Road to recovery

I have been sure to stay in bed until at least 7am every day for the past week.  Other than an awful night of sleep on Thursday night due to a racing mind, my exhaustion and dizziness seem to be improving lately.  I have also been having a glass of lemon water to start the day.

It's been 6 weeks since I did any lifting and I was starting to miss it, so I did some weights today.  I have lost a lot of strength in that time and lifting felt different than it ever has.  I'm going to try to go back to a 2x/week schedule, but in the afternoons so I am not getting up early or staying up late.  I'm hoping that with this I can continue to lose a bit of weight while continue to support my body in its healing mission.

The good news, I'm definitely feeling better!  So I will continue to stay in bed, it appears that is making all the difference even though I'm still waking at about 6:30.

Staying in Bed

I have been so frustrated with my exhaustion and dizziness lately so I did some more research last night.  I took another adrenal fatigue quiz and I am still coming in at the moderate, nearly severe range for associated symptoms.  Alright, I think I need to focus in and try to get myself back to a safe zone.  I also tried to think about what I've done differently for the last 3 weeks when I've felt so miserable.  I eliminated the morning tea and caffeine associated with it and replaced that with lemon water.  But after a full week, I think I can safely say the caffeine isn't the culprit, I didn't think it really was.  I realized last night, though, that I have only recently started getting up out of bed at 6/6:15 to do yoga or stretch.

On all the website I kept reading about how it's important to sleep as late as possible.  I read that and I guess thought "but I'm awake, so that doesn't apply to me."  Then I read how someone just stayed in bed for 15-20 minutes after waking each morning.  So I thought, what if I just stay in bed and read.  Will laying down give my body more rest?  This morning I started the experiment, of course James came to snuggle at 6:30 so I didn't get as much rest as I had hoped.  But I stay in bed until 7.  I will continue this experiment through the weekend, staying in bed and relaxing as long as is possible.  Hopefully I will start to find some extra energy later in the day through the extra rest in the morning.  I don't need to get up before 7:30 until DD starts Spanish in October.

I also read about someone having a special drink and eating coconut oil and how that helped.  I tried a spoonful of coconut oil this morning and nearly gagged on that, so I won't be repeating that again.  As I met my usual crash after lunch today, I made a cup to see if it would help.  I heated up some water, then put apple cider vinegar, honey, and cinnamon into the cup.  After mixing some I added a spoonful of coconut oil.  It melts in the hot water and is tasteless, so this should be a good way to have it.  I think I added too much of the vinegar so will decrease that a touch tomorrow.  But hopefully this will provide me with a boost through each afternoon.  I'm feeling a touch better right now, but I figure it will take a few days to start working as well.

Hopefully I've stumbled upon some good remedies here.  It at least gives me some hope, which I am in desperate need of right now.

Anxiety and Stress

My whole body hurts.  I did not play well at soccer last night, although it was a nice distraction.  I had to wake myself up for the game and felt a step behind.  Good thing we have next week off.  I think I need to start lifting again, because that was helping make soccer more enjoyable.  I need to find a happy medium here.  My chest felt very tight on the way home and my upper back was really sore.  I also felt extremely warm, although it was still over 80 out after the game.  I continue to crash everyday after lunch and fight to keep my eyes open for the rest of the day.  I will definitely be napping this weekend.

Getting to sleep took a long while and I woke up frequently.  And I had a lot of dreams, many of which included my mom.  I've been thinking about and missing her a lot lately.  DD started kindergarten today as well, increasing my stress level.  DH seems to be loving work, so that area is getting better.  But I have been having a lot of chest tightening lately, that I have to attribute to anxiety from something.  Of course, then starts the cycle of being worried that there is something going on physically with me.  I'm going to make an appointment for a physical once we have insurance again.

Hopefully now that DD has started school, life will being to settle down and this will all resolve itself.  Until then I'm going to start adding in some body weight exercises because I'm just starting to feel weak and I think I need to do something.

Lemon water helping?

Started off today with some stretching and then a glass of lemon water.  It definitely seemed to help clear things out in the morning and I felt better.  Had breakfast, took the kids to the museum with my MIL.  Had lunch, put the kids down for their naps and hit a wall.  I had to snap myself back to reality several times while working as I found I would just stop and stare at the screen, not thinking about what I was reading/writing.  I struggled to keep my eyes open, but I knew I needed to get my work done.  This afternoon was a lot of brain fog, exhaustion, and dizziness despite being outside for most it - park, dinner, and walk.  My body continues to ache for seemingly no reason.

I was hoping that removing caffeine by means of the tea I had added about 3 weeks would help.  But I have not had any since last Friday and yet I still find my days are not going well.  So I will continue to seek the answer to all of this.  We'll see what the future holds.

Slight improvement

Spent yesterday walking all over the zoo.  Felt better, but quite possibly due to being sufficiently distracted all day.  Was, of course, completely exhausted upon returning home.  I carried DS in the carrier for a bit and it was awesome to feel lighter when he chose to get out.  But left my leg muscles extra tired.  I still can't seem to find any diet or sleep issues that change the dizziness.  As with before, nothing seems to really effect it.  We'll see if anything changes over the next few weeks as I settle into a new routine for the school year.  DD starts K on Tuesday, and then next week gymnastics starts back up and there's a week off from soccer.

For now just praying that this will go away as mysteriously as it returned.

Still drained

I'm still really struggling today.  Slept horribly last night and got up at 6:15 when I had been laying in bed for over 15 minutes unable to fall back asleep.  Did a long yoga video since we didn't have anywhere to rush off to this morning.  Had a mug of bone broth and read the kids books before breakfast.  Had our usual breakfast - eggs, peppers, blueberries, and strawberries.  Just never got much energy going.  Dizziness has been with me all day and after I put the kids down for nap I struggled to stay awake to work.  By the time I finished work, Carolyn was up so I didn't get to lay down at all.  Even after eating dinner I have no energy.  And now I have a huge craving to eat a giant sundae.  But we don't have any ice cream or anything in the house.  So instead I'll read to the kids and head to bed early. 

