, ND:

Here is yet another study highlighting the relationship with emotional conflict creating long term ill health by way of altering the sensitive stress mechanism of the human body. Countless studies have shown that high cortisol levels (a hormone produced by the adrenal gland) which stays high can lead to many chronic degenerative diseases for which pharmaceutical drugs are conveniently prescribed by your doctor. There are some enlightened doctors however who do understand the relationship with stress and health, and here are a few comments I received from doctors who use Dr. Wilson's Adrenal fatigue Program in their clinics. A doctor I know here in New Zealand has been using Dr. Wilson's Adrenal Fatigue Program successfully in his primary practice for the past two and a half years. His comments: "The more patients I see in primary care, the more I can see the connection with many of their presenting complaints and stress. In fact, if I placed half of my primary care patients on Dr. Wilson's Program I could reduce my workload at least by half." Another doctor I spoke with in the South Island of New Zealand mentioned that he used to treat depression as a "disease in its own right" but after studying Dr. Wilson's work has seen that many cases of depression actually stem from adrenal exhaustion (and altered cortisol levels) in men women. His comments: "Many cases of depression I see in patients seems to be connected to their level of stress and tiredness, and once I got used to treating their fatigue and stress patterns, their depression lifted and in some cases disappeared."

 

British Work Stress - 65% higher risk of Heart Attack

LONDON (Reuters) - Work really can kill you, according to a study providing the strongest evidence yet of how on-the-job stress raises the risk of heart disease by disrupting the body's internal systems.

Read post and commentary by Dr. Eric Bakker, ND here.

Stress, the Workplace, and Adrenal Fatigue 3

One of my chief concerns is the overall decline in health of the US population, and specifically the health of working America that keeps US companies afloat. All too often, I have witnessed the detrimental effects of stress on the health and productivity of key company employees and leaders. The unnecessary waste of talent in American businesses due to health concerns caused by stress is costly, and in epidemic proportions. Research shows that the workplace accounts for about 75% of the stress in someone's life. We know that health care expenditures are nearly 50% greater for workers who report high levels of stress.[1]

In fact, in a study of over 46,000 working individuals, the Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO) showed that stress is the most costly factor in health care expenditures (even greater than tobacco use or obesity).[2] In 1992, The United Nations dubbed stress the "20th-century epidemic." In 2005, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NISOCH) reported that workplace stress is estimated to cost American companies $300 billion a year in poor performance, absenteeism and health costs.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not necessary to sacrifice one's body for the job. The keys are to know how to protect yourself from the negative effects of unavoidable stress, and to avoid the impact of stresses that can be managed.

Although the body is not a mechanical device, using a car as a metaphor provides a good conceptual -- albeit not entirely accurate -- analogy to the body and its response to stress. When a car is maintained properly and not driven beyond what it is designed to do, it usually holds up well, meets performance expectations and lasts for a long time. However, if the car gets irregular maintenance, poor quality oil, the wrong kind of fuel, is loaded beyond capacity, or driven hard on rough roads, it starts to break down and wears out more quickly. One car may blow a gasket, a second burst a water hose, a third bend a valve, and a fourth break a spring as a result of mistreatment. This analogy holds true for any person exposed to amounts of stress the body was not designed to handle. Each body may have its own particular pattern of decline, but in most instances its systems start breaking down in the ways we have learned to recognize as the symptoms and signs of stressed adrenals. The more you ignore the maintenance schedule and the warning lights on the dashboard, the more serious the problems that develop. Once adrenal fatigue sets in and that day of reckoning arrives, your body will no longer be able to respond the way you want it to do when you push it like you are used to doing.

To continue the car metaphor, just imagine the difference between the requirements of driving of your car around town at 30 miles an hour and around a racetrack at 180 miles an hour. In a race, your vehicle needs better fuel along with better and more frequent care. Our bodies are the same. During stress your body is in a race, and to finish the race in good shape it is essential to pay attention to what your body needs and to step up your level of self care.

It is important that you take care of yourself now to not just survive, but to strengthen your health during this time so you will always be ready for whatever lies ahead.

[1] Goetzel RZ, et al. The relationship between modifiable health risk and health care expenditures: an analysis of the multiemployer HERO health risk and cost database. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. 1998: 40(10); 843-54.

