Meds For Adrenal Support

[Angela]

I was mentioning to a coworker that licorice root helps a lot of pots patients from what I gather and she explained to me that she was recently dx'd with adrenal fatigue. She went home and looked at the 2 meds that her naturopathic doctor told her to use and found

Adrenoplex (by Priority One) contains licorice root. also contains panthothenic Acid, Ascorbic Acid, Zinc, Beta Carotene, Siberian Ginseng, Adrenal cortex and Pituitary.

It is designed to help immune system support, adrenal support, streess, fatigue

prostate cancer (what?) and elevated PHC levels. Also supposed to enhance metabolism.

The other pill she takes is Isocort by Bezwecken, designed to provide adrenal support for those with reduced cortisol levels which can result in many symptoms including:

fatigue

difficulty getting up in the morning

food cravings

allergies

anxiety

lack of energy

The ingrediants are fermented plant derived cortisol, and echinaciea Purpurea, also contains magnesium stearate, starch arrowroot, and a few other ingredients. It does contain lactose however.

Does anyone take either of these or variations of them or even think it would benefit pots at all? Seems like they might.

[Friedbrain]

It's up to you, of course, whether you would want to treat adrenal insufficiency with mainstream medication (like hydrocortisone or cortef or whatever) or naturopathic medication. However, I would suggest that you find out first if your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is messed up. The HPA is a critical response mechanism to stress along with just the day-to-day baseline functions. By artificially (external source) elevating cortisol-if you make your cortisol levels too high-it would feed back to the "top" of the HPA and tell it that it's overdoing its job and then it shuts off. When a stressor would come along, it would not respond, and then you'd be in bigger trouble.

Baseline levels of cortisol and ACTH would tell you whether the adrenal gland is producing enough cortisol (ACTH is helpful to tell you where the problem is if cortisol levels are off). You can also get a "stimulation" test where they initially measure your cortisol (and ACTH) and then stimulate your adrenal glands to produce cortisol, and then they re-measure. If your cortisol levels do not increase enough, that would also be dysfunctional.

Just my .02

[ramakentesh]

Licorice also boosts blood pressure acutely by increasing ACE activity and decreasing endothelial nitric oxide expression. it also acts as a MAO inhibitor with perhaps SSRI activities as well.

[ramakentesh]

They might help POTS. It seems mainly that for me anything that increases blood pressure can help acutely. I couldbe wrong but Cortisol can also stimulate the receptor that aldosterone agonises?

[Relax86]

I am one that responded well to dosing hydrocortisone. It's the only drug that helped to bring me along. Later added midrodine for a short period until BP stabilized. Then weaned off of HC as it makes medical Dr's nuts when you're on it and you have negative cortrosyn testing. I still miss how I felt on it. It was very helpful for me. I use a brand of vitamins called Pure Encapsulations and often browse their Adrenal support section.

[MomtoGiuliana]

Echinacea purpurea is I believe an immune system stimulant. From what I have been told in the past it is not advised for people with any autoimmune condition.

[Relax86]

Echinacea purpurea is I believe an immune system stimulant. From what I have been told in the past it is not advised for people with any autoimmune condition.

Good to know as I have recently had the positive ANA and also complement testing that was not normal. So I'm going down the autoimmune road. Information moves slowly and I learn more from the forum - so thanks; I'm trying to be patient while the medical community attempts to figure me out a little. I apparently have low C3 which supposedly means I have a reduction in my immune system which is funny because besides POTs in the beginning of last year and subsequent dysautonomia I rarely get sick, cuts heal very quickly etc...I may never understand my body again.

[Angela]

Echinacea and Autoimmune Disease

There is considerable controversy over the safety and value of echinacea in autoimmune disease. Given the great variety of disorders that come under this classification, and the associated complexity of immune imbalances, it seems unreasonable to suggest there might be no circumstances when the herb is safe and useful. On the other hand, echinacea might not suit all patients with autoimmune disease. On this point, the few documented cases where it might have been associated with a patient's deterioration have been taken as a proof that it is contraindicated in autoimmune disease. However, this ignores the countless cases where echinacea has been safely prescribed in this context.

There is growing evidence from individual cases and experimental models that autoimmune disease is often associated with a defective functioning of some aspect of the immune response, especially involving NK cells. NK cells are part of innate immunity and hence, this aspect of immunity can be deficient in autoimmune disease. In contrast, some aspects of T- and B-cell responses, which form the acquired immune response, usually are overactive in these disorders.

The NK cell deficiencies probably vary across the range of different autoimmune diseases, but also might vary for individual patients expressing a particular disorder. (This latter point might explain why a handful of patients with autoimmune disease do not respond well to echinacea.) For example, patients with systemic lupus erythematosus often are deficient in NK cell function³⁴ and the role of NK cells in inhibiting autoimmunity in general has been well-established from experimental models.^35,36 Natural killer cell dysfunction also is a distinguishing feature of systemic onset juvenile rheumatoid arthritis³⁷ and circulating NK cells are reduced in psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis.³⁸ A particular focus has been on NKT cells, which are a subset of T-cells that share properties of NK cells and conventional T-cells.³⁹ NKT cells are potent producers of immunoregularity cytokines that can control an overactive immune response. A survey of patients with different autoimmune diseases found around half had reduced numbers of NKT cells.⁴⁰

Given the above, the findings noted previously by Sandra Miller that E. purpurea root boosts NK cell numbers and function in experimental models are particularly relevant. Dr. Miller and colleague Danielle Delorme also have examined the effects of echinacea root consumption in non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice, a model of human type 1 diabetes. NKT cells are believed to be implicated in type 1 diabetes and their functional and/or numerical deficiency is thought to be largely responsible for the development of this disease in NOD mice.⁴¹ When NOD mice were fed echinacea for varying times. there was a substantial and significant increase in NK cell numbers. This was the only type of immune cell influenced by the echinacea in these mice.

[ramakentesh]

Steroids may help by supressing the immune system. As to the effect of that herb tread carefully if you have autoimmunity but some are cytokine driven.

[spinner]

im on cortisol, AM only.

I havnt tried licorice although i have some here.

The supplements i have are called ADAPT.

You can probably google that for ingredients within that you can buy individually.

The best test for this you WONT get at your regular doctors.

You'd need an integrated or hollistic doctor who will order up a salivary cortisol test for you,

or you can even order it yourself.