Just want to bump this thread and report that I drank rooibos around the clock over last weekend, and it definitely has appeared to reboot the HPAA in some respect. My energy is definitely different, can't assess the full effects yet, but at times when my cortisol is naturally high - in the AM and then rising up again in the evening - it often feels like I don't even have CFS anymore. Very strange.
My body still feels sore and tired, but even that has improved somewhat. More importantly, the PEM doesn't seem anywhere near as bad, although I haven't really pushed yet to find out where the limits might be.
When I started drinking the rooibos on Saturday, after a while I felt very relaxed, in kind of a good mood, lower anxiety, etc. I kept drinking it all day and all evening, a full glass of about 8-10 oz. every couple of hours or so, and then drank a big glass before bed.
The next day there seemed to be some kind of rebound, or perhaps the ACTH had not come up yet, and I was kind of irritable and short tempered most of the day. I took some kava which seemed to help, and just kept drinking the tea, trying to ride it out. By evening I was feeling better again, and then drank more before going to sleep.
Monday I woke up and that's when I noticed that I felt completely different. Energy definitely has shifted, and the change has persisted since then. Some nights I'm only getting 3 or 4 hours sleep (b/c of insomnia issues, not the rooibos), and yet when I get up, I don't feel totally trashed like I normally would. I hardly notice a difference from when I get 6-8 hrs., in fact, which is very unusual for me.
So something is definitely going on, and it's going to take some time and activity to gauge the full effects. I think it's possible that the HPAA only got reset part way, and I'm thinking about doing another round in a couple days after I get some things done that I need to take care of. Perhaps it would take multiple rounds of suppressing the adrenal output, going through the low ACTH period, and then getting the rebound again when hopefully the HPAA resets itself at an even higher level each time.
Since this improvement or whatever happened seems to be persistent, and because of the pattern it took, I feel reasonably sure that neurohormonal effects are responsible and not some antioxidant or other effect of the tea. And if the HPAA functioning is stable now at the higher level, I hope that more rounds would have the same effect and increase the HPAA set-point even higher, although I suppose it's also possible that the benefit topped out from the one trial, whether b/c it's all the steroid suppression the tea is capable of producing, or because that's the most my HPAA can be reset now b/c of damage over the years, etc. But now we know that the rooibus inhibits the steroid output at least somewhat, and it's virtually impossible in that case for there not to be effects on ACTH, so I'll just have to see what the next round brings. Maybe it would take longer on the tea this time, with the apparently higher HPAA set point.
To make the tea, I took an old glass coffee-maker coffee pot, put about 5-6 hefty tsps of loose rooibos in a cloth tea satchel, and put that out in the sun for a few hours. It makes a very deep-red, deep tea-color tea, it's really beautiful, and tastes great. :- ) So after taking care of some things over the next couple of days, it's on to round two. I'm sometimes posting status updates in my profile if anyone wants to check there, also.