[2.] Anderson DR< Whitmer RW, Goetzel RZ, Ozminkowski RJ, Dunn RL, Wasserman J, Serxner S; Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO) Research Committee. The relationship between modifiable health risks and group-level health care expenditures. Am J Health Promot. 2000 Sep-Oct; 15(1):45-52.

Stress, the Workplace, and Adrenal Fatigue 2

A meta-study on the cost of stress to business revealed that 75 to 80% of the stress in a person's life is work related. Much of the stress at work is actually unnecessary and can be eliminated or minimized. Many people are not aware that the typical work-related behaviors listed below actually stress their adrenals and can lead to health problems that will eventually interfere with their ability to work. The following are warning signs that you are mistreating your body and are risking some aspect of your health breaking down on you:

• using caffeinated beverages to keep going instead of taking proper nourishment or getting enough sleep
• missing meals
• eating non-nourishing foods
• continually working through lunch hours and past the hours of a normal work day
• coming to work sick
• not exercising regularly
• not taking time to relax and enjoy life

In addition, there are many common workplace situations that increase stress. These fall into two categories:

1) The physical environment:

• poor lighting
• air quality
• noise
• inadequate tools for the job
• lack of access to facilities, etc. and

2) The work culture:

• insufficient job training
• office conflicts
• inadequate access to resources
• low compensation
• responsibility without commensurate power (common with middle management)
• unrealistic expectations and deadlines
• absence of positive feedback, etc.

Your health is a very valuable, but often ignored, aspect of success. Consciously redesigning your lifestyle and work place with the goal of decreasing these stress factors can profoundly affect your long term success as well as your health. When you are healthy and work in a physically and psychologically healthy environment, you are capable of greater productivity, a higher level of cooperation, more enthusiasm for work, and a deeper commitment to your job. You get to spend more time getting work done rather than trying to cope with stress fallout. Discovering how to minimize and manage stress in your personal and work life so you can avoid or recover from adrenal fatigue could turn out to be one of the most worthwhile lessons learned.

 

Stress, the Workplace, and Adrenal Fatigue

How many companies do you know give an employee award for a balanced life? In reality, most businesses unknowingly encourage stress in the workplace. Many operate on a crisis to crisis basis, going from one urgent short term goal to the next. They reward and encourage the person who stays late and comes in early day after day. Missing lunches, pushing through fatigue, living for work, and adding extra responsibilities to an already full workload often earn applause rather than words of caution from superiors. We have created a culture in which many individuals take pride in how much stress they are under.

However, the physiological effects of stress often go unnoticed and build insidiously over time until they become too disruptive to ignore. Some people experience total burnout, but most just experience a gradual decline in their productivity, powers of concentration, ability to handle stress, energy and enthusiasm. They find themselves missing deadlines, getting sick, quarreling with coworkers, and playing catch-up more and more frequently. Understanding the changes that occur in your body as a result of stress may give you some insights that can help you design your workplace and your life to minimize these problems.

Stress affects everyone from the CEO to the entry level clerk in similar physiological ways. Your adrenal glands respond to every stress you experience by secreting hormones that mediate the many physiological accommodations your body must make to adapt to the stressor and maintain homeostasis. In physiology, these walnut-sized glands situated over your kidneys (hence their Latin name, ad-renal) are known as the “glands of stress” because their primary function is to produce adequate responses to all the stresses your body experiences. Stress elicits the same physiological reaction whether it is from a physical, psychological or emotional source.

At first your adrenal glands can adapt and increase their production of hormones to enable your body to handle more stress. However, these higher levels of circulating stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, can have detrimental effects on your body when they are repeatedly or chronically elevated. The damage they do then becomes an additional stressor. With continued stress and too little rest and replenishment to allow recovery between stressful times, your adrenal capacity to respond to stress gradually diminishes. I coined the term "adrenal fatigue" in 1998 to describe this state of low adrenal function.

