Caught A Nasty Cold

I caught some nasty cold and it is kicking my butt. It kept me up almost all night. My ears are clogged and my nose is so clogged I can barely get any air through it. This is the first sinus infection I have had in years. I can't remember the last time I had one, but what's interesting about this is adrenals have been known to become more fatigue after respiratory illnesses. I really hope I am not putting more strain on them because I just can't handle anymore.

Does anyone out there have any home remedies they can offer to help get this congestion out of my sinuses? Thanks.

All Worked Up Today

With all this Ron Paul stuff going on, I am really worked up today. I found myself biting my nails today, which I haven't done for a while. That was a really bad habit I broke myself of just recently.

I feel like pacing around the room...

Be back later. :-)

My Teeth Are All Better

I went to the dentist yesterday and he drilled down a few of the points on my teeth and it fixed my grinding problem for now. My one tooth was hitting another and that is what was causing the pain.

I survived my days of no caffeine, sweets, or packaged foods. The worse part was that I had a withdrawal headache. I am going to try to continue the no caffeine or sweets thing for as long as possible. Honestly, I can't say that I feel any better. I think I feel worse, but that would make sense.

These past few days haven't been too stressful for me either which helps quite a bit. We also invested in 2 window air conditioners, so my symptoms at home are not so bad day to day.

My doctor's appointment is on Monday...I am not looking forward to it.

No quick fixing: Feel horrible

Yet another day without any sweets, caffeine or packaged foods. I have had to take 2 naps today because I simply could not keep my eyes open any longer.

I so desperately wanted some coffee, but I did not give in. The 2 naps today are very weird even for me and I wonder if I am catching some type of virus because my neck is hurting and my throat feels a little scratchy. If it's not one thing it's always another. That's life, right?

I have started to chart my temperature averages and it's been 98.2 for 4 days now. Now looking at what Dr. Rind says that means I have a thyroid problem and not an adrenal problem, but clearly my saliva tests shows that my adrenals are not working properly. I don't have any symptoms of thyroid problems and have almost all the symptoms of Addison's Disease.



I am holding off on trying any type of herbal formulas until I can get my aldosterone and renin tested. Those 2 are very important in order to find out where the problem lies. Those tests will help to pinpoint whether this is an actual adrenal gland problem or a pituitary gland problem.

Grinding My Teeth Away

A few nights ago I noticed that I had bit the side of my cheek on the right side. I knew what that meant, I am grinding my teeth again while sleeping. My dentist gave me a night guard a few months ago and it has helped me during times when I shift my jaw at night. To add to my other problems, I now have really painful teeth in the back. I am shifting my lower jaw, which is making my bite crooked. Biting down right now is really painful, so I am off to the dentist tomorrow morning to see what is going on here. Perhaps, I need to go on a vacation or something because I think the amount of stress I am feeling (elevated but it should not be) is really hurting me.

This is day 1 with no caffeine, sweets, or packaged foods!

My Vicious Cycle

There is one thing that I really hate about having adrenal fatigue and it's the vicious cycle I find myself in every day. I feel horrible and my body craves something with caffeine or sweet. When I eat it, I actually feel better for 3-4 hours to only crash the next day even worse. Without that quick fix though, I usually have to take 2-3 hour naps a day and even after the nap I feel just about as tired as I did when I went to sleep. BLAH. It makes me so frustrated with myself that I think it's causing its own stress and emotional problems. As a result, for 3 days I am vowing to not eat any packaged foods, no caffeine, and no sweets. It's not going to be too tough because my husband is with me on this one.

For the next 3 days, I will be feeling like crap. I can't wait!

My Story: Why Do I Feel So Awful?

This is my story. It is still ongoing because I am NOT better. I have only recently gained the knowledge I need to begin to explore treatment options.

It has been a few months since I began to feel like total garbage. Unfortunately, I think I have been damaging my adrenals since I was 10 years old. The foods that I ate were not healthy and started me down a path of destruction.

I used to be a huge drinker of diet sodas and have found out that they cause so many problems. Dare I say, I think it is a huge contributor to obesity and chronic diseases in this country! If you drink that stuff, which used to be classified as a chemical warfare weapon, please visit this website for more information.

