Wilson, a chiropractor, who wrote a book called Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome in 2001.
Wilson has a thriving supplement business where he sells formulations for immune and gut health as well as adrenal fatigue supplements.
Thing is, mainstream medicine actually rejects the idea of adrenal fatigue.(A 2016 systematic review found that there is no hard science that backs the theory.) The wellness community, however, doesn’t — many alternative practitioners, ranging from naturopaths to functional medicine doctors to chiropractors, diagnose patients with adrenal fatigue despite the mainstream consensus that it’s not an actual condition.
Alejandro Junger, a functional doctor, on adrenal fatigue who recommends supplements and an “adrenal reset.” (All of the endocrinologists I spoke with told me that some of the supplements alternative practitioners prescribe for adrenal fatigue are made from ground-up adrenal glands from pigs or cows, which contain hormones that can interfere with and damage adrenal function.) It has made its way into British Vogue, MindBodyGreen, Mpls St.
The Medical Medium, the wellness guru who brought us the celery-juice trend, goes as far as to call adrenal fatigue “an epidemic.”.
Instagram thinks I have adrenal fatigue — or at least the algorithm that decides what ads I see.For several months last year, adrenal fatigue was the seemingly reasonable explanation for my steadily deteriorating health.
Among the various theories that the internet suggested to me (perimenopause, polycystic ovary syndrome) was adrenal fatigue.
It wasn’t adrenal fatigue; it was adrenal cancer.
People of all genders and ages get diagnosed with and treated for adrenal fatigue, but the wellness culture in which it’s embedded is largely directed at women in their 30s and 40s.
The popularity of the idea of adrenal fatigue speaks to this; it’s a desire to find something wrong and fixable rather than just the inevitability of aging in a youth-obsessed culture.
One told me that these sorts of stories always end up being hit pieces, not just on the concept of adrenal fatigue but on the industry as a whole.
“I think people who are given the diagnosis of adrenal fatigue are being fobbed off by practitioners who want their money, that’s my view,” she told me.
Even though the endocrinologists I spoke with said that the adrenals just don’t work the way that adrenal fatigue posits, they all emphasized that they know that the symptoms that people come to them with are real and they understand the desire for a diagnosis.
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