Stress! How to Treat It. Why It Matters Even If You're Coping.

But it’s even worse than that. We also have physical stressors: chemicals and pollution. And then, we have the body’s response to physical trauma, infections, heat, cold, nutritional deficiencies, toxins, poisons like artificial sweeteners and hydrogenated fats. Again, the list is endless.

All of these situations require that you and your body do something. No, not run or attack, but your body doesn’t know the difference. It reacts the same way as it does to fight or flight—and it wears you out.

Cortisol’s Effects and the Adrenal Glands’ Response

Your adrenal glands produce extra cortisol in response to stress. Unfortunately, the adrenals don’t have the ability to determine what caused the stress. It could be fear of a tiger, fear of losing your job or failing a test, chemicals damaging tissues, worry about the latest news report. Your adrenal glands respond with more cortisol.

Cortisol sets up the body for the fight or flight response. Not only is the blood diverted from digestion to allow you to act quickly and with strength, it also diverts energy from healing. After all, running from a tiger is of more immediate importance than healing that sprained wrist you got yesterday or the cold you’re fighting!

Your blood sugar is raised. Your immune system is put on hold. The thymus gland and lymph nodes shrink. The entire balance of your body’s function is altered.

The Four Stages of Constant Stress

1.    Response/Reaction: This is the fight or flight stage. Ideally, it should last as long as the danger does. Unfortunately, in today’s world, the danger goes on and on.

2.    Adaptation: Your adrenal glands expand to cope with the constant need to produce cortisol…and everything seems okay. You feel like you’re one of those people who thrive on stress. You are, of course, wrong. No one is. See Stage 3.

3.    Exhaustion: Ultimately, your body cannot keep up with the demands that excess cortisol places on it. Healing is harmed. The adrenals wear out. The raw elements needed to keep up the pace can’t be processed because the digestive system is inhibited. In some way, you break down. It could be as obvious as a heart attack or ulcer, or it could be chronic disease or a nervous breakdown.

4.    Death: Finally, your body loses the race. Obviously, you don’t want to reach this point. The good news is that, up to this point, the damage can nearly always be undone and reversed.

Symptoms of Adrenal Burnout from Excess Stress

There’s no single symptom that defines adrenal burnout, but a cluster of them should have you considering the possibility:

• Energy levels lowered, without the ability to regenerate.
• Emotional distress and inability to cope: Depression without reasonable cause. Emotional instability. Mood swings. Irritability and anxiety. Compulsiveness. Sense of hopelessness. In an unconscious attempt to regenerate, some people may even develop compulsive behaviors. (Please, keep in mind that these emotional symptoms are ones outside the norm for a person.)
• Loss of interest in things that generally interest the individual, such as loss of desire to interact with friends or go to formerly interesting events.
• Personality changes that involve anger. This happens because anger acts as an adrenal stimulant.
• A feeling of burnout without the ability to regenerate.
• Weight gain.
• Multiple chemical sensitivity can be related to adrenal burnout.
• Thyroid malfunction is often related to adrenal burnout. It’s usually in the form of hypo, underactive, thyroid, but can also manifest as hyper, overactive, thyroid.

If you have children, keep an eye on them for signs of inadequate adrenal function. Their lives have become highly stressed, too. Keep in mind, also, that a hectic lifestyle is not a requirement for adrenal burnout. We’re each different, and what is stressful to one person doesn’t trouble another. In fact, a hectic lifestyle can be brought on by adrenal burnout, as an expression of compulsiveness in an attempt to stimulate.

Why It Matters, Even If You’re Coping

The reason for writing about stress is my own realization that it’s doing me in. My life has always been stressful, and it had always been my misconception that I was a person who thrived on it. Not so! A recent move has left me exhausted and achy, far beyond any reasonable norm. Trying to push through it—my old sure-fire approach—simply hasn’t worked. I’m done in, and the time has come to face it.

Let’s face it: a certain amount of stress is unavoidable. We can, though, bring it down to reasonable levels. First, though, we need to understand that stress isn’t something that’s limited to extreme lifestyles. It isn’t, however, simply a matter of how we each respond differently.

Some people—like me, for instance—appear to do well under heavy stress. We’re the world’s workaholics. That, though, is only because we move into Stage 2, as described above, with relative ease. In other words, our bodies work against us, allowing us to continue living stressfully until we’re at or near adrenal burnout. If we’re blessed with a strong constitution, we can go on like this for years—but at some point, it catches up with us, and when it does, the collapse tends to be fairly dramatic. That’s why workaholics are noted for having heart attacks.

The bottom line for me and anyone else who reaches the point of exhaustion from excess stress—that is, adrenal burnout—is that it’s reversible. I’m not going to reach Stage 4—at least, not from stress.