What to Eat for Adrenal Fatigue - Ask a Nutritionist

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Transcript

Alyssa: Welcome to “Ask a Nutritionist”, our weekly mini episode of Dishing Up Nutrition. I'm Alyssa Krejci, Registered and Licensed Dietitian with Nutritional Weight & Wellness. This month's listener asked about what to eat when they are dealing with adrenal fatigue. They mentioned feeling exhausted no matter how much sleep they get.

Well, low energy and tiredness are common reasons people seek medical help. Maybe you've found yourself saying, "I'm exhausted no matter how much I sleep. I need coffee just to function. I hit a wall every afternoon. I'm wired at night, but exhausted all morning." If you have searched for those symptoms online, you have probably come across the term adrenal fatigue.

Today, we're going to discuss what might be causing your ongoing fatigue and how your diet and lifestyle habits can help.

What is adrenal fatigue? 

First, it's important to touch on adrenal fatigue. The term adrenal fatigue is not actually an official recognized medical diagnosis Many of the very real symptoms people experience and blame on adrenal fatigue have different causes.

Symptoms could be related to a variety of things like chronic stress, poor sleep, blood sugar swings, inflammation, depression, anxiety, nutritional deficiencies such as iron, and under-eating during the day. Your adrenal glands are small glands that sit on top of your kidneys and produce several important hormones, including the hormone cortisol.

Cortisol is sometimes referred to as our stress hormone, but it isn’t a bad hormone. It's essential. Cortisol is part of your body's natural circadian rhythm. In a healthy rhythm, cortisol peaks in the morning within thirty to forty-five minutes of you waking up. It helps you feel alert and awake and gets your brain ready to focus.

Then cortisol naturally lowers throughout the late morning and afternoon. You should feel steady energy without big crashes or cravings for sugar and a need to caffeinate to stay awake. Cortisol also helps your body respond to stress, maintain blood sugar balance, and regulate blood pressure.

Problems can occur when your body is producing cortisol at the wrong times, constantly responding to ongoing stress, and that stress does not have to just be emotional stress. Your body views many things as stressors, such as poor sleep, under-eating, skipping meals, excessive exercise, chronic dieting, chronic restriction, illness, blood sugar crashes, and inflammation. Over time, your body can become less resilient, leaving you feeling physically and mentally depleted.

How might you know if you have adrenal fatigue? 

So how would you know if this is affecting you? Clients have described feeling like they're running on empty. Some common symptoms include morning fatigue when you feel like you just never fully wake up, needing caffeine throughout the day just to function, having afternoon crashes in your energy levels, constantly having sugar cravings, having difficulty concentrating, feeling brain fog, being overwhelmed by small tasks, trouble falling asleep despite feeling exhausted, and experiencing frequent illnesses like you just can't seem to get over things from one cold to the next.

You may notice that weekends or your days off work don't seem restorative. Even after sleeping in, you wake up tired. Another clue is blood sugar instability. If you become shaky, irritable, anxious, or lightheaded when meals are delayed, your body may be relying more on stress hormones to keep your blood sugar stable.

Strategies to support adrenal fatigue (#1: balance blood sugar) 

Blood sugar is one of the first areas we address with nutrition. Encouraging news: nutrition, the food you eat can and does make a huge difference. So instead of trying to fix your adrenal glands, at Nutritional Weight & Wellness, we focus on lowering unnecessary stress on the body, starting with food.

When it comes to diet, the first step is balancing blood sugar. When you eat an adequate amount of food, that is your protein, your carbohydrates, your healthy fats, you eat that food consistently throughout the day, you send your body an important message. You send the message, "Energy is available. Your battery is charged. Stand down. You are safe."

This means you eating a balanced meal or snack every three to four hours during the day while you're awake. You're avoiding longer periods, five, six, or more hours during the day going without food. Going for those long stresses of time without eating during your day can add stress to the body.

Every meal and snack should contain three key components. First, quality protein. These include foods like your eggs, chicken, beef, pork, dairy, tofu, or edamame. Healthy fats: olive oil, avocados, nuts, seeds, and fiber-rich carbohydrates. These are foods such as raspberries, blackberries, pears, black beans, lentils, green peas, broccoli, oats, ground flax, and chia seeds.

So for breakfast, instead of only quickly grabbing a slice of toast with butter and an egg or cereal with milk, and then skipping out on fiber-rich colorful plants, maybe consider trying a scramble of eggs, liquid egg whites, and sautéed vegetables, including black beans and a side of avocado.

