Chapter 9
How Did I Get This Way?

The purpose of this section is to develop a timeline or sequence of events that will reflect how your health may have changed with time, either improving or getting worse. This will help you see with more clarity what has affected your health and which associated events may have led to further problems that have gone unrecognized. Adrenal fatigue reflects the adrenals’ inability to respond to stress, but remember that the sources of stress are additive and cumulative over time. Adrenal fatigue is usually preceded and aggravated by multiple events. It is very therapeutic to see how seemingly unrelated events combined to undermine your health.

Completing the “Health History Timeline” is like being a detective in a “who-done-it” mystery. In this case, the crime is the decline in your adrenal health and you are both the star detective and the victim (and sometimes the culprit as well). Your objective is to assemble as much information as possible regarding the events leading up to the crime. The timeline is a very useful tool for uncovering previously unrecognized sources of adrenal fatigue. Recording the events that preceded the onset of your fatigue and putting them in a meaningful, sequential order will help you recognize the contributing factors. The categories listed below are only guidelines for organizing this information. If you think there are other categories or incidents, list them as well. It will be easier to see the patterns of changes in your health with brief entries placed at their appropriate times, even if you want to write pages about an incident, be brief. You are now ready to complete the “Health History Timeline.”

Health History Timeline

To complete the “Health History Timeline”, review again the date you gave as the last time you felt well. Then start 2 years before this date and list the events as requested in the section below.

When completing this section, just recall the information to the best of your ability. Do not try to associate it with any signs or symptoms of the previous questionnaire. Simply enter it on the lines provided. If you need more space to complete any section, use a separate piece of paper. Remember, you are the most authoritative source of information about you, so now is your chance to be an expert on a subject of great interest and importance to you, You!

In the following section, list and date all the accidents, illnesses, emotional traumas, lifestyle changes, etc. that happened within the two years preceding the decline in your health. Even if you do not see any connection between these events and the symptoms you are experiencing now, write them down. There may also be long term, ongoing factors that have not changed. For example, you may have had a poor diet and little exercise for years before an illness or other specific event precipitated your adrenal fatigue. Write these down because, even though they did not begin within the two-year time frame, they were ongoing during that time. Poor dental work can also lead to hypoadrenia. If you have had root canals, amalgam fillings, gum infections, abscesses, teeth pulled or other dental work after which you noticed your health sliding (within 6-12 months), or if there were complications from dental work that seem to persist, it is important to list these. The mouth is an extremely important, but often unrecognized, factor in your overall health. In some cases it has been the pivotal key to health. The timeline can provide surprising information to help you recover. Like many things, the more you put into it, the more benefit you will receive.

Now that you have completed the “Health History Timeline”, review the entire list and number the events sequentially by date. For example, if your accident happened in June of 1996, your surgery in August of 1996, you lost your job in February of 1997, and had a root canal in April of 1997, number them 1-4 in the order in which they occurred. Then go back and circle any events that stick out in your mind. These would be events after which you seemed to feel particularly tired or required an extended period of time to recuperate. The first events after which these symptoms occurred are likely to be the onset of your adrenal fatigue. The events before it probably helped precipitate it and the events afterward helped intensify it. Having the knowledge of how your adrenal fatigue began is often valuable in your treatment plan and is psychologically very gratifying. It takes away the impression that you were walking along one day and adrenal fatigue fell out of the sky and hit you. Instead it allows you to see that your adrenal fatigue had an origin and that you can identify the probable source. This immediately places you in a more powerful position.

Adrenal fatigue often comes in stages and its onset can only really be seen when you review the series of seemingly unrelated events leading up to the fatigue. Look and see if there is a pattern to the events that preceded your adrenal fatigue. If so, recall in detail how you felt after each of the events and make a few notes concerning your recollection of the times after those events. If it was after an accident, injury, surgery, or chemical poisoning that your energy became especially low or you developed many of the symptoms of adrenal fatigue (see questionnaire), you may never have recovered completely from that experience. In that case you may need to do further healing related to that event to completely recover from your adrenal fatigue. If so, be sure to look at the chapter titled “Trouble-shooting.”

The next chapter explains how to do several different types of self-tests you can do yourself to further determine if your adrenal glands are underfunctioning.