If you’ve ever been told you have adrenal fatigue, you’re not alone.

Many of my clients come to me saying they’ve been diagnosed with it, usually after months (or years) of unexplained fatigue, brain fog, dizziness, or that infamous “tired but wired” feeling. Maybe a practitioner recommended adaptogens, or a cortisol test showed low levels… and suddenly, your symptoms got lumped under the label “your adrenals are just tired.”

But here’s the truth:

Your adrenals are not tired.

And adrenal fatigue?
It’s not even a medically recognized condition.

Then why do I feel like this?

What you’re experiencing is real—but the explanation you’ve been given is outdated.

The term “adrenal fatigue” tries to simplify something that is actually very complex: a web of communication between your brain, hormones, stress response, and environment. That system is known as the HPA axis (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis). It’s how your body determines how much cortisol (your main stress hormone) to release—when to release it—and when to pull back.

The problem isn’t that your adrenals are too tired to work.
The problem is that the whole system is dysregulated.

Sometimes, cortisol is low.
Other times, it’s high—but showing up at the wrong time (like spiking at night instead of the morning).
And often, labs are dismissed as “normal,” even when your body is begging for help.

It’s not your fault. The testing is flawed.

Most cortisol testing uses just one blood draw. But cortisol naturally rises and falls across the day, influenced by everything from your light exposure to your meal timing. A single reading doesn’t show the full picture—and yet that’s how most people get diagnosed with adrenal fatigue.

Here’s what I’ve learned after years of working with chronically fatigued clients:

• Many people with “adrenal fatigue” don’t actually have low cortisol.

• Others do—but for very different reasons than just “chronic stress.”

• And some are dealing with circadian dysfunction, not cortisol problems at all.

So what’s really going on?

In the full Beyond Adrenal Fatigue masterclass, I walk you through:

• The real physiology of cortisol (and how your brain runs the show)

• How to test cortisol properly—using blood work and the DUTCH test

• How to tell the difference between true low cortisol and a reversed cortisol curve

• What lab patterns reveal about your unique root causes: stealth infections, nutrient gaps, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and more

• Why adrenal supplements often fail, and what to do instead

And if you're wondering whether any of this applies to you…
It probably does, especially if you've been feeling:

• Tired in the morning but wired at night

• Unable to fast or tolerate stress

• Craving salt or crashing after meals

• Stuck in healing despite taking “all the right supplements”

🧠 Want to go deeper?

If this post resonates with you, I highly recommend watching the full 55-minute Beyond Adrenal Fatigue masterclass. It includes a bonus PDF on science-backed supplements for stress recovery, plus lifetime access to the recording and materials.

👉 Watch the Masterclass Here ($49)

You’ll walk away knowing what’s actually driving your exhaustion—and how to start fixing it with real clarity.

Let’s stop guessing. Let’s go beyond burnout.
Your energy is not gone—it just needs the right message to come back online.