I hope this doesn't last much longer, it's how I felt way back at the beginning but now I have 2 kids to take care of.  Barely awake even as I write this.  Taking a day off the bone broth tomorrow to see if it is in any way linked.

Exhaustion from little exertion

I'm hoping my body is doing great things with the bone broth vitamins and minerals I've been consuming the last couple days.  Because all I can tell is that I'm dizzy and exhausted.  We spent the day at Navy Pier with my dad and it fully drained me.  Walking around and then cooking dinner should not make me this tired.  So I'm hoping that something is healing and that is where my energy has gone.  I just hope that I don't get as weary as I did in May 2012, because this timing would be horrible.  I did do yoga this morning before we left, but will not go on my nightly walk because I am just that tired and dizzy.  I pray that in the morning things will be better, for I feel now like I did when all of this started nearly 5 years ago.

You can feel better!

It's been a long time since I've written here, but things have improved.  I stopped nursing my son last October and I wonder if that has had a huge impact.  The dizziness actually got worse right afterwards for about 2 months.  But I'll never know if that was hormone related or stress since we moved and it was a stressful period right before the holidays.  This calendar year, though, things have been better.

I'm back here writing after a conversation with my sister the other night.  We are both discovering that the number of women that experience signs of adrenal fatigue but no one can find anything wrong with them are staggering.  This seems to especially be true after women have babies.  So I wanted to come back and write about how I've been battling towards better health.  All of this is without the guidance of any doctor, because I just can't handle listening to random advice anymore.  I've done quite a bit of research about adrenal fatigue and I always can highlight a huge number of the issues as ones I've experienced.  A few places you can go to check out lists:
http://www.drlam.com/articles/adrenal_fatigue.asp
http://www.naturalnews.com/024985_cortisol_blood_fatigue.html

Going off the first site, here's what I can check off as having experienced within the past 6 months:

Tendency to gain weight and unable to lose it, especially around the waist.  I managed to lose 25lbs, but it has taken me over 18 months to do so.

High frequency of getting the flu and other respiratory diseases and these symptoms tend to last longer than usual.  Not a high frequency, but colds take a long time to work through me - significantly longer than anyone else in the house.

Reduced sex drive.

Lightheaded when rising from a horizontal position.  At times the room nearly blacks out.

Unable to remember things.  I can forget what I'm saying midsentence, and this happens several times a week.

Lack of energy in the mornings and in the afternoon between 3 to 5 pm.  This has been better lately, but I was needing a nap frequently.

Feel better suddenly for a brief period after a meal.

Cravings for salty, fatty, and high protein food such as meat and cheese.

Increased symptoms of PMS for women; periods are heavy and then stop, or are almost stopped on the 4th day, only to start flow again on the 5th or 6th day.  This seems to finally be regulating in the last month or two and my horrible cramping was no more this month.

Pain in the upper back or neck with no apparent reason.  All sorts of back pain!!

Feels better when stress is relieved, such as on a vacation.

Lightheaded.  Yep, actually experiencing this right now.

Okay, so it's pretty clear that I can include nearly every one of the 16 symptoms he lists.  Now, as of lately things seem to be improving slightly.  But this is still an uphill battle and I am striving to get more healthy things into my body to help it heal.  About 18 months ago I cut out all wheat products and most other grains.  I have tried low carb, but that doesn't work for me well in the long term, so we include sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, and rice fairly regularly in our meals.  Eating as many organic foods as possible seems to be working, unless you ask our bank account.  They always say pay for good food now instead of paying the doctor later.  Well, I'm trying to avoid paying the doctor now and later.

My most recent change is drinking bone broth.  We ate organic, free range chicken legs earlier this week and I threw them all into the crockpot with some veggies, spices, and water.  I started it Thursday morning and have left it on since.  Yesterday and today I had 2 mugs of it during the morning.  It served to fill me up a bit and I found I needed less for breakfast, which was interesting.  I'm wondering if this broth will provide some of the missing nutrients my body still seems to be searching for.  I will some again tomorrow and Monday, but am cooking dinner in the crock pot for Monday night so will need to end it there.  I'm going to see how brittle the bones are afterwards as well and consider trying to grind them up for the gelatin.  We'll see how that goes.

I've also been changing up my exercise lately.  Frustrated with my inability to lose weight, I've halted my weight lifting.  I'm opting instead for things that should help to reduce any inflammation in my body and help me relax.  I've taken to nightly walks while Jon is putting the kids to bed.  I've also started yoga/pilates in the mornings when I wake up early enough.  I was going to push myself to get up at 6:30 to have enough time, but with reconsidering that I'm not yet fully recovered from the adrenal fatigue I am going to do it Sat/Sun and any other day that I happen to wake up.  Sleep has been horrible the last 2 nights with middle of the night wakings where I struggle to get back to bed.  The kids have also been up a bunch, which certainly doesn't help.

I'm restarting this journal to reach out to any women that are struggling with similar symptoms.  No, it's not normal to always be tired as a mom.  As your kids get older you should get your energy back!  No, it's not normal to be lightheaded frequently or to have muscle aches that you can't contribute to anything.  And there are things you can start doing today to help you feel better.  I've been battling this for nearly 5 years now, so I can't give you the magic pill to make it all better.  But most of my days are good days now as my body recovers.  And I haven't spent tons of $$ on special supplements or drugs.  I'm doing this the natural way, you're welcome to come along for the ride if you'd like!