The New Energy Crisis

You may have heard people blame their crushing exhaustion, brain fog, and moodiness on burnout or adrenal fatigue. But experts say those usually aren’t accurate diagnoses. Here, a new term for what ails us, along with new thinking on exactly how chronic stress is affecting our health—and why yoga can help.

- Leslie Goldman

In our fast-paced, always-on culture, where phrases like “burned out,” “stressed,” and “exhausted” are regularly bandied about—humblebragged, even—it’s no wonder the term “adrenal fatigue” has become a health buzzword. What is it? In fact, it’s been dubbed “the stress syndrome of the 21st century” and is described as being sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

What is it? A nebulous, controversial ailment that blames overtaxed adrenal glands for a cluster of nonspecific symptoms, including chronic fatigue, sleep and digestive disturbances, cognitive difficulties, and odd food cravings. (Your adrenals are the two triangular glands on top of your kidneys and are responsible for secreting the energizing hormones cortisol and adrenaline in times of stress.)

To be sure, people are reporting higher and higher levels of stress, says Jeffery Dusek, PhD, chief research officer at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and a research psychologist who has studied the body’s stress response with mind-body medicine pioneer Herbert Benson. Yet even though adrenal fatigue is sometimes diagnosed—and frequently self-diagnosed—the medical community largely denies that it is a real thing.

Both the Endocrine Society and the Mayo Clinic say the condition lacks proper scientific support, and a 2016 review of 58 studies, published in the journal BMC Endocrine Disorders, concluded “there is no substantiation that ‘adrenal fatigue’ is an actual medical condition.” Detractors think symptoms are more likely due to well-recognized medical conditions like depression or hypothyroidism, and they fear that ascribing them to adrenal fatigue could delay critical treatment. (To be clear, true adrenal insufficiency, an autoimmune disorder called Addison’s disease, is rare.)