 Hi, I'm Rhonda with Professional Supplement Center, and I'm sitting here with Mike Paz, pharmacist, and we're discussing a few of the topics that some of our customers and patients are concerned with. We're going to start with adrenal fatigue, if that's okay with you. We would love to talk about it. Okay. So how do you know if you're in adrenal fatigue? What are the symptoms, and what can I take to reduce those symptoms? Well, you really don't know whether you have adrenal fatigue or not. Probably the best thing is to do testing on it, and basically the easiest way is saliva. All right? But some of the symptoms that you may very well notice might be you can't wake up in the morning. You're tired all day long. The only thing that gives you a boost is sugar or salt. Right? When you go to bed at night, you are totally exhausted. Even if you had a good night's sleep, you are still exhausted when you wake up the next morning. That is just one set of symptoms for adrenal fatigue. It may very well be that you wake up fine in the morning, you actually do fine all day long, and at night you can't sleep. Why? Because your stress levels are high. So you're saying that adrenal fatigue is symptoms, not a condition or a diagnosis? It is not a diagnosis. There isn't no such a thing as a diagnosis for adrenal fatigue, but it is a real condition and a real concern for people. Because when you have adrenal fatigue or your cortisol levels are not up to snuff or your adrenal glands are not working appropriately, all of your hormones don't work appropriately. And what would you suggest someone do when they first start to exhibit some of these symptoms? Well, the first thing is I certainly would go to your doctor and have it checked out to make sure you're not on the extreme edge of a diagnosis. And then if you are not, and if you are within those bounds, if you will, of adrenal fatigue, I then would probably have a saliva test, and that saliva test will give you an adrenal stress index. And that will tell you where your cortisol levels are all day long, and that's four times during the day. First thing in the morning, at noon, about 5 p.m. and also when you're getting into bed in the evening. The test is sent away, and usually between 10 to 14 days, results are gotten back. And then you can determine what you want to do about it. What about vegetarians? I know that a lot of the adrenal supplements have bovine in them. Is there things that vegetarians can use? Yes, but be aware they certainly can't have anything with bovine or beef, right? So what they probably will use, they'll probably use adaptogens, and adaptogens allow the body to adapt to stress. Be aware, as I told you before, that when you have adrenal stress, when your cortisol levels are either high or low or not functioning appropriately, that means your adrenals are not functioning appropriately. There are a number of things one can take in order to bring those adrenals back into normal working order. Things like vitamin C, magnesium, zinc, the adaptogens, these are all things that can be used to help to heal, to make the adrenals well again. And by the way, it takes quite a while in order for this to occur. It's a way between six months to two years for your adrenals to come back to some semblance of normalcy. So you certainly have to give it a little bit of time. You certainly do have to give it time, and certainly you want to keep in touch with your physician, very, very, very important, right? You want to make sure you take those supplements we discussed so that you can get your adrenals back on track. Okay. And by the way, some people don't even know what the adrenals are, but adrenals basically are two kidney shaped, not kidney shaped, but butterfly shaped organs directly on above the kidney. Add renal. Renal is kidney, add right above the renal, it sits right on the kidney, and they're about that big. Be aware that, you know, we talk about stress management, and that's extremely important, and stress management basically is getting your adrenals under control, but also be aware that it also has far reaching consequences, a good example is, when one starts to gain weight around the middle, what is it caused by? Well, probably it's caused by stress, and once we get that stress under control, many times the weight goes away, it disappears.