Tired and depressed?

Mary was tired. Actually, she was exhausted. And depressed. And fed up. Everyone kept telling her that she had it all: great husband, three wonderful children, a job that she enjoyed and a loving family. So why did she wish she could just curl up in a ball and make it all go away?

When Mary came to see me, it was hard for her to open up but she realised that her problem was not going away. She had been depressed in the past, but somehow she’d managed to work through it. This time it wasn’t that easy.

As we talked, I realised that Mary didn’t have classic depression; what she had was depression caused by adrenal exhaustion. Let me back up a bit.

The adrenals are little glands, which basically behave as if they are the body’s internal battery. When Mary had been depressed in the past, she was able to draw on this battery to find the will to get well again.

She saw a therapist and dug deep down to get her life back on track.

But after having three children in the space of seven years, her reserves were low. All the children had been breastfed, which had depleted her nutrient stores further, and she hadn’t had the time to replenish herself.

Add to that the lack of sleep that three children and an active social life bring, and it’s surprising that she’d kept going for so long.

This is why Mary wasn’t just tired; she was suffering from chronic fatigue. In short, she was burnt-out – and that’s why she no longer had any lust for life.

Chronic fatigue is a very difficult condition to treat. Following on from the battery analogy, you know how hard it is to jump-start a dead battery. In a car or in your remote control, batteries can just be changed. Not so for the body. So what did we do?

When we’re jump-starting things in the body, we need to make sure that the food that is eaten is cooked.

In chronic fatigue, the body is already in a debilitated state, so it wants food that is essentially pre-digested (so no salads).

For this reason, bone broths/soups with warming vegetables (pumpkin, onion, garlic, ginger) are good. Small, regular meals are also required, since larger ones put tremendous strain on the body, discouraging healing.

I also asked Mary to get her husband to start pitching in at night for the kids. Even if she got a few days of uninterrupted sleep, that would really help her recovery.