Maybe you're having nitrate-free chicken sausage with chopped broccoli florets, peppers, and diced sweet potato topped with a small drizzle of olive oil and a side of raspberries. Or Greek yogurt with a mix of seeds, including ground chia seeds, flax seeds, and pumpkin seeds, plus some fiber-rich fruit like blackberries and sliced golden kiwis.

Cottage cheese is another great option, topped with diced pear, blueberries, and sunflower seeds. Protein and fat paired with fiber-rich carbohydrates, like your vegetables, your beans, your fruits, and whole grains first thing in the morning helps support that healthy cortisol rhythm throughout your day so you can feel great and have more steady energy.

For most adults, we want to aim for about twenty-five to forty grams of protein per meal, and maybe around fifteen grams of protein at snack. Lunch might be a bowl filled with four to five ounces or around one cup of diced grilled chicken for your protein, six ounces or about two to three cups of roasted vegetables like carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, red onion, bell peppers for color, and topped with maybe three ounces or about a half a cup of roasted crunchy chickpeas for a fiber-rich carbohydrate boost.

All that can be tossed in a drizzle of olive oil, a splash of lemon juice, plus your favorite herbs and spices for flavors. A snack could be hard-boiled eggs with a side of celery, snap peas, carrots, and sliced apples. Dinner may be four to five ounces of baked pork tenderloin for protein with six ounces of roasted broccoli and carrots and three to five ounces of potato, maybe a sweet potato for that fiber-rich carbohydrate, topped with half of an avocado for healthy fat and some additional fiber.

Some other mini meal snack ideas to include other than the eggs, veggies, and fruit, maybe you make turkey roll-ups with some baby cucumbers, carrot sticks, and cream cheese. Or a bean salad made with black beans, pinto beans, a little bit of shredded cheese, diced avocado, peppers, onion, tomatoes, and lime juice.

Or make a balanced smoothie snack. My recent go-to smoothie combo for snack time has been taking one cup of ultra-filtered milk paired with about an ounce of banana, an ounce of avocado, and a couple tablespoons of cocoa powder, and some ice. I keep chunks of banana and chunks of avocado in my freezer so I can build easy, quick smoothies.

Those balanced smoothies work great when you need something quick and on the go. For instance, being on the go to sports practices for kids. The goal is to have consistency in eating in balance every three to four hours during your day. Your body and brain love predictable nourishment. It doesn't want to be stressed by consistently waiting six, eight or more hours between each meal and snack.

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Is intermittent fasting appropriate when you have adrenal fatigue?

You may be wondering about intermittent fasting, which is a popular trend these days. Intermittent fasting has varying approaches as far as eating versus fasting windows. But the longer fasting breaks aren't necessarily appropriate for everyone.

If you're already experiencing fatigue, brain fog, cravings, blood sugar swings, consistently eating those balanced meals every three to four hours during your day is going to be more supportive.

More on blood sugar importance for adrenal support

So why does blood sugar matter so much? Well, every time blood sugar drops too low, your body releases stress hormones, including cortisol, to help raise your blood sugar back up. If you're constantly skipping meals, relying on coffee or tea alone, or eating mostly low-fiber refined carbohydrates with added sugars, your body may spend much of the day responding to little blood sugar emergencies that create another layer of stress. Stable blood sugar means less work for your stress response system.

Foods that can add additional stress to the body 

On the same note, some foods can sometimes add additional stress to the body and make symptoms worse. Added sugar, refined carbohydrates. These carbohydrate options that have a lot of this added sugar and don't have a lot of fiber can create rapid blood sugar spikes and then be followed by quick crashes in blood sugar.

And those crashes often trigger cravings, irritability , and fatigue. Try limiting sources of added sugar in your diet. So look at sweetened beverages, breads, pastries, sauces, condiments, cereals, chips, crackers. There's many areas that that added sugar can be hiding.

Ultra-processed foods in general tend to be lower in nutrients and higher in refined carbohydrates, unhealthy fats, added sugars. So prioritize real whole foods to provide those vitamins, the minerals, the energy, the carbohydrates, protein, fat your body needs to fuel properly and recover from stress.

Be mindful of caffeine intake 

Now let's talk a bit about caffeine. Coffee isn't necessarily bad if, as an adult, you keep it to about one to two cups in the morning. However, if you're relying on coffee because you're exhausted, that's worth paying attention to. Multiple caffeinated beverages each day may temporarily mask fatigue while disrupting your sleep, increasing feelings of anxiety, and making symptoms worse in the long run.

