If you've been suffering from the debilitating effects of the symptoms named above for 6 months or more, you know by now that it's not just a passing illness or a condition that will just run its course. It's stubborn and seems here to stay.

After 22 years of practice, I've learned that any attempt to treat these symptoms without healing Adrenal Fatigue is pointless. The symptoms will always return.

We must heal your entire body by addressing what's occurring in your stress response system, including the brain (the limbic system, to be precise, where it all starts).

Any other approach is ultimately designed to fail.

Life Without Enough Energy to Live It

Before I go on, I want to make sure you know that none of this is your fault. That's important: none of this is your fault.

In search of relief, you may have tried any of the following.

• Quick-fix supplements
• Diets or fasting
• Detoxes or cleanses
• Metabolic "fixes"
• Heavy metal treatment
• IV vitamins
• Hormone therapy
• Advice from internet influencers
• Self-medicating and pharmaceuticals
• Microbiome treatment

These attempts and treatments you've tried have failed you. You haven't failed them.

The fact is, they couldn't work, however much you may have hoped they would. Why not? There's more to healing Adrenal Fatigue than taking a couple of pills, eating well, cleansing your gut, or adding HRT.

The Specialist Merry-Go-Round 

When you have Adrenal Fatigue (whether you realize it or not), you most likely have been shuffled from specialist to specialist, and none of them has known exactly what to do with you.

Every day, I must remind my patients: "It's not all in your head."

That's how ignorant and arrogant the medical establishment is about this real but "invisible" condition. Adrenal Fatigue can have a catastrophic impact on your quality of life, and having a professional dismiss your symptoms as purely psychological is narrow-minded and condescending.

The conventional medical industry is not built to address a complex condition like Adrenal Fatigue, which has no magic pill for healing.

Doing Things Differently

No matter what name we give to this cluster of painful life-changing, and sometimes debilitating symptoms, complete and lasting treatment boils down to this:

Adrenal Fatigue and related illnesses cannot be healed without treatment specific to the brain, hormones, and nerves, which are the three parts of the stress response system. 

I do this using my Trilateral Approach to Healing. No one else in the world treats all three parts of your stress response system simultaneously, and that's why no one else can provide a solution for lasting healing.

The "CEO" of Your Stress Response System

The brain's Limbic System is in charge of your stress response system. It's the region of the brain in charge of all these regulartory functions.

• Automatic function of organs
• Temperature regulation
• Sleep-wake cycle
• Hunger signals
• Controlling emotions like rage, fear, and anxiety
• Instincts for reproduction

One of the limbic system's most important jobs is making the subconscious decision to put the body in fight-or-flight mode when necessary. Once that decision is made, it simultaneously triggers the nerve and hormone sides of the stress response, resulting in the adrenal glands pumping out stress hormones.

The Hormone Side of Your Stress Response System

The hormone side of the stress response is called the HPA Axis (Hypothalmic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis). This axis ends with the adrenals being triggered to release cortisol.

The hypothalamus and pituitary sit just under the limbic system in the brain, although they are part of your hormone system and not your central nervous system.

The Nerve Side of Your Stress Response System

The nerve side of the stress response refers to the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). These are the nerves that control your organs. They also send signals to your adrenal glands to produce adrenaline.

The ANS is a system of nerves. Consider the ANS as two wires from your brain that travel to every organ in the body. One wire is a "fight-or-flight" wire, and the other is a "rest-and-digest." These functions oppose one another; the ANS can only fire off one wire at a time. When a person is stuck in fight-or-flight mode, the body is hyper-focused on survival and nothing else.

Fight-or-Flight Versus Rest-and-Digest

We cannot affect one part of the Stress Response System without affecting the other. All three parts work together intimately.

However, In treatment, I consider the hormone and nerve sides separately. I do this to understand the exact cause of my patients' symptoms.

For example, when a patient experiences a rapid heartbeat under stress, it is primarily the result of the main fight-or-flight nerve to the heart and, therefore, an ANS issue.

However, if a patient has low blood sugar, which is the result of a cortisol imbalance, there is instead a hormone or HPA axis issue.

Nerves are inherently different from hormones. That means the treatments are also different.

In other words, if the rapid heartbeat occurs because of an ANS issue, my treatment will be quite different than if it's a result of a hormone imbalance. Targeted treatment is essential to healing.

Fight-or-Flight Versus Rest-and-Digest

We cannot affect one part of the Stress Response System without affecting the other. All three parts work together intimately.

However, In treatment, I consider the hormone and nerve sides separately. I do this to understand the exact cause of my patients' symptoms.

For example, when a patient experiences a rapid heartbeat under stress, it is primarily the result of the main fight-or-flight nerve to the heart and, therefore, an ANS issue.

