Ran across this today as I was searching web. I too have adrenal insufficiency…NOT adrenal fatigue. Like you, my adrenals just stopped making cortisol. They label me idiopathic AI as they can not figure out what happened to cause this. Loved your blog! So true! And I hate quack dr’s and adrenal fatigue too. It really causes issues for those of us who are really sick. If I hear oneore time how Dr X can fix me with his vitamin pack I just may lose it!! I need steroids to stay alive!!

Depends on the usage of Addison’s Disease. Some people use that to mean only primary adrenal insufficiency (arising from the adrenal glands directly and only from the adrenal glands). Some people use it to mean all adrenal insufficiency, including primary (adrenal glands), secondary (pituitary gland), and tertiary (hypothalamus).

So to some people I would have “secondary Addison’s disease”, to other people I would have “secondary adrenal insufficiency”.

One thing I do not have is “adrenal fatigue”, which makes me angry — furious, even — to even think about. Because basically, quacks invented it so that they could diagnose anyone with a fatigue-causing condition with an adrenal problem. This means people are not getting the treatment they need (including some with real adrenal insufficiency, which can kill when not treated properly — I was near that point when they finally tested my blood for cortisol and couldn’t find enough of that, or ACTH, to measure), and may also be getting treatments they don’t need. People diagnosed with adrenal fatigue do tend to have real medical problems, they’re just being grossly misdiagnosed.

To make matters worse, some of the quacks have started calling adrenal fatigue, adrenal insufficiency, which just muddies the waters even more. Fortunately I have real doctors at a real hospital who diagnosed me using the most standard testing available and sent it to the Mayo Clinic to be sure. But I’ve had people (always laypeople, my medical records speak for themselves if you’re a doctor) doubt my diagnosis because they didn’t know the difference between adrenal fatigue and adrenal insufficiency.

The difference in my book? With adrenal fatigue, you don’t have to carry around needles and vials of hydrocortisone to use in case of adrenal crisis. I do have to carry those things around. Sort of like people with falsely-diagnosed “severe food allergies” never seem to need an epi-pen (even if they do have a condition that’s being misdiagnosed as food allergies, which is quite common — been there done that)…

I hope these still work. I hope all your future medical interventions are minimal but effective, and that you still have a cat
best wishes,
Dinah

Secondly, she’s nothing but right about stress -of all forms – and adrenal insufficiency not mixing. Even *mild* adrenal insufficiency can cause problems if you have major surgery. I was drenching the sheets with sweat after my last one.

I currently take hydrocortisone every day. What she’s taking is a *much* stronger drug.

Yeah there’s some people (such as old bullies from school, posing as old friends) who have personal reasons for disliking me, and other people who seem to believe that if my life story isn’t what they imagined when they first heard about me, then I must be “hiding things” (even though, curiously, the things I’m supposedly hiding are things I talk about constantly). Then they feel justified in any level of bullying they see fit, up to and including death threats. The person who provoked this post was just one of those garden variety “Why don’t you tell anyone that you used to speak and have been to college?” types (the answer, as always, is “I do tell people those things, I talk about them constantly, you’re not paying much attention”) followed by accusing me of faking all my medical conditions, then saying that some of my medical conditions are real (how anyone other than my doctors can make that distinction, I don’t know). It was a string of comments by one guy, and on a good day I’d have laughed it off but it was a bad day and it stressed me out, and then I thought, “I don’t have to take this. Nobody should have to take this, but I have adrenal insufficiency, and deliberately stressing me out is a very direct attack on my health. And given that I’ve posted about it before, this guy probably knows it.” So I wrote that.

It could be, but nobody’s ever found out exactly what it is. I do have pituitary gland problems, which can affect hormones all over the body (including causing the severe adrenal insufficiency I have). Why are people so interested in why I have facial hair?