I recommend drinking coffee or any caffeinated beverage with breakfast instead of drinking it on an empty stomach to decrease those effects. And if you're having trouble sleeping Consider trying to cut back on caffeine or completely trying no caffeine for a few days. It can be a hard adjustment, but a worthwhile experiment to see how you actually feel with less of it or without it.

Alcohol disrupts adrenal balance

Next, a little bit on the alcohol. The truth is, alcohol disrupts restorative sleep, even if it initially makes you feel sleepy. Poor sleep increases cortisol the following day and can worsen fatigue. So even though you might feel relaxed after having an drink with alcohol, you will get worse off sleep in terms of quality, which often worsens fatigue and raises anxiety in the next day. If you're battling or feel like you're battling adrenal fatigue, skip the alcohol.

Hydrate adequately

And on that note, don't forget to hydrate. So drink water. Many people who feel chronically fatigued are also mildly dehydrated. It's common to see improvements in fatigue simply by drinking an adequate amount of water.

Adrenal supplement support considerations 

Now, how about the question: Can any supplements help support energy and adrenals? As a dietitian, first and foremost, I start by addressing the food and lifestyle habits. Certain supplements can help provide support to fill in nutrient gaps that a person may be experiencing, depending on what they're having or not having during the day.

So these supplements can improve the body's stress response and how a person's feeling. First supplement that comes to mind is magnesium. Magnesium is a mineral involved in hundreds of biochemical reactions. It supports muscle relaxation, nervous system function, and sleep quality.

Most people don't necessarily meet recommended magnesium intakes through food alone, so it can be a beneficial one to add in as a supplement, especially if someone is struggling to get enough of it from food. So often I might recommend Magnesium Glycinate before bed, as it is helpful with that sleep and relaxation.

Next, I often think of a quality multivitamin that contains all your B vitamins and vitamin C, or a separate B complex and C supplement may be beneficial. Both B vitamins and vitamin C are involved in the body's stress response, helping you manage stress levels and improve mood.

The adrenal glands naturally contain high concentrations of vitamin C. We need plenty of vitamin C to support normal adrenal hormone production. For those wanting a separate vitamin C supplement or needing a separate supplement, two quality options we carry at our offices are NutriKey Complete C 1000, or Liposomal Liquid Vitamin C. These each can provide that boost of vitamin C in a highly absorbable form that's well-tolerated.

A great multivitamin option we have at our offices is the NutriKey Twice per Day. And when someone is really struggling with energy and needs more support, I will often recommend the multivitamin by Ortho Molecular called MitoCore. It works great for supporting energy and combating fatigue. You can find all of these on our site, nutrikey.net, as well as in our offices.

Shop Nutrikey Supplements

Separate from magnesium, multivitamin, I often sometimes also consider herbal supplements to be beneficial. Ashwagandha and/or rhodiola are herbal adaptogens that can be useful for supporting stress resilience and improving fatigue and mental performance.

We carry a couple of supplement options on our Nutrikey site and in our offices that contain these herbal adaptogens. Two are by Ortho Molecular called Adrenal-All and NuAdapt. Now, as always, before starting any supplement, I recommend discussing it with your doctor, your dietitian, or another healthcare provider on your team that is familiar with your history and medications. And remember, nutrition is first the foundation.

Lifestyle habits to support energy

Other daily lifestyle habits that you can practice to support energy include having enough sleep, so getting seven and a half to nine hours of sleep or giving yourself that opportunity to get enough sleep in, spending time outdoors, moderate exercise, not necessarily overdoing it, but getting it consistently, practicing stress management activities, and building in just activities you enjoy into your week.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is simply slowing down. Take a breath whenever you are able to. Your nervous system needs opportunities to slow down and to recover.

Wrap up 

Wrapping up today's discussion, if you've been feeling exhausted for months, don't assume it's simply stress. Have a visit with your doctor. Persistent fatigue can be related to modifiable diet and lifestyle behaviors. Working with a dietitian can be helpful.

Good news is that many people begin feeling significantly better when they consistently eat enough balanced meals throughout the day, prioritize sleep, do things to help manage your stress, and address any nutrient deficiencies.

Recovery doesn't necessarily happen overnight, but every nourishing meal that you're having is another opportunity to support and fuel your body. If you're interested in meeting with myself or one of my fellow dietitians at Nutritional Weight & Wellness, give us a call at 651-699-3438 or visit us at weightandwellness.com.

Schedule Nutrition Counseling 

Thank you so much for joining me today on “Ask a Nutritionist”. If today's episode was helpful, share it with someone who's always saying, 'I'm just so tired.' And remember, food is one of the most powerful tools we have to support our energy, resilience, and long-term health. I'll talk to you next time. Have a great day.