Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By
Izabella Wentz, PharmD
ABCs OF ADRENALS
Based on my experience with clients and readers, I’ve found that most people with Hashi-
moto’s have some degree of adrenal dysfunction. The adrenals and thyroid gland work in a
delicate balance with one another, and treating hypothyroidism without treating the adrenals
is one of the biggest reasons people continue to feel exhausted despite receiving treatment
with thyroid hormones.
Patients may initially report feeling more energetic after starting thyroid hormones, but this is
usually followed by feeling worse and worse until they are right back to where they started.
At this point, they will likely go back to their physicians to check blood work and will be told
that everything is normal.
The patient begins to feel crazy… but that’s when another layer of what is broken in Hashi-
moto’s becomes unraveled. Many symptoms of hypothyroidism overlap with symptoms of
underactive adrenals. However, physicians don’t routinely check adrenal function in those
with Hashimoto’s.
You may have heard that the stress hormone cortisol is “bad”. This is misleading — while high
levels of cortisol are problematic, what could be equally or more problematic is having low
levels of cortisol, especially when it comes to having an autoimmune disease and fatigue.
Cortisol is a hormone that is required for life — we could not live without it, and it is an impor-
tant anti-inflammatory hormone. In fact, it gets released whenever we have inflammation to
cool things down.
I have found that the majority of people with Hashimoto’s have low levels of cortisol.
Pupil Contraction
People with low adrenal function may often have difficulty with contracting their pupils. Our
pupils usually dilate (enlarge) in the dark, and contract (get smaller) in the light. Symptoms
of adrenal dysfunction may include light sensitivity, difficulty seeing in bright lights, having to
wear sunglasses on most days, or as I like to call it, feeling like a vampire in daylight!
Hormone Testing
Adrenal saliva tests provide a way to test our current adrenal function. These tests are gen-
erally only available from functional medicine and integrative health care professionals, but
can also be self-ordered online.
Normally functioning adrenals are supposed to put out the most cortisol in the morning, and
the levels of cortisol should decline during the day until very little cortisol is secreted at bed-
time. A cortisol kick in the morning helps us to get out of bed bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,
ready to face the day. Low cortisol secretion at bedtime helps us relax and sleep.
Some people with adrenal dysfunction have the opposite pattern — they can’t get up in the
morning and drag their feet until the early afternoon, feel slightly human for a few hours be-
tween 2pm and 8pm, then get a second wind at bedtime. These people often have a flipped
cortisol rhythm, where their adrenals put out very little cortisol in the morning and too much
in the evening, causing them to be alert and sleepy at the wrong times.
Other people may have abnormally low cortisol readings all day, everyday. These poor souls
wake up tired and the fatigue lasts all day — I have been there, and it’s not fun. This low
cortisol causes inflammation to go unchecked in the body, prevents healing, and causes the
person to be sluggish for most of the day.
Please note that my updated protocols don’t require testing, but if you’d like to pursue test-
ing, I recommend the Adrenal Stress Profile from ZRT. I have found it to be the most accu-
rate for adrenal testing. If you’re going to go down the road of adrenal saliva testing, I recom-
mend working with a practitioner trained in interpreting these labs, preferably one who has
been interpreting them for at least 4-5 years.
The hypothalamus is like the CEO of our body’s production of hormones. It scans messages
from our environment and other endocrine glands, as well as checks the body’s overall
hormonal status before passing on the order for more hormones to the pituitary gland. The
pituitary gland then acts as a project manager and will pull together individual workers (like
the thyroid gland, the adrenal gland, and the gonads) to do their jobs. The pituitary will also
make sure the workers have adequate resources to do their jobs by managing growth (and
repair), and electrolyte/water balance.
The HPA axis works in response to two types of stress: immediate stress and chronic stress.
Let’s see how the responses to each type differ.
