ADRENALS AND VITAMIN C - WORTH A READ

[Guest guest]

Stop the thyroid madness newsletter.

Why do some patients escape adrenal dysfunction?? I think I know why I did.

Anyone who has read my story of nearly 20 years of absolute misery on T4-only

meds would think I'd be right in the thick of adrenal fatigue / HPA dysfunction

and low cortisol. Those were horrible, miserable, stressful, debilitating

years.

Yet, I escaped it.

For awhile after I entered the thyroid patient activist field, I felt guilty.

That was especially true as I saw how terribly people suffer with low cortisol.

But I also realized there was something potentially amazing to be discovered as

to WHY I escaped it.

But years went by, and I have always been extremely busy as an activist: daily

emails to take care of; constant updates to the website, keeping track of

and Facebook groups; thinking about and writing the blog; activities around the

book, phone consultations, and so much more. I have also fought to have an

important private life.

So, it wasn't until recently that I readdressed this question: why did I escape

adrenal dysfunction? Was it genes which gave me strong adrenals?? That thought

has drifted through my mind many times. But I wasn't sure. So recently, I took

some time to really search my past to find answers. And something else really

stood out.

Namely, because I had always been a fitness and health buff, I was big into

supplements. Sure, I was unable to do hardly anything about fitness part of the

equation–my T4-induced and crippling dysautonomia killed that. But my belief in

supplements never ended. That was impressed into me by my mother who always

stressed taking a vitamin pill as a child. I also remember her putting my

cigarette-smoking Dad on Vitamin C in the 1970 & #8242;s, having read it might

delay his inevitable lung cancer. (It was too late.)

So when I became a young adult, married with little children, I learned even

more about supplements, and took them. And one thing I remember always taking

all those years as a young adult was high amounts of Vitamin C. High amounts of

Vitamin C!! That stood out to me. And below are facts about Vitamin C and

adrenals:

VITAMIN C and ADRENALS:

" Of all the vitamins and minerals involved in adrenal metabolism, vitamin-C is

probably the most important. It is essential to the adrenal hormone cascade and

manufacture of adrenal steroid hormones. It acts as an antioxidant within the

adrenal cortex. " ~ www.bluemountainrx.com/adrenal.htm

" While the adrenal glands need numerous nutrients to function normally, perhaps

the most important of them all is vitamin C. The highest concentrations of

vitamin C reside in the eyes, brain and adrenal glands. ~

http://www.adrenalfatiguefocus.org/adrenal-fatigue-and-vitamin-c.html

" Healthy adrenal function requires vitamin C, and some of the highest

concentrations of vitamin C in the whole body are found in the adrenal glands. "

~ http://www.naturalnews.com/029842_vitamin_C_adrenals.html

" Vitamin C is utilized by the adrenal glands in the production of all of the

adrenal hormones, most notably cortisol. When you are faced with a stressful

situation, your vitamin C is rapidly used up in the production of cortisol and

related stress-response hormones. " ~

http://www.adrenalfatiguerecovery.com/vitamin-c.html

" The adrenal gland is among the organs with the highest concentration of vitamin

C in the body. Interestingly, both the adrenal cortex and the medulla accumulate

such high levels of ascorbate. Ascorbic acid is a cofactor required both in

catecholamine biosynthesis and in adrenal steroidogenesis. " ~

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15666839

There is much more on the net than the above, as well. And in fact, the

important relationship between Vitamin C and your adrenals was proposed in 1951.

This was huge, to me, as to why I may have escaped adrenal dysfunction. Even the

use of B-vitamins and magnesium are important, tho I don't remember what I was

taking of those.

ANOTHER CLUE: I had a conversation with a gal recently. Like me, she suffered a

long time, yet did not fall into adrenal fatique. I asked her why she felt she

escaped it. She explained that she had worked for a naturopath for many years,

and thus, took many supplements, including high dose Vitamin C. I was

dumbfounded.

MY CONCLUSION: Whether I have found the irrefutable reason as to why I didn't

fall into adrenal fatigue and low cortisol may not be answered inconclusively.

And who knows if some of us just have genetically strong adrenals. But I lean

to believe that my early use of high-dose Vitamin C all those miserable years

may have been a huge factor, along with B-vitamins which can also be depleted.

Today, I take a minimum of 2350 mg daily via my buffered C powder, and in water,

and usually double that amount, as I like taking it before bedtime for the

magnesium. I am also a fanatic about adding squeezed lemon to my water or

occasional fluoride-laden iced tea.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU: Adrenal patient experience has shown that once your

adrenals or HPA function drops, as does your cortisol, the use of hydrocortisone

is usually the best way to treat it. See the adrenals page here. And patients

have learned in leaps and bounds on how to use HC with their open-minded doctors

(…if they can even find a doctor who looks beyond his dogmatic training. It's

not easy.) But the use of high dose Vitamin C might not be something you want

to ignore, whether you have to use HC or not:

" Sufferers of adrenal fatigue are hit particularly hard by vitamin C deficiency.

The production of cortisol and other adrenal hormones, characteristically low in

this disorder, is dependent on an ongoing supply of vitamin C. If this supply

dwindles, so too does the secretion of adrenal hormones. This feeble response

from the adrenal glands places the body under further stress, further increasing

demand for the vitamin C. The importance of intervention with the appropriate

amounts of this nutrient should not be overlooked. " ~

http://www.adrenalfatiguefocus.org/adrenal-fatigue-and-vitamin-c.html

Have you heard of Scurvy? This is a progressive disease from the deficiency of

vitamin C that ultimately leads to death. And Linus ing wrote in his 1979

book, Biomolecular Sciences, that death from Scurvy is actually

" adrenalcortical failure " . That is profound as to the importance of Vitamin C

with YOUR adrenal health and/or recovery.

" In two separate studies about vitamin C supplementation (1,000–1,500 mg per day

for one week), ultramarathon runners showed a 30 percent lower cortisol level in

their blood when compared to runners receiving a placebo. In another study of

healthy children undergoing treatment with synthetic corticosteroids, 1 gram

(1,000 mg) of vitamin C, consumed three times a day for five days, resulted in

significantly lower cortisol levels compared to healthy children given a

placebo. In a study of lung-cancer patients, a dose of 2 grams of vitamin C,

given daily for one week prior to surgery, was able to bring elevated cortisol

levels (resulting from the surgery) back to normal ranges in a significantly

shorter period of time compared to patients receiving a placebo. ~

http://cortisolconnection.com/ch8_3.php

What about you? If you escaped adrenal dysfunction while going through years of

misery on T4-only meds, or being held hostage to the lousy TSH lab result, why

do YOU think you escaped it?

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