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Is it menopause — or an adrenal imbalance?
Posted on Jun 21 2011
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Why Menopause symptoms and Adrenal Fatigue overlap.

Maureen was worried she wouldn’t be able to make her best friends 50^th birthday party .

She was experiencing multiple symptoms  — anxiety, night sweats, extreme exhaustion and for added annoyance, she’d gained weight around her abdomen  and couldn’t fit into her clothes. Most days, life seemed utterly overwhelming. Maureen  knew she’d have to catch up on her busy workload  in order to get everything done beforehand, and then there’d be a long drive and sleeping in a hotel bed for several days — all of which left her feeling even more anxious and overwhelmed.

Like many women, Maureen was relieved to find a herbalist to help her but was not sure where to begin with her health issues. Luckily when she called the urban herbals clinic, we asked her which of her symptoms seemed hardest to handle. She had no hesitation in picking fatigue. “If I could just get some sleep, I think I’d be able to handle things a bit more,” she told us.

If you, like Maureen, struggle with symptoms that run the gamut — hormonal and adrenal and everything in between — this article can help you sort things out. If you want real solutions, you can call us here  at Urban Herbals for advice on where to start, or book an in depth consultation and perhaps some hormone function tests.

Take a look at the following table and see if you can align yourself more closely with one group of symptoms than the other.

Common symptoms of hormonal imbalance

Common symptoms of hormonal imbalance   Irritability and mood swings Worsening PMS Headaches Sleep problems Irregular periods Heavy bleeding Problems with uterine fibroids Hot flushes and night sweats Breast tenderness, cysts, or nipple discharge Decreased libido Joint pain or stiffness Vaginal dryness Dry eyes Skin changes Heart palpitations Urinary incontinence

Common symptoms of adrenal imbalance   Difficulty getting up in the morning Never feeling well-rested, even after sleep Nocturnal waking Anxiety, nervousness, mild depression Lightheadedness on standing Low blood pressure (hypotension) Salt cravings Reliance on sugar and caffeine to bolster flagging energy Problems coping with stressful situations Frequently feeling angry and frustrated Struggling to get through the day, but feeling better after an evening meal Frequent infections Abdominal weight gain Hair loss Acne Cold intolerance Lack of mental focus, decreased productivity, absentmindedness Feeling like everything’s “too hard”

 

 

Sometimes, when a woman simply can’t decide which way to go, we suggest she begin by supporting the adrenal glands and working toward minimizing the effects of stress on her bodies. In our experience, this will help rebalance sex hormones and minimize menopausal symptoms as a welcome “side effect.”

Try our Adrenal Imbalance Tonic as a good place to start, or book a consult with a herbalist. You will need to take herbs for some months to correct long term imbalances. No Sweat Medicinal Tea Blend may also help with your hot flushes.

Why do menopause and adrenal imbalance overlap?

You may be wondering how sex hormones like oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone could be related to the stress hormone cortisol, especially since the ovaries are supposed to produce sex hormones and the adrenal glands cortisol… right? Well, our endocrine (“hormone-releasing”) system isn’t quite so simple.

The connection between adrenal health and hormonal balance originates in our brain. The areas of the brain known as the hypothalamus and pituitary are responsible for controlling whether to increase or decrease the release of hormones by the adrenal glands, ovaries, thyroid, and other endocrine tissues. These parts of the brain receive information in the form of stimulus from our environment, as well as internal feedback loops from the rest of the body, so that if there is need for more of any one hormone, the brain can respond appropriately.

Maureen’s story of runaway stress began with years of a high powered stressful job and inadequate nutrition for her body.. For many years, your body can and will accommodate long-term stress. Yet even though the body’s stress and sex hormone pathways lead back to the same place — the brain — the stress response takes priority because it’s more immediate to your survival.

As women enter perimenopause, the adrenal–reproductive hormone connection becomes even more pronounced. Here’s why: your adrenals are responsible for so much more than pumping out stress hormones. One of their secondary jobs is to make and release sex hormones, to pick up the slack as production in your ovaries tapers off. If you’ve spent the bulk of your adrenal resources on chronic stress, by the time you reach perimenopause there’s little reserve for keeping peace in the sex-hormone camp. This is why adrenal imbalance can sometimes lead to worsening menopausal symptoms, which is most likely what happened to Maureen.

Here’s a simplified scenario of what happens when a woman who has been stressed-out for many years transitions into menopause:

• The brain perceives stress.
• The stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol are released by the adrenals to help the body respond to the stressful event — whether it’s emotional or physical.
• This occurs daily over many years, cortisol remains continually high, and symptoms of adrenal imbalance result (see list above).
• During perimenopause, the ovaries naturally slow down production of sex hormones.
• Under stressful circumstances, the adrenals moderate stress first, leaving very few resources for maintaining sex hormonal balance.
• Menopausal and adrenal symptoms are intensified.

 

Over 85% of clients treated  report significant improvement in their symptoms.

If you’re not certain what’s worse — your menopause or your adrenal symptoms — take a moment to rank them in terms of their cost to your overall quality of life. If your most disruptive symptom or symptoms align with one program more than the other, heed your body’s message. Maureen’s fatigue was ruining every other aspect of her life, and the insomnia and anxiety were closely tied for second place, so she ultimately chose to consult the herbalist and took an adrenal profile lab test.

Though she was experiencing typical menopausal symptoms like hot flushes and night sweats, which we explained as relating closely to fatigue, anxiety, and insomnia, she elected to begin with trying to normalize her cortisol levels as a means to resolving her other concerns.

We sometimes call this the “back door” approach to hormonal imbalance. If you think about hormonal balance as your home, sometimes you like to enter through the front door, and sometimes you prefer the back door. Our Herbal Program for Hormonal Imbalance is a “front door” approach to balancing sex hormones because it is designed to optimize the ratios between oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. But supporting the adrenal glands allows for a more appropriate stress response, levels out cortisol spikes, restores sound sleep, and, ultimately, provides for more physiologically balanced sex hormones in the process.