In cases of immediate stress, the hypothalamus senses stress and sets off a hormone cas-
cade that leads to the activation of our fight or flight response. As part of this response, the
adrenals pump out extra hormones and our bodies go from a state of relaxing, digesting and
healing, to a survival state.
Your body’s energy is shifted from activities not essential to survival like growing beauti-
ful hair, metabolizing nutrients into energy, making hormones, digesting and repairing
itself, to instead focusing its resources to meet the great, stress-induced demand for
cortisol and adrenaline.
Then, once you’ve escaped from the threatening bear or gotten out of the way of the oncom-
ing car, the demand for emergency levels of hormones settles down and the focus once
again turns to parasympathetic response, focused on body maintenance and upkeep.
To help meet the demand for cortisol, your body will decrease the production of other hor-
mones normally produced by the adrenals, such as progesterone, DHEA, and testosterone.
Eventually, with enough chronic stress, the HPA axis becomes overwhelmed and desensi-
tized to the usual feedback loop and stops sending messages to the adrenals to produce
more hormones or less hormones, no matter what’s happening. Additionally, a person may
run out of nutrients that are required for proper adrenal function.
Sleep Disorders
One of the fastest ways to induce adrenal dysfunction is through sleep deprivation. In fact,
sleep deprivation is used in lab animals to suppress the hypothalamic-pituitary and adrenal
(HPA) axis. Sleep deprivation can be caused by insomnia, sleep apnea, and shift work.
Mental Stress
Feelings such as grief, guilt, fear, anxiety, excitement and embarrassment can be classified
as stress. This stress is based on our perception, not on the nature of the individual stress. For
example, public speaking may cause plenty of mental stress for someone with social anxi-
ety, but another person who enjoys speaking in front of others may perceive the experience
as pleasurable. Situations that are new, unpredictable, and threaten the ego, or that involve
feeling a loss of control, are perceived as stressful.
Glycemic Dysregulation
Researchers in Poland have found that up to 50 percent of patients with Hashimoto’s have
an impaired tolerance to carbohydrates. This means that after consuming carbohydrate-rich
foods, their blood sugar levels would spike up very high, causing a great amount of insulin
release. The role of insulin is to clear blood sugar out of our bloodstream and store it in our
cells, so a large insulin release is followed by a rapid drop of blood sugar (hypoglycemia).
Symptoms of hypoglycemia are very unpleasant and may include irritability, fainting, light-
headedness or tremors. Hypoglycemia necessitates the release of cortisol to help maintain
the glucose supply to the brain and counteracts insulin, causing insulin resistance. (This is
also linked to the Type 2 diabetes epidemic).
Inflammation
Chronic inflammation may occur from joint pain, obesity, toxic burden, inflammation in the
GI tract from irritable bowel disorders, pathogens, or food sensitivities. These conditions will
signal cortisol for its anti-inflammatory effect.
When my integrative doctor first suggested that I get tested for adrenal fatigue, I “Googled”
the term and found a “reputable source” claiming that adrenal fatigue was a made up disor-
der and did not exist.
Being a skeptical pharmacist, I put-off testing my adrenals — I had just ventured into the
world of alternative medicine, and was always afraid of people trying to take advantage of
me and take my money, not realizing that they were simply trying to help.
But then I got to a point where I was just so exhausted and irritable, despite taking thyroid
medications and following a gluten free diet.
I started talking to Carter Black, RPh, my compounding pharmacist, about the symptoms I
was experiencing; and he suggested that I have my adrenals tested. Mr. Black had special-
ized in hormones for many years and told me that the interventions for adrenal fatigue did
indeed work well for many of his patients.
Finally, it stuck: maybe it was hearing it from a fellow pharmacist, or maybe because he
didn’t have any adrenal test kits to sell to me, that I decided to try it out.
Sure enough, I had an advanced stage of adrenal fatigue, and the recommended treatments
for the adrenal fatigue helped me feel tremendously better!
I now recommend the adrenal saliva test to all of my clients with Hashimoto’s, and have
found that 90 percent of my clients (who do the test) have some degree of adrenal fatigue.
So trust me, adrenal fatigue does exist!
When I started working with others with Hashimoto’s, I used to recommend the adrenal
saliva test to all of my clients, and found that 90 percent of my clients (who did the test) had
some degree of adrenal fatigue. Because I found adrenal imbalances to be so common, and
addressing the stress response had such a profound impact on symptoms for my clients, ad-
renal support became one of my fundamental protocols for everyone with Hashimoto’s (with
or without testing).
Rest
Sleep is the reset button for the adrenals. When we sleep, our body releases human growth
hormone and repairs itself. Make sure to get at least 7 hours of sleep each night and go to
sleep before 10pm. If you can pull it off, I actually recommend getting 10-12 hours of sleep
per night for 1 month in my adrenal-focused recovery protocols. Be sure to read my article on
the sleep apnea and Hashimoto’s connection if you have unrefreshed sleep, snoring and/or
a scalloped tongue.
Aim first and foremost to eat more fats and proteins, and less sugary and starchy carbs. When
consuming carbohydrate-rich foods, your blood sugar goes up too high, too quickly, causing
symptoms such as nervousness, lightheadedness, anxiety, and fatigue. These swings in blood
sugar can weaken your adrenals and cause a spike in your thyroid antibodies.
Check out my article on stabilizing your blood sugar with diet for more information.
Stress Reduction
The most important strategy for combating adrenal fatigue does not involve dieting, supple-
ments, medications, or testing. This strategy, however, is often the hardest to implement.
Reducing my stress was probably the hardest lifestyle change for me to implement. I only had
two settings, “GO” and “SLEEP”. I did not know how to relax, smell the roses, turn-off, or unwind.
So, I came up with this list of strategies to make myself more relaxed and shift my body into a
state of relaxing, digesting, and healing:
• Do your best to eliminate, simplify, delegate, automate.
• Be more resilient by being more flexible. Bruce Lee once said, “Notice that the stiffest tree
is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.”
I hope some of my strategies will resonate with you. But, many of you will want to come up
with your own list. Many of these items may be really difficult to implement, especially for
those of us with responsibilities like jobs, children, or elderly relatives who need our care.
However, somehow, you HAVE to schedule time for yourself.
Reduce Inflammation
Food sensitivities are a common source of inflammation. Gluten, dairy and soy are the most
common reactive foods in Hashimoto’s, and eliminating them will eliminate inflammation in
your body. Elimination diets and food sensitivity testing may help you determine additional
foods that may need to be removed from your diet. I have an article on food sensitivities that
you can read for more information.
Chronic infections are also a common source of inflammation in the body. Common infec-
tions include H. pylori, Blastocystis hominis and Candida, but there are numerous potential
infections that can be root causes as well.
If you’d like more in-depth support and a clear roadmap to healing your adrenals, I highly
recommend getting yourself a copy of my new book! Adrenal Transformation Protocol out-
lines a simple four-week program to help you balance your stress response and gradually
build up your resilience, to prevent excess stress from overwhelming your adrenals.
The protocol in this book is based on my Adrenal Transformation Program that has helped
over 3,500 participants dramatically improve their health and reverse symptoms like brain
fog, fatigue, anxiety, and more!
To make this protocol more accessible, I put it into a book form designed to make it easy for
you to get to the root cause of your symptoms and address your healing from every angle.
I share simple lifestyle changes to help you feel happier, calmer, and more energetic and
clear headed. Pre-order your copy today!
A - Adaptogenic herbs
B - B vitamins
C - Vitamin C
Adaptogenic herbs are natural herb products that supplement the body’s ability to deal with
stressors. In order to be considered an adaptogen, an herb must possess several qualities.
