Re: Re: Exercising-Tish

September 18, 2004

Tish,

What is your opinion on this: I have to take 22.5 mg of hydrocortisone a day

right now to be functional. ( I am still not optimized on 3 grs of Armour daily.

) Even at that dose of hc I sometimes cannot handle a sudden stress as well as

I would like. I've tried to start up some exercise again here and there. It's

been since June that I had stopped regular exercise because of adrenal

exhaustion. I seem to handle some small exercise on some days and not others.

This past week I tried 14 minutes on the Nordic trac keeping my HR under 120. I

felt ok at the time. Then crashed the next 3 days. I've tried 20 minutes of

Pilates floor exercise and felt miserable right after.I have been thinking that

exercise may have to be put off for a while longer. I do ok walking a couple

miles, but it does not do anything much for my fitness. Then I saw your post

here about supplementing FOR exercise. I'm a little uncomfortable though with

adding more hc to my daily dose. Are you saying that if I were to take, say 5

mg, 15 minutes before exercising, that not only might it prevent me from

crashing the next few days, but that I needn't count that as part of my daily hc

dose? That I could still consider myself taking only 22.5 mg support a day? Or

better, that my adrenals would have only registered a decreased need for output

by 22.5 mg daily. I hope I am making my question clear. I am concerned about

adrenal atrophy. That is my concern with taking more than 22.5 mg to supplement

for exercise.

I would really like to be able to get back into a routine of aerobic exercise

and weight lifting. I have missed it. My legs are turning to jello. By the way,

during and after the small amounts of exercise I do, earlier in the day, I

usually have felt really good, not fatigued, as before. I have checked my

postural BP right afterwards and it is very good, even better than before the

exercise! But I have experienced that crash the next day+. It's a very bad

crash!

Thanks for your help. It sounds like you have been through similar adrenal

issues.

Roxanna

North Star German Shepherd Dog Rescue Inc

northstargsdr@...

www.northstargsdr.org

Re: Exercising - causing insomnia, other

symptoms of hyper

Is it OK to take Isocort without

> doing any tests etc.?

________________________

The adrenals make 35 to 40 mg of cortisol a day. If you are not able

to make enough extra for excercise and you just take an adrenal

glandular to help make up the difference you cannot hurt yourself.

Cortisone only causes symptoms when it exceeds normal blood levels.

If you take 20 mg of cortisol in a pill and your were perfectly

healthy, your own adrenals will drop output by 20mg to keep blood

levels proper for good health. It works the same for thryoid

hormone. Anything you take less than 4-1/2 to 5 grains, your own

thryoid (if you were a healthy person) would drop production by that

much to maintain proper blood levels of hormone. So, as long as you

take less adrenal than your adrenals make, you cannot get any

symptoms of overdose. You will not get any side effects whatsoever

from a dose less than your own adrenals make. They call these low

doses " physiological doses " . If you ask more of your adrenals than

they can do and you start to make yourself sick from it, replacing

some of the hormone that is missing, that you need to be healthy, is

actually helpful and takes the stress off the adrenals. If you want

to read about this see if you can get " Safe Uses of Cortisol " by Dr.

Jeffries from your library or on inter-library loan.

You are already running on a deficit of cortisol or you would not be

getting sick from excercise. So, taking 10 mg of cortisol is only

going to keep you healthier. When adrenal hormones get too low,

immunity is hampered, inflammation gets out of control and your

immune system can't work properly, you can't control glucose, you

can't use thyroid hromone, you can't convert T4 to T3, and the heart

cannot be properly regulated among many other things that go wrong

with inadequate cortisol. So, you cannot get symptoms from replacing

something that is low that you need.

If you were to take 20 mg of Cortisol a day whether you needed it or

not, your own adrenals would lower their output by 20 mg a day.

After about 4 weeks of doing this, you own adrenals would drop their

capacity by up to half (if you had healthy adrenals). If you do it

long term, you must keep in mind that your adrenals will become

dependent on it and then if you want to get off the cortisol, you

will need to taper off slowly. This would not harm you in any way

other than lowering your adrenal capacity. You could continue this

your entire life without problem. But, if you just take it for

excercise when you are going too low, this should not have any

effect whatsoever on your adrenal strength and overall output, since

you are just replaceing what is needed that they cannot do. In fact,

it would probably protect them from being damaged and from loosing

all their stores.

