Is Adrenal Fatigue Real
Why The Symptoms Are Real But The Diagnosis Is Not
If you are always tired, if your energy crashes in the afternoon, if caffeine barely works, someone has probably told you that you have adrenal fatigue. The concept is appealing. It is also not supported by endocrinology.
What Adrenal Fatigue Claims vs What Science Shows
The adrenal glands do not fatigue from overuse. They are not like muscles. Adrenal insufficiency (Addison's disease) is a real autoimmune condition that destroys adrenal tissue. It is not caused by stress or overtraining. The endocrine system has enormous reserve capacity. Your adrenals can produce cortisol for decades under chronic stress without exhausting output.
Why Your Adrenal Glands Are Not Exhausted
If adrenal fatigue is not real, why do so many athletes have these symptoms? Because the symptoms are real. They have a different cause. The most common cause in the training population is chronic sympathetic nervous system dominance driven by breathing dysfunction.
The Real Cause: Chronic Sympathetic Dominance
When you are a chest-dominant breather with a low BOLT score and lost Zone of Apposition, your nervous system is in constant low-grade sympathetic activation. Cortisol and adrenaline are persistently elevated above resting baseline. Over time, receptor sensitivity downregulates. Your cells become less responsive to cortisol despite normal or elevated levels. You feel fatigued. Caffeine stops working because the receptors are blunted.
How Breathing Dysfunction Creates Fatigue Symptoms
The afternoon crash results from a blunted morning cortisol peak (baseline is already elevated, so the peak is less dramatic) and an afternoon decline that feels like a crash because blunted receptors receive even less signal.
How Restoring Parasympathetic Capacity Resolves The Symptoms
The fix is not rest and adaptogens. It is restoring parasympathetic capacity through breathing correction. MOVECHECK identifies breathing dysfunction in the first stage. Athletes with low BOLT scores and chest-dominant patterns are almost certainly dealing with receptor downregulation from chronic sympathetic overdrive. Correct the breathing. The fatigue resolves because the cause was never your adrenal glands.
See This In Your Own Body
Every concept in this article is tested in the MOVECHECK assessment. Find out which patterns apply to you.
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