7 Easy and Cheap Tips to Improve Your Adrenal Function

You can have an adventurous mind and spirit but if your adrenals aren’t happy, it will be hard for your body to cooperate and live as adventurously as you want to. If you feel constantly tired and lack a zest for life, there’s a good chance your adrenal health is compromised. If you are battling food allergies, depression, anxiety, or can’t lose weight no matter what diet you try, there’s a possibility that you have adrenal burnout. Give these seven strategies, that worked great when personally dealing with adrenal exhaustion, a try so you can live your life to the fullest.

My husband, Victor, is the most laid back, easy-going guy you’ll meet.  But 10 years ago (I can’t believe it’s been that long) he had a severe case of adrenal exhaustion. It was horrible.

Victor was working out vigorously, eating super clean (I’m talking only chicken and broccoli), and would tell you that he wasn’t stressed out.  But he was always tired, couldn’t recover from workouts, would have bouts of anxiety and depression, random panic attacks, and couldn’t drop weight.

After months of running tests and doctor’s saying it was all in his head (or the best one was the endocrinologist who said it was his “culture”) we finally started treating it on our own as adrenal exhaustion. At the time, there wasn’t much information on adrenal exhaustion like there is now and we had to go through a lot of trial and error to come up with a solution.

While it did take an entire two years to fully recover from it and some more in-depth approaches than just these ones below, these are the easiest and cheapest ways to improve your adrenal function. 

If you have any symptoms of adrenal fatigue, I recommend trying these approaches for a few weeks and see if you feel better.  If your adrenals aren’t too beat up, these things should help. 

However, if you are in full adrenal burnout, these measures may not be enough to make a significant difference and you should seek out more help.

While we are not doctors, we have been able to help many clients improve their health with a lot of these strategies and more in-depth approaches that we do with our coaching especially if your adrenal fatigue is caused by stresses such as work/life balance, your exercise or training program, poor nutrition, leaky gut, or even just feeling “boxed in”.

One easy way to check if your adrenals aren’t functioning optimally is to do a 24-hour cortisol test. It’s really easy and affordable and the best part is that you can do it at home without having to deal with going to the doctors.

Give these 7 strategies a try and also check out the blog 5 Reasons Fitness May Be Making You Fatter to rule out overtraining. 

Boost Your Energy with Vitamin C

Try taking 3000-5000mg of vitamin C a day for a few days and notice if you start feeling better. You can’t overdose on C and this is one of the easiest ways to know if you have some adrenal issues going on. I’m a huge fan of Emergen-C packets and will take one or two a day when I’m feeling run down.

If you are really tired, take 1000mg with each meal but not too close to bedtime or it might disrupt your sleep, which brings me to the next solution.

Get a Solid 9 Hours Sleep Each Night

This one is so important.  I can’t tell you the number of clients we have that just need to change this one factor and would see their health improve dramatically. 

It’s super important to get to bed before 10:30 p.m. if your adrenal health is compromised.  If you don’t have the luxury to sleep in until 7:30 a.m., try to go to bed early enough so that you do get 8.5 to 9 hours of sleep each night. 

Catching up on sleep on the weekend might not help either.  It’s way more important to get your body on a regular sleep pattern than to average out 9 hours over the course of a week. 

If you have trouble falling asleep early, try to not watch TV or be on your phone after dinner. Also, try eating a warrior style diet, take a low dose of Melatonin before bed, read an entertaining but not too intense book before bed, and use aromatherapy like lavender oil.

There are a lot of great sleep supplements out there that are natural. These are two of our favorites:

• ONNIT’s New Mood because it helps you feel calm, produce more serotonin to fight off depression, and improves your focus.
• HFL’s Stress + Cortisol Relief because it has ZMA and adrenal support.

Related Blog: Why We Love ONNIT Supplements

Salt Your Food With Himalayan Salt

You’ve been told salt is bad and yes, salt in processed food is a no-no. But adding a high-quality sea salt like Himalayan Salt will help keep your adrenals healthy.  In Dr. Wilson’s book, Adrenal Fatigue, he recommends adding 1/4 tsp of salt to your water with each meal.  It totally helps! 

If you are looking to spend a little money on healing your gut, recover faster from sports training, and minimizing muscle loss when on a low-carb diet, we highly recommend Enduropacks Daily Nutrient System.

Eat Coconut Oil

While Victor was recovering from adrenal exhaustion, he’d have to eat spoonfuls of high-quality coconut oil throughout the day as one of the many ways to repair his gut health. Adrenal exhaustion often causes leaky gut (or sometimes vice versa).  Coconut oil is antibacterial and anti-fungal and kills off the bad bacteria in your gut, helping you to heal. You can also try oil pulling with coconut oil. 

Drink Bone Broth

Adding bone broth to your meals is also a cheap and easy way to improve gut health.  You can buy bone broth here or you can buy grass fed soup bones and throw them in a crockpot with onion, celery, carrots, and garlic overnight and then add it to my meals when I cook.  When Victor felt really bad, he’d just have a cup of it with his meals each day.  This really is one of the easiest ways to help your body recover!

While you can make your own bone broth it’s much simpler to just buy some.  Kettle and Fire has really well sourced bone broths and they taste delicious too.

Take a Digestive Enzyme

If you have severe digestion issues, take a digestive enzyme to help you.  I love ONNIT’s Total Gut Health supplement because not only does it have digestive enzymes and probiotics, it also includes prebiotics and betaine HCL which will improve digestion and in turn, improve adrenal function.  Healing your gut is a top priority in recovering from adrenal exhaustion.

Click here to watch Robyn + Victor’s FREE 5 Day REIGNITE THE PASSION workshop. In Day 1 we cover exactly how cortisol, gut health, and food sourcing are impacting your hormones and in turn, your relationship.

Get Horizontal to Recharge Your Adrenals

You don’t have to have a full siesta every day, but try to lay down for 15 minutes in the afternoon to give your adrenals a rest.  Sitting in a chair doesn’t help nearly as much as getting fully horizontal so get a hammock or lie on a blanket in the grass and zen out.  

We are also huge fans of yoga.  There are many different types of classes you can take and I encourage you to try many styles until you find one that speaks to you. You can find one of my guided yoga classes on YouTube here or try this sequence.

You can have an adventurous mind and spirit but if your adrenals aren’t happy, it will be hard for your body to cooperate and live as adventurously as you want to.  Give these seven strategies a try so you can live your life full of adventure and purpose.  If you want more help, reach out to us about coaching.

Pin This For Later: