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Do you often feel stressed or tired and don’t feel rested when you wake up in the morning?

When you are stressed your body uses up your vitamin B reserves. Not only do you actually need B Vitamins for a healthy functioning nervous system and stable mood, Candida also thrives in an environment that is lacking B Vitamins, so it is not uncommon to develop other illnesses once you have a Vitamin B deficiency for instance there is a correlation between Adrenal Fatigue and Candida! 

How Candida affects Adrenal Fatigue and vice versa

When you have Candida your Thyroid and adrenals are taking a hit from constantly trying to balance your hormones which makes you more susceptible to stress which in turn leads to more Candida and more stress, argh.… A vicious circle!

Do you wake up between 1 and 3am persistently?

That also can be a sign that your adrenals could do with a boost because when your body is pumping out cortisol to give you extra energy too much of the cortisol in your blood stream can make you feel alert when you’d rather sleep, and it can activate your bladder in the early morning hours and wake you up at silly o’clock. That will then eventually effect how much you can accomplish during the day and how much energy you have left. My energy and sleep quality have been pretty low. That’s why I’m going through the “Fatigue Fighter” online program run by lovely nutritionist Heather Nicholds. Hopefully this will get me back on track!

The different stages of adrenal fatigue

There are varying degrees of adrenal fatigue. Not everybody has a complete burn out or severe fatigue symptoms so they are so depressed and disinterested that they can’t even get out of bed.
But more and more people have at least mild symptoms. They are not responding well to unforeseen stressful situations and they crave carb rich foods and resort to caffeine drinks to see them through the day, only to arrive at the weekend and feel too exhausted to do much.

Socializing seems like a lot of effort. House work or playing with your kids – phew… where to take the energy from? Exercise – you can but drag yourself there and then feel really run down, achy and agitated the next few days or you come down with an infection because your immune system is lowered from the high cortisol. Sound familiar? Welcome to my world ?

How overburdened adrenals affect your relationships and sex life

At first your body can compensate and create the hormones it needs from sex hormones for instance which initially is not a great loss as when you are under stress you are less likely to be in the mood anyway. But if this feeling of being tired but wired persists then it will eventually affect all other areas of your life and your body simply runs out of ways of making the hormones to keep your mood up. That’s when you end up feeling touchy and your partner always seems to be getting on your nerves and you blow the whole situation completely out of proportion!
If any of that sounds familiar don’t worry – you are in good company. I have been noticing for quite some time now that I have been operating in emergency mode. I don’t seem to have a buffer any more.

I work long hours; I don’t sleep enough and when things happen out of the ordinary I go into overdrive — not a recipe for a happy balanced life.

What is adrenal fatigue?

That means that your adrenals cannot meet the demands of stress. This could be any kind of stress (emotional, physical or psychological).

Your adrenals regulate stress with hormones to make sure all processes in your body run smoothly. This affects your muscles, your organs, your immune system, how energy is stored…. So regardless if you have a surgery, illness, constant arguments or permanent stress at work your adrenals always have to work overtime to deal with it (and they are really tiny – evolution only had in mind that they would have to deal with the od sabretooth tiger and not the hectic times we are facing otherwise they had be a lot bigger!)

What are common signs of adrenal fatigue?

• You feel tired all the time, but don’t feel rested
• You always hit the snooze button in the morning and find it hard to get up
• You are feeling overwhelmed and run-down
• It takes you a long time to overcome illnesses
• You crave salty foods
• It takes you ages to get going during the day, it’s only in the evening that you can focus

Why I think I got Adrenal Fatigue and What I’ve done about it so far

I started taking some Ayurvedan herbs like Ashwagandha and Rosacea to support my adrenals, but I simply don’t know if that’s good enough. I want to make sure I do this the right way.
So when my friend Heather (you might have heard me mention her name before because I went through her Vegan cleanse last year) launched her latest online training specifically helping people overcome Fatigue I decided to give it a go.

I think from all these years of Candida crusading and dieting my adrenals are burned out and that keeps me in that zone where I feel ok but never fully awesome and my immune system is still fairly vulnerable. If a virus comes along, boom you can bet I’ll get it.

So I’ve decided to do something about this and get my energy and zest for life back, hah!

Promising Live Online Training for People who don’t have the Energy to Play with their Kids

Heather’s course, Fatigue Fighter starts next week and goes on for 6 weeks so I’ll be ready before the festivities begin yay. You can hear her talk about the training here.

I’m super excited about this opportunity. I have wanted to work with Heather 1:1 for quite some time because I was aware that she offered skype consultations. But it would have cost me $900 to work out an adrenal healing plan and going through an online training is much more affordable, so I’m really glad she is offering that now.

Let me know if you are joining her program too, so we can chat in the members’ area. The only thing I’d say is if you are thinking of joining then you should do so in the next day or so because I know she will take the course offline in order to be able to serve the people who have committed to it well.

Not having gone through her Fatigue Fighter program yet I obviously can’t vouch for it, but I’ve known her for years, I loved her last training – so I trust her and happily support what she is doing.

Not Candida Specific but Recipes can Be Easily Adapted

So although the training is not specifically about Adrenal Fatigue and Candida, I know there will be LOVELY recipes!

They are of course vegan and geared towards healing adrenal fatigue. So not all of them might be candida-diet-friendly, but with adrenals it’s important to limit sweets so there will be absolutely no sugar in them. There may be some fruity ones, or some date balls and things like that, but they will be mostly veg/grain/bean-centric.

I’m pretty sure Heather would be happy to provide some alternatives, if you wanted to sign up and needed help with substitutions or other ideas.

The program isn’t a meal plan, there will just be recipes provided for guidance on how to incorporate the recommendations, so it’ll be easy to shift things around or provide alternates if necessary. So you need not worry if you are currently suffering from Candida symptoms – you could still benefit from this training, and you would also be able to watch the recordings of the training at a later date that is more convenient to you.

How Awesome Would it be to Have the Energy to Enjoy Life?!

Anyway I thought I’d let you know what I’m up to, and if you’re interested I can let you know how it went afterwards. I have yet to give you a proper review of the 10 week gut healing program that I went through this summer, too. What an enriching experience! I’m at the tail end of it now (what they call the 80/20 phase, where I can re-introduce some naughty foods hurray!)

I hope you are plodding along nicely with your diet and life in general. Apologies if you’ve been trying to get in touch with me recently. Due to my state of overwhelm I completely locked down my inbox and have only looked at mission critical emails the past few months, sorry!

You have to look after yourself before you can help others….

Take good care of yourself!