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“Adrenal fatigue” is not a thing

 •  • by Paul Ingraham
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Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

Adrenal fatigue was invented by a chiro so he could sell a cure. It is supposedly caused by chronic stress and “burnout” of the adrenal glands, and it’s a common bogus explanation (see Cadegiani et al) for fibromyalgia and chronic widespread pain. At best, that’s a simplistic guess; at worst, it’s a great way to peddle false hope to fibromyalgia patients.