Adrenal fatigue is a decrease in your body's ability to respond to stress because your adrenal glands are no longer able to function optimally under stressful conditions. This dysfunction can range all the way from being mild enough to only slightly interfere with daily life, to being so severe that you become nearly incapacitated. In its more moderate forms adrenal fatigue has become a common occurrence in the workplace, affecting all occupations, work levels, body types and ages. Burnout and “breakdown” are severe types of adrenal fatigue caused by stress. People vary in their ability to withstand stress; some have congenitally low adrenal function due to maternal or inherited factors, and some lose hardiness through poor environment, lifestyle choices or illness. When chronic or severe, adrenal fatigue accelerates aging, and can have a negative impact on many aspects of health, including immune function, allergies, libido (lack of sex drive or function), blood sugar metabolism, hormone balance, sleep patterns and mental acuity. 

Because the hormones secreted by your adrenal glands affect almost every gland, tissue and organ in your body, decreased adrenal function can manifest itself in a variety of ways. 85% of patient complaints to their medical doctor involve some sort of fatigue, but only adrenal fatigue produces this unique daily fluctuation in energy. The cardinal signs of this episodic daily fatigue pattern are:

• Unexplained tiredness upon rising - even after 8-9 hours of sleep
• Difficulty getting going or feeling awake in the morning without the help of caffeinated drinks such as coffee and cola beverages
• Low energy in the mid to late afternoon lasting from 15 minutes to 2 hours that may be so slight you just want to sit for awhile or so severe you need to lay down
• Renewed energy at around 6:00 PM that lasts until 9:30 or 10:00 PM (like a switch is turned on making you feel better than you have during most of the day)  
• New burst of energy around 11:00 PM that can last until 1-2 AM
• Best, most refreshing sleep between 7-9 AM in the morning 

What is unique about the typical adrenal fatigue energy pattern is its episodic waxing and waning throughout the day at specific time periods. No other fatigue pattern has this unique characteristic. If you recognize this energy pattern in yourself and you answered yes to the questions listed in my previous article, you are probably experiencing some level of adrenal fatigue.

Cumulative Stress Load and Adrenal Fatigue

Your body is designed to handle a certain amount of stress. In fact, a low level of stress appears to strengthen it and help keep it in good repair. However, when the total amount of stress is greater than your body can adequately compensate for, the signs and symptoms of stress begin to appear. Because stress includes all physical, emotional, mental, chemical and biochemical deviations from homeostasis (physiological stability), many of the stresses your body handles on a day-to-day basis are imperceptible. They can be internal or external, imagined or real. Their effects can surface in your conscious or remain unconscious, but your body has to mediate every stress from every source in order for you to function properly and remain healthy.

It is important to remember that there is what I call a "cumulative stress load." This is the sum of the total number of stressors, plus the severity of each stressor, plus the length of time that stress has occurred. You many only be consciously aware of trying to get to work on time, but your body has to also compensate for the distresses of waking up before you are ready, skipping breakfast, frustration and impatience with traffic on the way to work, your unresolved argument with someone 12 days ago, the tight family finances, that chronic upset stomach, the upcoming report that is due, and your high blood pressure. If it is not able to physiologically compensate for all of these stresses, optimum functioning of various health preserving systems in your body begins to break down. This deterioration usually begins slowly and innocuously, but can be reversed given the right conditions. However, if your body is over-stressed for long, the negative effects on your health and state of mind gradually become noticeable, and begin to interfere with your ability to work and live life fully.

Stresses that are chronic or severe have a pervasive physiological impact that can negatively affect your physical and mental health, sometimes in surprising ways. To find out if stress is affecting your health, honestly answer the questions in the following short quiz:

• Are you tired for no reason?
• Are you having trouble getting up in the morning?
• Do you need coffee or colas to keep you going?
• Are you feeling run down and stressed?
• Do you crave salty or sweet snacks?
• Are you struggling to keep up with life's daily demands?
• Are you having difficulty bouncing back from stress or illness?
• Do you notice that you're not having fun anymore?
• Are you experiencing decreased sex drive?

If you answered ‘Yes' to even one of the above, stress may be silently undermining your health. The more questions you answered ‘Yes' to, the more likely it is that stress is seriously interfering with your ability to feel good and function at your best, and with your defenses against metabolic and degenerative disorders like cardiovascular disease, diabetes and autoimmune problems that are gaining such prevalence in modern life.