Hi I'm Rachel, I'm 26 and I have been experiencing severe adrenal insufficiency symptoms for the past few months. Enough to impact my job where I own my own business and constantly have to cancel and reschedule clients or leave work early. I'm waiting to get into an endocrinologist in a few weeks, but in the mean time I wanted to see if anyone can help me pinpoint what might be going on. I feel like a crazy person. So I'll start with my symptoms...
-severe fatigue (being the worst, sometimes I feel like falling asleep while driving even though I go to bed at a decent time and get plenty of sleep...it is worse starting from about mid day until about 6-7 o'clock.)
-dizziness/weakness- (some days are worse than others, but the dizziness comes on randomly, but eating something does seem to help some.)
-salt and sugar craving all the time. (I know with diseases like Addison's disease people seem to lose weight or don't have an appetite, I seem to be hungry more often and seem to be gaining weight.
-not sure if this has anything to do with adrenals but my glands in my neck hurt and feel swollen everyday for the past at least month maybe a month and a 1/2.
-headache
-hot flash type of feeling in face. (Feel like I have a fever but I don't)
-cold hands and feet most of the time.(I have previously been diagnosed with anemia.
-severe irritability/agitation
I want to add that I have had 2 cortisol blood tests done which were both abnormal. One was done first thing in the morning and it was too low...my next one was done in the afternoon around 4:00 and it was too high...has anyone had this happen or know what it might mean?
I'm sure there are other symptoms I have had that I can't think of at the moment, but I just want to talk to someone who has been in the same boat as me...thanks a lot!
I have both a thyroid problem and an adrenal gland problem. The thing I learned is that thyroid and adrenals have to be in balance with each other.
Your symptoms could belong to both.
I recognize the severe irritability, anemia (which often goes with thyroid) headache, never sufficiently rested and wanting to go to sleep half way the day, the dizziness, salt graving. I also wonder how your memory is.
All I can say at present. I'm not a doctor, but a patient.
Thanks for commenting! I appreciate it. As far as memory goes, I'm super bad about remembering things and I forget things easily. At work I literally have sticky notes all over my desk otherwise I will forget about everything I'm supposed to remember. I get brain fog all the time now. I didn't use to be this way.
The brain fog I found the hardest to live with. Eventually all came back, though from previous years a lot got lost. I'm still in the habit of writing things down in various logbooks.
The dizzie part is not entirely gone and is resurfacing when I look at glare and glitter for instance. A fine striped or checkered pattern on a shirt will still do it too. But that could be a form of migraine an eye specialist once told me.
Rachel, the only way to get a definitive answer about cortisol is to have an ACTH STIMULATION TEST. My endocrinologist said cortisol moves up and down like your blood pressure throughout the day. Best wishes.
I have hyporeninemic hypoaldosteronism. When I get extremely fatigued or uncontrollably sleepy, it can be a sign of hypo-volemia, a form of dehydration. You should check your heart rate and blood pressure when laying down and then after standing for 3 minutes. If the heart rate goes up more than 20 points when standing, you could be hypo-volemic. Likewise, if your standing blood pressure has a narrow gap between systolic and diastolic, you could be hypo-volemic. Example, standing BP 120 / 90 is borderline hypovolemia. 120-90=30.
25% of 120 = 30. That's the formula. If the gap is smaller than 25% of the systolic, you are hypo-volemic and need fuids, especially electrolytes. When I fall in this range I take 8 oz of water or juice with 1/8 teaspoon of table salt. I hope this helps.