First, the herb must be non-toxic to the patient at normal doses. Secondly, the herb should
help the entire body to cope with stress. Finally, the herb should help the body to return
to “normal” regardless of how stress is currently affecting the person’s functioning. In other
words, an adaptogenic herb needs to be able to both tone down overactive systems and
boost underactive systems in the body. Adaptogens are thought to normalize the hypotha-
lamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis.
B vitamins become depleted in stressful situations that often precede the development of
autoimmunity. Pantothenic acid (B5) and biotin (B7) deficiency in particular have been linked
to decreased adrenal function in animals and humans.
Vitamin C is essential for proper adrenal function, and is often depleted during high cortisol
production. Additionally, vitamin C has antioxidant properties, and can be very helpful for fight-
ing viral infections (that may contribute to weakened adrenals) such as the Epstein-Barr virus.
While some may wish to obtain these supplements from natural whole food sources, due to
gut issues, people with Hashimoto’s usually have an impaired ability to extract vitamins and
minerals from food.
RECOMMENDED SUPPLEMENTS
ABC Blend
I recommend a synergistic mixture of adaptogenic herbs, B vitamins,
and vitamin C in one convenient formula, as a starting point for most
individuals with adrenal dysfunction.
Please note that both products contain ashwagandha, which is a nightshade that can be re-
active for some people with nightshade sensitivities.
Adaptogens
Dose: Please follow the directions from your healthcare provider and/or the directions on the
bottle under the care of your practitioner.
When choosing a standalone adaptogen, it’s also wise to add in a B complex and a vitamin C
Magnesium Citrate
Magnesium is an essential mineral that supports healthy DHEA levels
(a precursor to our other hormones) and promotes relaxation. Physical
and psychological stress depletes magnesium, as does caffeine, alco-
hol, and certain medications. Food sources of magnesium include green
leafy veggies (like spinach and kale), whole grains, nuts, beans, le-
gumes, seeds, and fortified processed foods like cereal. However, mag-
nesium is difficult to get from food these days, due to soil depletion of
minerals and modern farming practices. Additionally, many people with
Hashimoto’s may exclude a number of these foods if they are following
Another way to get magnesium is to absorb it through your skin, like in an Epsom salt bath.
Epsom salt baths are wonderful for relaxing and soothing aching muscles. Simply add one
to two cups of epsom salts to a warm bath (don’t exceed two cups), and soak for at least 12
minutes. I love to add essential oils to make it even more relaxing.
ADVANCED PROTOCOLS
Those who do not find relief from symptoms after a few months of ABC support may need
to follow more specific advanced protocols. My Adrenal Transformation Protocol book guides
you through lifestyle changes and symptom solutions beyond the ABCs, to help you regain
control of your adrenal health and transform your life.
We’ll start with the 4-week protocol that has helped thousands improve their symptoms
within a few short weeks, or even days! (92% reduced mental fog, 89% reduced fatigue and
forgetfulness, 86% reduced anxiety, and more…)
Adrenal Transformation Protocol will guide you through these more advanced protocols (like
optimizing hormones, restoring nutrient depletions, and overcoming traumatic stress) based
on the symptoms you’re still experiencing, and direct you towards the appropriate next steps.
Disclaimer: The information contained herein is for informational purposes only and should
not be construed as medical advice. Please consult your physician about any health prob-
lems and before making any medical or lifestyle changes.
Lifestyle changes can result in improved thyroid function and/or increased absorption of
thyroid hormone medications, leading to a lower required dose and possible symptoms of
hyperthyroidism at a dose that was previously stable. Please discuss lifestyle changes with
your physician and ensure that your thyroid function is monitored every 6-8 weeks while
making lifestyle changes. Symptoms of overmedication include, but are not limited to: rapid
or irregular heartbeat, nervousness, irritability or mood swings, muscle weakness or tremors,
diarrhea, menstrual irregularities, hair loss, weight loss, insomnia, chest pain, and excessive
sweating. Do not start, change, increase, decrease or discontinue your medications without
consulting with your physician.