IsoCort contain 2-1/2 mg of cortisol per tablet. Nutri+meds adrenal

glandular seems to contain about 5 mg per tablet. For excercise, you

will need to experiment to see what is needed to keep you from

becoming sick later. I have found that 7-1/2 mg works for me. My

former doctor, a tall big man, needed 10 mg. It also partly depends

on how hampered your adrenals are. If they are really weak, then you

will need more and if they are doing pretty well, you will need

less. You are just trying to replace what is missing so you don't

get sick.

If you want to do regular adrenal support, which many hypothryoid

people like me need to feel good and function properly, this would

mean taking 10 to 20 mg of cortisol a day in 4 evenly divided doses.

This is the typical adrenal support given to thryoid patients with

low adrenal reserve. Usually we take this dose for 4 months up to 2

years and then taper off. It all depends on how much our adrenal

capaciy has been lost due to low thryoid and how long we have been

low thryoid before getting diagnosed. The longer you have been low

thryoid, it seems the more adrenal capacity is reduced and the

longer it takes to recover. If we were to not take any cortisol, we

would have a much harder time getting our thryoid doses up to

optimal, because if you don't have enough adrenal hromones, thyroid

cannot get into tissues and it builds up in the blood and gives many

symptoms that just really set you back even though the thryoid dose

is still too low. We would also suffer with immune problems and

inflammatory problems. Also, for me, I would not have been able to

continue my job and I would have been a total insomniac. It also

damages the adrenals to have demand that far exceeds their capacity

to produce hormones. It protects them to supply low dose cortisol

for enough time for them to build their strength to meed the demands

of a higher metabolic rate. The literature that comes with thryoid

hormone has dire warnigs about prescribing thyroid in the presence

of adrenal fatigue. Typically persons with adrenal fatigue start on

cortisol first for a week and then the thyroid. This protects

against a potential adrenal crisis sending you to the hospital with

a heart racing out of control. So, anyway, it is impossible to get

symptoms or any harm from replacing something that is low and needed.

Tish

September 18, 2004

With exercise intolerance, has anyone considered the MVP here (Mitral Valve

Prolapse)? It can cause this kind of exercise intolerance also. Is that

you Janie, who has the MVP, or who is it? It's very common with

hypothyroidism that has been around awhile. After all, the mitral valve is

just another piece of tissue, connective tissue and muscle, and we know that

hypo effects this. They took " pictures " of my heart in action, while doing

the treadmill, but that's been 9 yrs ago, so, who knows. I had no heartbeat

irregularities as of 3 yrs ago, but haven't had treadmill thing again.

Re: Exercising-Tish

> This past week I tried 14 minutes on the Nordic trac keeping my HR

> under 120. I

> felt ok at the time. Then crashed the next 3 days

> ________________________________

> This is the case for me. I cannot do any cardiac type excercise

> without crashing for 3 days either. This has been going on with me

> for almost two years since starting thryoid. I can go for a walk now

> and walk a mile or so, which I couldn't do for such a long time. I

> had big improvements when I got past 3 grains and up to 3-1/2

> grains. I started to feel really good and do a lot. Then, since I

> was feeling so good, I decided to increase my thyroid to 4-1/2 and

> maybe I'd become superwoman. Well, I crashed my adrenals big time,

> by being too confident and not paying attention to the signs. So, I

> have taken two months to recover from this and have not been able to

> do any excercise, though I can walk now and am almost back to where

> I was with that. I am also back down to 3-1/2 grains. I may have

> reached my best dose, but don't know yet. I feel really good at 4

> grains, but after several days start to get adrenal problems.

>

> I have read some disturbing things in Werner and Ingbars " The

> Thryoid " about how 20% of thryoid patients have adrenal damage from

> auto-immune disease, also. So, after so much time, I am wondering if

> my situation is permanent. I have been hypo to some degree most of

> my life and I have also read that the longer you are hypo the longer

> it takes to recover adrenal function.

September 18, 2004