[LucyG]

http://www.medicinegarden.com/2011/0...rtisol-part-3/

The above link is an article by a woman who has PTSD and found out that one of the results of the hypervigilance she experienced for years was abnormally high cortisol levels. She went to a functional medicine doctor who put her on a supplement designed to lower the cortisol which helped her anxiety and whatnot.

I have adrenal fatigue [low adrenal function] so my cortisol levels are upside down--extremely high at night and very low in the morning causing years of horrific insomnia. I just started back on the Seriphos and it's helping me sleep. We'll see if it helps my anxiety and whatnot.....

The reason I'm posting this is because I was rather amazed to find high cortisol levels linked to things such as PTSD where the person wasn't really sick like I've been for years. I would imagine a lot of people on here can relate.......

Take this for what you think it's worth......

[everything]

If understand correctly, cortisol is pretty much a stress hormone. And your adrenal fatigue is actually a stress disorder, I don't know if anyone has explained that to you. You stress out and your body asks for adrenaline and so it pumps it out in response to stress, but it can't make enough to respond to all the anxiety felt. So that's when you get the fatigue. When you feel energetic, that's probably when your gland is ready with the adrenaline to give out to the rest of body. But it should be released slowly throughout the day and shouldn't really get depleted like it does.

But I hope you know 3x more about adrenal fatigue than I do, I really hope that's redundant info for you. Or maybe I'm flat out wrong.

I quit caffeine because it increases cortisol and, if I remember correctly, it creates more adrenaline (norepinephrine) receptors and therefore builds an adrenaline tolerance in your brain. Anyway, it seems like the two are related and adrenaline is a much needed chemical that keeps us energetic while cortisol is more linked to stress (which we need some of, but not as much as we get with anxiety).

[Hellion]

Yeah I think it was fairly shortly after we went over PTSD in psychology class and that exact topic that I dropped out. I mean I am not to happy I ended up with one of the worst mental disorders that can actually damage you physically. So yeah learning about that kinda was overwhelming.

Its really frustrating waiting and waiting for proper help for it knowing not only does it make you feel like crap mentally but its likely doing physical damage as well since the body is not designed to deal with that much stress on a consistent basis.

[LucyG]

Everything, yes, I know a great deal about adrenal fatigue as it runs in the family. I've been dealing with it over half my life, but I never thought to call it a stress disorder. Very insightful. I'll have to research it more from that angle and see what I can find.

I have been taking the Seriphos mentioned in the article and it's helped my sleep a lot.

It's amazing how stress breaks down your body......