Everything started rather slow for me. It wasn't like all of these symptoms started overnight, which is what made this difficult to pinpoint. It was right after a few extremely stressful times in my life. My husband's grandfather died early in 2006, my grandfather had died in December 2006 and my sister was diagnosed with a brain tumor in February 2007. You can imagine how stressful these past months were for me. I am the type of person that swallows their stress and hides it very well from people. However in reality I was tearing myself apart inside!

I think the reasons why I didn't feel the effects of all this stress right away was because I had drastically changed my diet just prior to my grandfather's death. It was a blessing in disguise when I look back at it. I stopped eating all packaged and processed foods. Anything that went in my mouth was in it's natural, whole state. The week I found out about my sister was probably the worst week of my life. A dark depression kicked in and the lack of appetite was so very strong. I didn't want to talk to anyone and could barely even think clearly.

Eventually my feelings of helplessness faded and my sister's surgery was a success. 6-8 weeks later is when things really started to get bad for me though.

Now you may think that I would have gone to the doctor's before this, but I have a severe distrust in doctors and health care in America. I REFUSE to take their pharmaceutical drugs and add to their profit margins. Keep in mind that these symptoms would come and go and started slowly. I just thought I was feeling ill because I had drifted slightly away from my "diet" plan.

This is when it got bad. I lost 8 lbs in one week and I felt like I was dying. My primary care doctor yelled at me for my weight (I am very thin as it is) and did not even listen to my concerns (You wonder why I HATE doctors). She told me that I was too skinny and that she basically would not hear my concerns until I gained 30 lbs, which is total insanity! The weight she said I needed to be, I have NEVER weighed in my entire 6 years I had seen her. Obviously she was PMSing that day and took it out on me. She ordered blood tests just to get me out the door. A few days later a visit to the ER revealed more of nothing. Absolutely nothing. The doctor was so rude by accusing me of being a heroine addict and coming in for drugs. He asked me if my husband beats me and whether or not he "treats me like a queen". Did I already say I strongly dislike doctors? The visit was a waste of 6 hours of my life and $200.

The blood tests came back and I started to vigorously research the results. My doctor said that everything was "normal", but when I got the results in the mail they were NOT normal. ALWAYS get a copy of your lab results from your doctor, ESPECIALLY if they say they were normal! I swear these doctors do not look at the results! There were specific things that were high or low that concerned me. My white blood cell count was slightly low, my eosinophils were very high, and my sodium was low. Looking into all of these things, I kept coming back to Addison's Disease. The website wrongdiagnosis.com is fabulous. You can put in your symptoms and it will tell you what it may be! This is what I did to first find out that I could have an adrenal problem. However, it was not clear cut at this point. I checked the symptoms and mine didn't match to adrenal insufficiency. I was having night sweats, weight loss, and fatigue, but some of the typical adrenal symptoms were not present.

To make a long story a tad bit shorter, I left that doctor to go to another. My symptoms started to change at this point, which is why I decided to go to a new doctor! I was becoming very lightheaded, dizzy and my heart would race when I stood up. It was hard catching my breath when this happened and I felt like I was carrying around a 100lb pound on my back. Every little thing was 1000 times harder to do than it used to be. Walking down the stairs to let a dog outside was so difficult or bending down to fold clothes or put away dishes became a workout. It was like I had run a marathon and I could not figure it out!

This new doctor was no help either. At least she was willing to listen to me unlike the other one. A person I met over the internet told me about a website called www.stopthethyroidmadness.com . It was a miracle that I met this person because I don't think I would be where I am right now without this information. I was able to order a saliva test and found out it appears I am in Stage 5 Adrenal Fatigue.

My story ends here because I am exploring my treatment options. I basically refuse to take any type of hormones that will cause my adrenals to quit working. There is a doctor in this area that I just found out about, that I will give a try. But with my luck in the past few months I really don't have much hope.

Here's to more tests, wasted dollars, and more adrenal fatigue...
I get more adrenal fatigue from trying to figure out what is causing my adrenal fatigue. Talk about irony.

READ: PART 2 of my story here!