Last year I had a consultation with a 27 year old woman named Allison. She is a marathon runner who has been suffering from what I call “athletic fatigue.”
I had been treating Allison off and on for the past two years for a number of problems, including hip pain, back pain, and plantar fasciitis (foot pain). Lately she was getting injured more frequently and complained that she had trouble sticking to her training schedule.
This is how she described her problem:
“I feel like shit. I’m really tired and pretty cranky at work. I’m training for Chicago (the Chicago marathon) and I’m not doing well. And it’s been upsetting my stomach. I know you do adrenal tests, and I wanted to see if I could do that my race is in two weeks so can we do it after that I agreed Allison beat her race but she wasn’t happy with her time she said she didn’t feel like herself and she was absolutely exhausted for the three days after the race, she came to pick up her test kit and looked exhausted.
“Why don’t you take a few weeks off from training until we can see what’s wrong with you?” I suggested.
Allison agreed. I gave him the functional adrenal stress profile test kit to see what was going on with his adrenals. I also had her complete a metabolic screening profile, to see if she was digesting protein correctly and to see if excessive exercise had caused any cell damage. The results of her test showed that she had actually crashed into the ground. Laboratory tests on her indicated:
- His adrenal glands were in stage 2 exhaustion.
- He was gluten intolerant.
- I wasn’t digesting protein properly.
- His body was under stress from free radicals.
When I talked to her about Allison’s test results, she asked me a question many athletes like to ask: “Can’t you tell me what supplements to take?”
Unfortunately, there is a mentality today that goes something like this: “Do you have a problem? Take a pill.” While this can work in certain serious situations, the truth is that health and sports performance problems are rarely caused by missing pills; either prescription or supplement.
So, in Allison’s case, the answer was a resounding no.
“Look Allison, we need to get your diet, your training program, your sleep and recovery under control, and then we can talk about which supplements you should take. In cases like yours, there are no quick fixes, and I can tell you from experience that these problems will continue. worse”. I told her that she needed to work with me for 6 months so we could really get her back on track. She agreed and enrolled in a 6-month personal program.
After she took the Baseline assessment home and faxed it back to me, it was easy to see that Allison had a number of things stacked against her.
- She was over training. Endurance athletes tend to train too much for too many races without enough free time. Allison was no different. She ran in 4(!) marathons this year and did a few sprint triathlons. She was planning to do a half Ironman next year.
- Allison was drastically consuming gluten grains and carbs in general. The high carbohydrate diet is still very popular among endurance athletes. Allison ate a lot of pasta and cereal, and also used too much protein powder.
- Allison was also experiencing quite a few digestive issues. Her diet included a lot of processed foods and she didn’t cook enough of whole foods.
- I wasn’t getting enough sleep. Allison stayed up quite late and got up early to run. She was averaging around 6-7 hours a night.
- Allison was having issues with a low sex drive. This is common, especially in female athletes who overtrain. She had been married for a year and a half and having children was in her plans.
So Allison’s overtraining, lack of sleep, and gluten consumption had depleted her adrenal glands. First we had to control that problem, then we had to see her digestion.
The first thing I made him do was take a full month off from running. Yes, a full month. I even forbid him to run in the Turkey Trot. Here’s why: Many runners are addicted to running. They’ll keep running through just about anything. When someone begins to develop some of the issues that Allison was experiencing, it is critical that they take time to heal. He was not allowed to ski until December.
While the rest itself would help Allison tremendously, taking a month off would allow her to sleep in later. Sleep is crucial for the recovery of the adrenal glands.
That was all we worked on in the first month. I’m not going to lie: At first Allison rebelled. But after I explained that letting her adrenal glands recover now would pay off next year and that adrenal fatigue was the reason she felt so bad during races, she agreed.
During that first month, we met every week. Allison spent about a week in the broker’s retreat. He had to fight the urge to go 10 or 12 miles every day. But she survived. She quickly began sleeping later and getting about 9 hours of sleep each night. She had told him that month 2 she would focus on going gluten free, but she gave it up right away. She wanted a big project to focus her attention on while she wasn’t running.
We also started her on a supplement program.
After her month off from running, I let Allison start again. He agreed to keep the distance from him 3-5 miles three times a week. Twice a week he did circuit training with kettlebells at home, for no more than 30 minutes. If he went skiing, that replaced a day of running that week.
After the first month, Allison was fine. Her digestive problems were still bothering her, so I asked her to see her doctor about it. The doctor asked her to do a stool test and it turned out that Allison had an infection in her intestines. Her doctor prescribed antibiotics and her problems got better within a few weeks (this was one case where ‘Are you having a problem? Take this pill’ worked).
At 3 months, Allison repeated the Adrenal Stress Profile and did much better. She had stuck to her schedule and she had really been a great patient. After about 4 months, Allison was doing great. She was done with her supplement program. Her sex drive was back to normal, she was staying away from gluten and she was getting ready to start training for her first marathon of the season. But then something happened. Guess…
Sometime in the fifth month of her show, Allison told me that she and her husband were expecting their first child. She would be taking a long break from marathon training.
Allison’s case of athletic fatigue is very common, particularly in women who play distance sports. (Men also have problems with athletic fatigue, but the symptoms are different.) Taking enough time to recover, eating right, and training sensibly is critical.