However, if a patient has low blood sugar, which is the result of a cortisol imbalance, there is instead a hormone or HPA axis issue.

Nerves are inherently different from hormones. That means the treatments are also different.

In other words, if the rapid heartbeat occurs because of an ANS issue, my treatment will be quite different than if it's a result of a hormone imbalance. Targeted treatment is essential to healing.

Oh, That Busy Limbic System

The limbic system's job is to assess your environment constantly, both internally and externally. From there, it adjusts to the changes it finds.

It first receives information—or stimuli—through the blood supply or sensory nerves and perception. It then filters that stimulus through your past experiences and belief systems before reacting.

When the limbic system perceives a threat, it also tells the adrenals, via both the nerve and hormone side of our stress response system, to get busy by delivering stress hormones around our bodies.

These stress hormones are adrenaline and cortisol, and they help our bodies mobilize and kick in our fight-or-flight response.

Too Much Stress Hormone

These stress hormones give you a boost of adrenaline.

They tell your heart to beat faster and give you the oxygen you need to avoid danger. They increase blood sugars for energy and prepare your muscles for whatever is coming your way, no matter how big or small the threat.

Do this once in a while, and it will save your life. Doing this too often creates tremendous wear and tear all over your body.

Why We're Swimming in Stress

Our limbic system evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago.

The scenarios then were often immediately life-threatening: fear of starvation, becoming prey, and environmental changes that we could not control.

But today, our lives are full of so many "little" stressors—not to mention all the life-altering events—that our limbic system is working triple-time. For example, changing careers, although a positive move, is a stressor to our limbic system.

Even our limbic system itself, by its own doing, is swimming in stress hormones because of life events, and it becomes chronically overstimulated and even trigger-happy.

If it's constantly in fight-or-flight mode, your body never has a chance to come down, reset, and heal. 

Body-Wide Damage 

What if there are so many stressors in your life—anywhere from sitting in traffic to the death of a loved one to a worldwide pandemic—that this response is no longer acute?

If your limbic system perceives any stress as a threat, no matter how small, it tells your adrenals to pump out adrenaline and cortisol constantly. But cortisol and adrenal can be incredibly damaging when they are triggered over and over.

When the limbic system is overstimulated, the adrenal stress hormones begin to do damage to the limbic system itself. The more time passes, the more this increases the body-wide drain and dysfunction. How long were we designed to run from a predator? How long can our bodies hold out? Not long.

But these constant daily—sometimes hourly—stressors are constantly occurring. We get "stuck" in a chronic stress response and become increasingly sensitive to our environment.

Hypersensitive to Even the Smallest Stressor 

Being stuck in a chronic stress response makes us start to over-interpret our world as stressful. Things that wouldn't have stressed us in the past now trigger our stress hormones, and it feels like panic or anxiety. We can't get our bodies out of fight-or-flight mode...even at the grocery store.

This causes a vicious cycle of a chronic stress response, even when there are no stressors present.

The longer this occurs unchecked, the more each of the body's global operations can be thrown into chaos. Chronic overstimulation of the limbic system—and, as a result, the rest of the stress response—has detrimental effects on the body.

If someone has Adrenal Fatigue, these dysfunctions are already occurring.

"Why Has No One Told Me This Before?"

Others attempt to "fix" systems in your body that are, at best, secondary or tertiary issues. Of course you have digestive, immune, and reproductive system problems; when your body is stuck in fight-or-flight, it suppresses these very systems.

Perhaps this is the first time anyone has told you this because it's an inconvenient truth that would spoil their efforts to sell you diets, supplements, herbs, or detoxes as quick fixes. I do wish it were that easy. I wouldn't be writing this article, and you'd feel great!

Other practitioners chase symptoms and pay no attention to the underlying cause.

They provide a band-aid solution to what is essentially a deep, infected wound in your stress response system.

Worst of all, they all waste your precious time, energy, and money on superficial treatments that yield only temporary results.

Calming an Overworked Limbic System

To heal completely—and for good—we must focus on the function of the entire stress response system and do it simultaneously.

As I wrote above, the stress response system involves interaction between the brain (the limbic system), nerves (the autonomic nervous system), and hormones (the HPA-axis). You wouldn't try to heal one part and leave the others unwell, would you?

As we work together, your limbic system begins to calm and repair. It will no longer constantly trigger your adrenals. As a result, you'll feel a lift in energy levels.

You'll experience less pain, less inflammation, and improved digestion. You won't feel downright exhausted every waking moment.

Best of all, while your body heals, all the hopelessness and frustration you've been feeling for months—or years—dissipate.