Frequent Questions about Fatigue

This week I thought I’d pause my blog series on fatigue and answer some common questions I’ve received. You are welcome to send me more questions by clicking here.

What is IsoCort, is it a safe supplement, and how do you use it?

Both here on my blog and at Anne’s Health Place, I recommend the use of an adrenal supplement called IsoCort for fatigue. IsoCort is also widely recommended by healthcare professionals and advocacy groups across the Internet.

IsoCort is simply an animal adrenal extract, which means that when you swallow a pill of IsoCort, you are ingesting adrenal hormones from sheep. The nice thing about IsoCort is that the common thought is that each pill contains 2.45 mg of cortisol (although I’ve never been able to actually verify this claim!). Because the amount of cortisol is rather standard, much like a prescription, fatigue sufferers can count on reliable relief. The same thing can’t be said of many other “natural” adrenal supplements.

Drenamin, manufactured by Standard Process, has been another rather-reliable source of adrenal hormones for many sufferers. I don’t have any personal experience with how much Drenamin to take in order to equal IsoCort, but healthcare providers normally recommend three pills per day.

One of the biggest complaints about using IsoCort (or any other adrenal extract) is that you could become “addicted.” Let’s talk about this for a minute.

Dr. William McK. Jefferies has published an excellent book called The Safe Uses of Cortisol. In it, he explains the uses of the pharmacological drug cortisol and what conditions it can help. He explains why doctors are so afraid to use it, yet he also explains how to use it safely. If you are considering the use of IsoCort or any other steroid (cortisol) drug, I urge you to read this book first. (It’s very expensive online. Try borrowing a copy through your library.)

Dr. Jefferies recommends cortisol for many more diseases than Addison’s disease. For instance, he says that asthma, allergies, rheumatoid arthritis, many autoimmune disorders, infectious mononucleosis, shingles, chronic fatigue syndrome, and hypoglycemia are all conditions that can benefit from low doses of cortisol.

A medical doctor such as Dr. Jefferies would typically use the prescription drug Cortef to treat these problems. Other cortisol-containing drugs include Dexamethasone and Prednisone. Even hydrocortisone cream, available over the counter for itchy skin and similar problems, is a cortisol-containing drug.

How do all these drugs compare with each other? For the purpose of comparison, the following is the equivalent milligram dosage of the various corticosteroids:

In other words, Prednisone is 4 times stronger than hydrocortisone (Cortef) and 32 times stronger than IsoCort. You can see why IsoCort is available over the counter and online, and why Prednisone is NOT! However, you can also see that by combining pills (for IsoCort, etc.) or by splitting pills (for Prednisone, etc.), you can obtain any dose of cortisol that you might want.

So how much cortisol should you take? This is important, so pay close attention here! Dr. Jefferies points out that cortisol is safe IF you mimic how much cortisol your body naturally makes. Cortisol is only unsafe when you take dosages that are much LARGER than what your body naturally makes.

Normal adrenal glands produce about 40 mg of cortisol each day, for a day that is quiet and unstressful. However, if you took 40 mg of cortisol by pill, your adrenal glands would shut down their own production and you would, in effect, be addicted.

In addition, adrenal glands can produce 200 mg (or more) of cortisol in a day, if that day is very stressful. (Maybe you were in a car accident, or you delivered a baby, or you underwent surgery.) If your adrenal glands had shut down their own production of cortisol because you were using a pill, they would NOT produce this emergency stress dose. You could easily go into shock and even die! (This is why people like me, who have Addison’s disease and don’t make cortisol on their own, must wear a medical alert bracelet and carry injections of cortisol with them at all times.)

So you can see why doctors say that cortisol, even sold over-the-counter like IsoCort, is rather dangerous and even addictive!

The manufacturers of IsoCort, as well as Dr. Jefferies, recommend that you never exceed 20 mg of cortisol in a day. This requires your own adrenal glands to continue to do something, yet you are letting them have a little rest. Dr. Jefferies gives specific instructions on how to “stress dose” when you need it, as in when you have a baby, so again, I highly recommend that you read his book.

I am impressed with the effectiveness of IsoCort and other adrenal extracts, including prescription Cortef, but I urge you NOT to use them unless you’re serious about educating yourself. Always remember:

• To mimic how your body produces cortisol. If you don’t have an understanding of this, don’t use one of these products.
• To not shut down your own body’s production of cortisol by taking too much. If you make a mistake on this, you could die.
• To always test your adrenal gland function FIRST, before ever starting the use of one of these products. Once you start using an adrenal supplement containing cortisol, you will never be able to get accurate baseline testing.
• To monitor yourself during usage, by taking your body temperature, recording your blood pressure, and all the other things we’ve been learning. If you don’t think you’re responsible enough to do this, then you aren’t responsible enough to use one of these products.

Can you see why you should always be under the care of a qualified healthcare provider? If you don’t have one, I’ve listed some of my favorites here.

Having said that, for many people, giving their adrenal glands some rest with a product like IsoCort is often the key to feeling better. Do some research, pray about it, read Dr. Jefferies book(!), and certainly consider whether this might be right for you.

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Will you address fibromyalgia? Is this related to chronic fatigue? Will your suggestions help fibromyalgia?

I firmly believe that fibromyalgia IS related to chronic fatigue, and now scientists have proof. Fibromyalgia is pain (“algia”) in the muscles (“myo”) and tissues (“fibro”). This chronic pain is often accompanied by horrible fatigue, “brain fog,” and difficulty sleeping, as well as a host of other symptoms. Doctors usually require pain in 18 different spots on the body before officially diagnosing fibromyalgia.

The Fibromyalgia Research Foundation is a non-profit organization that has been doing studies on fibromyalgia for many years now, and they report they they have achieved recovery for 75-85% of their patients. That’s fabulous news!

According to their research, fibromyalgia is actually a disease producing low levels of thyroid, adrenal and other hormones (such as DHEA). Often fibromyalgia sufferers have “normal” test results for thyroid, which led these researchers to try to figure out what could be causing the problem.

Evidently (in my own, very unscientific words), your thyroid gland can produce thyroid, but other hormones are needed to get the thyroid hormones from your bloodstream into your cells. In other words, your test results may be “normal,” but are your cells actually receiving any of this thyroid?

You should not be surprised to learn that the adrenal hormone cortisol is one of the hormones you need to get thyroid into your cells. Another necessary hormone is DHEA.

If you suffer from fibromyalgia, I recommend reading the book The Metabolic Treatment of Fibromyalgia by Dr. John C. Lowe. You can also visit Dr. Lowe’s informative website at http://drlowe.com. Another helpful doctor is Dr. Gina Honeyman. Finally, you can read an interesting article about fibromyalgia here.

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Can you tell me more about a diet that will help my fatigue?

This is a huge subject, and I could talk for hours! I would, in fact, like to do a blog post on just this topic, but even then, it will be hard to cover everything.

I post the best-of-the-best in websites and books at Anne’s Health Place. One of the easiest ones to read (not do, necessarily!) is from “The Doctor Within”:

• The Last Resort – read this first
• The 60 Day Program
• The New West Diet

Finally, I recommend the chapter on Health Recovery in the book, Eat Fat Lose Fat. The authors have a section entirely devoted to adrenal fatigue, and I’ve found it very helpful personally.