@Jimbo39 it would be a very good idea to research secondary adrenal insufficiency and get very familiar with the symptom list of adrenal crisis. Study up on the HPA axis and what happens in an adrenal crisis. The prominent thing I remember is that in an adrenal crisis the kidneys no longer get a chemical message from the adrenals that tells them to save salt and excrete or waste potassium. Thus you end up excreting the salt and water and developing hyperkalemia or high potassium which is very dangerous. The body from the cellular level on up is highly dependent upon a strict sodium/potassium ratio in order to function.
Buuuuutttt.... when you are normal you need potassium and not salt. So how to know whether you are normal or abby normal is important but hard to figure out. If you crave salt and you are getting very dry, like inside your nose is dry as a rock instead of the normal moist and spongy, you could be heading into adrenal crisis and thus need to avoid potassium but drink lots of water with salt.
I'm still hoping for an FDA approved potassium tester like diabetics have a glucose monitor. Unfortunately there is no FDA approved handy potassium monitor for health use. There is a small sensitive potassium meter approved for agricultural use that some folks purchase to check their potassium levels with saliva, but it costs several hundred dollars and needs constant recalibration which you can do at home. There are youtube videos that show how.
Sending off lots of money for lab tests on a regular basis gets very expensive fast. I've heard that adrenal saliva testing is pretty good but haven't tried it. Monitoring and interpreting your body signals is difficult but essential to learn.
Don't take any form of caffeine or other stimulant as it will cause your adrenals to quickly go bankrupt. If you get tired, rest immediately. Do not push yourself. Your body has 2 cents worth of gas and you don't want to spend it on something silly. Your body needs to use it to heal you. Do make sure to get plenty of vitamin B12 which does give some energy.
Here is a few good resources that will help you quickly learn a lot you need to know without wading through a million conversations and hoping someone will respond to your questions with accurate info in a timely manner:
1)
http://howirecovered.com/active-b12-therapy-faq
Active B12 therapy and methylation FAQ
May 21, 2013
302 comments
An Index to ‘B-12 the Hidden Story’
"When I discovered methylation and B12 therapy, I became obsessed with understanding it (and my startup reaction). I read through the entire ‘Hidden Story‘ thread (maybe 80 hours worth) on Phoenix Rising (and watched all of the methylation videos I could get my hands on). It seemed to me that lots of valuable information was buried in the ‘Hidden Story’ and I wanted to make it accessible to people without the time on their hands (or clarity) to read 2,750+ posts.
So here, I’ve pulled out the discussion that might interest the greatest number of readers. This project got a boost when my wife asked me what methylation was and I could not give her a simple answer (even after being immersed in it for weeks). Unless otherwise noted the author of the answers below is Freddd whose active B12 protocol I’m following. There are other B12 protocols like Amy Yasko, Ben Lynch and the late Rich van Konynenburg’s and where possible I’ve tried to include information about the differences between them....
A great big thanks to everyone participating in the discussion and of course especially Freddd, Rich (posthumously) and Cort Johnson for creating and maintaining Phoenix Rising."
2) A book by Earl Mindell called the "New Vitamin Bible," revised in 2011, which covers a whole lot more than vitamins in a very friendly layperson text. It is very inexpensive and available on Amazon.
3)
http://www.healthrising.org/forums/
4)
http://www.nadf.us/adrenal-diseases/secondary-adrenal-insufficiency/
5) The best $200 I ever spent: No doctors involved. Getting your genetics. Genetic data is not a doomsday profile. Genes can be switched on and off by things you eat, do, etc. As a result, once you know what you have you can try workarounds. Epigenetics goes deep into all of this.
You can visit these sites now to see and play with product samples and figure out how to use it.
http://23andme.com/
$200 online payment. They send you a kit to submit your saliva by mail. You return this by mail.
You will receive email notification of your results which can be downloaded in about 2 months. The raw data you will download from 23&me using their tools section and it will be in a zip file.
Then, you can submit your raw data to Promethease online for only $5 which will give you an extensive report in about 15 min, that you can manipulate various ways.
http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease
Oh yeah, when in the forum, remember you are dealing with sick, exhausted, cranky, defensive, worn down folks who may not be thinking clearly and might snap at you over.... well maybe nothing; just a misinterpretation or a presumed insult. Don't take it to heart. Try to take the high road. We're all struggling in the trenches. Hang on to your sense of humor. But be careful with that too. "Don't smile or the chimps will throw feces." - a sign at the Zoo.
http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease
