- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
anonymous wrote:I have been diagnosed with PTSD.
To say I was exhausted is the understatement of the year. I began TRT (and thyroid), but still have lingering fatigue.
My AM Cortisol (blood) was within range (17), an 11:30 cort was 5.0, but I have all the symptoms of AF. My tolerance to stress is low.
My doc started me on 5 mg HC AM, and it helps. Interestingly, cravings, which had been rampant, have all but subsided. Someone else suggested starting with Isocort, since although my stress was high, my CORT numbers weren’t too bad.
I was going to give HC (or Isocort) a 90 – 120 day run and taper to see if it helped. The only fear I have is hearing about how some become dependant on HC and their adrenals stop functioning, though that supposedly isn’t at doses <20 mg.
Is that an accurate understanding that at divided doses <20 mg, HC is additive and that it does not suppress baseline adrenal function?
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) could probably be called a poster child example for adrenal fatigue. Like every mental illness, however, it is more complex than what “adrenal fatigue”. Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal problems are part of the pathophysiology of PTSD. In the literature, patients with PTSD have low cortisol production. And there are several studies in the use of cortisol (hydrocortisone) in treating PTSD.
In regard to safety with hydrocortisone, I would refer you to the book “The Safe Uses of Cortisol” by William Jeffries, M.D. and “The Hormone Handbook” by Thierry Hertoghe.
The average man at rest, without stress, makes about 20 to 25 mg of hydrocortisone a day. When active and under more stress, the average man makes even more hydrocortisone. When given orally, the liver takes out about 40 percent of the oral dose of hydrocortisone. Thus an oral dose of 20 mg or less will slow down but not stop adrenal function. This dose would be called a subreplacement dose or a subtherapeutic dose.
A person can use IsoCort like hydrocortisone. 5 mg of IsoCort is about the same as 2.5 mg of Hydrocortisone. Too much of it would stop adrenal function just like too much hydrocortisone can.
If one has fear of withdrawal problems from hydrocortisone, then it should be tapered off slowly.
@DrMariano 55 wrote:
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) could probably be called a poster child example for adrenal fatigue. Like every mental illness, however, it is more complex than what “adrenal fatigue”. Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal problems are part of the pathophysiology of PTSD. In the literature, patients with PTSD have low cortisol production. And there are several studies in the use of cortisol (hydrocortisone) in treating PTSD.
In regard to safety with hydrocortisone, I would refer you to the book “The Safe Uses of Cortisol” by William Jeffries, M.D. and “The Hormone Handbook” by Thierry Hertoghe.
The average man at rest, without stress, makes about 20 to 25 mg of hydrocortisone a day. When active and under more stress, the average man makes even more hydrocortisone. When given orally, the liver takes out about 40 percent of the oral dose of hydrocortisone. Thus an oral dose of 20 mg or less will slow down but not stop adrenal function. This dose would be called a subreplacement dose or a subtherapeutic dose.
A person can use IsoCort like hydrocortisone. 5 mg of IsoCort is about the same as 2.5 mg of Hydrocortisone. Too much of it would stop adrenal function just like too much hydrocortisone can.
If one has fear of withdrawal problems from hydrocortisone, then it should be tapered off slowly.
This condition is what our soldiers are suffering from coming back from Iraq. I am going to Colorado springs to university of the rockies to talk to try and talk to a psychologist that works at the army base to educate them on the fact that if they would combine psychotherapy with proper hormone balancing will help them to break the cycle. With out proper adrenal and thyroid support to have the ability to cope with the trama their becomes a vicious cycle. I ran into a number of soldiers while out there that goto VA hospital and had some hormones ran. The results were border line hypothyroidism. How ironic isn’t it? These soldiers are on so many psychotropic drugs it is ashame. Majority of them are on lithium carbonate at 300 mgs and also trazadone to sleep. I know it is only theory but could simple addressing the adrenal fatigue and thyroid actually give these soldiers a new lease on life? I am going to do my best to educate health professionals to look into this. I would love to conduct a study of cortisol saliva test on solders returning home to see exactly what their levels are at.
@hardasnails1973 56 wrote:
This condition is what our soldiers are suffering from coming back from Iraq. I am going to Colorado springs to university of the rockies to talk to try and talk to a psychologist that works at the army base to educate them on the fact that if they would combine psychotherapy with proper hormone balancing will help them to break the cycle. With out proper adrenal and thyroid support to have the ability to cope with the trama their becomes a vicious cycle. I ran into a number of soldiers while out there that goto VA hospital and had some hormones ran. The results were border line hypothyroidism. How ironic isn’t it? These soldiers are on so many psychotropic drugs it is ashame. Majority of them are on lithium carbonate at 300 mgs and also trazadone to sleep. I know it is only theory but could simple addressing the adrenal fatigue and thyroid actually give these soldiers a new lease on life? I am going to do my best to educate health professionals to look into this. I would love to conduct a study of cortisol saliva test on solders returning home to see exactly what their levels are at.
Any forward progress with the new treatment of soldiers in this manner? We really need to jump on this, and my friend (and I) who is actually about to be med-boarded for psychiatric/psychological reasons is trying to start a new behavioral health and drug treatment program. This could really go somewhere..
@VehementlyAlive 1124 wrote:
Any forward progress with the new treatment of soldiers in this manner? We really need to jump on this, and my friend (and I) who is actually about to be med-boarded for psychiatric/psychological reasons is trying to start a new behavioral health and drug treatment program. This could really go somewhere..
Progress is in bits and pieces, unfortunately.
Like virtually all mental illnesses, PTSD is actually a very complicated illness with multiple simultaneous causes (pathophysiologies). And thus it needs a complex treatment to address each one. Further, not everyone develops PTSD. Only a subset – about a third of people do. Those that do have predisposing factors to PTSD.
Unfortunately, from a medical point of view, there is a bias against complex treatments. They take a lot of thought, work and time to implement. If a primary care provider can give a person only 6 minutes, then this won’t be accomplished. At most, many providers may only consider one or two treatments.
Lithium would not be the first medication I would think of in treating PTSD. I wouldn’t know a psychiatrist that would use Lithium first.
There is a definite bias against the use of Cortisol. The term “adrenal fatigue” should be abolished. This confuses primary care doctors and gets endocrinologists riled up. Cortisol and other glucocorticoids have been highly demonized also. In psychiatry, poorly designed studies have caused psychiatrists to be taught that depression and other psychiatric illnesses are actually contributed to by high cortisol signaling, despite how rare high cortisol levels are in real life when cortisol is actually measured. Thus there is hesitancy to use cortisol as a treatment for PTSD. The brainwashing has been fairly thorough. If the low cortisol signaling in mental illness is called “hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis dysregulation” then practitioners of various specialties are more accepting of cortisol treatment.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.