This is Dr. Lam. In the context of holistic healing, the body type, also known as the biological constitution, refers to the inner make up of our body and the body’s ability to deal with stress. This is not something that can be detected by any laboratory test, but only be detailed history, as well as how a person’s been reacting all their life to different stresses, including infections, as well as trauma. As you can see from this diagram here, most of us fall into the normal category, but 2% of the people are very strong constitution, and they don’t seem to get sick or have a Adrenal Fatigue even under a lot of stress. On the other hand, those who are very weak, the last 2%, seem to have a problem even with a minor, minor small amount of stress. There’s little question that our body type, which is something that we are born with, that we inherent from our parents, has a big part to play in terms of adrenal function. Now, I want you to look at this diagram carefully. As we plot adrenal function on weakness level against the staging, as you can see here, on top of the Y axis, there’s no fatigue, but while here, it’ll be a bedridden state. Now there’s two lines here, this line’s called “Adrenal Symptoms Threshold,” above this line, there’s no symptoms and below this line, in the gray zone, you start to have increasing severity and symptoms, until you come to this level here, which is called, “Hormonal Level Required for Basic Adrenal Function,” if you go below this level, the person actually is bedridden. As you can see, during stage 1 Adrenal Fatigue, there’s no outward signs, but in stage 2, you start to have a little bit of fatigue, very mild, and as you go to stage 3, it can go from mild to moderate and peak up to 3C, that’s when the moderate to severe sets in, and from 3C, it really is a big drop as you go to 3D, when the person is usually bedridden, before it gets to stage 4, which is very, very severe. This diagram is very important because it shows us how adrenal exhaustion recovery pattern are based on the body constitution. If you look at this diagram here, if a person goes to stage 3C Adrenal Fatigue, those with strong constitution, you will see here, has ability to go above the symptoms threshold so they become asymptomatic and it can be a long time before the age start catching up and then eventually they do get worse if there’s no improvement in terms of the healing. On the other extreme, those with very weak constitution, if they do get Adrenal Fatigue into stage 3C, they seldom recover. In fact, they go into what we call rolling crashes, very traumatic, a very troubling time and eventually go into stage 3D, near fatal, and beyond. The person who is normal within the population group, normally can recover slowly over time and then they come up to a certain point and at this point, usually still symptomatic, but it’s not as bad as before. However, over time, with a stressor that comes on, it could be the death of a loved one, or a car accident, they crash. Each time they crash, then the recovery is slightly better but not up to the previous level. Eventually they keep crashing and each crash is more and more severe and eventually they decompensate. What is interesting to note is that if the person use excessive amount of natural stimulatory compounds to affect the recovery, then the curve looks a little different. Natural compounds such as certain herbs and glandulars can facilitate adrenal recovery pretty good in stage 1 and stage 2, but when you get to stage 3 and beyond, some of these compounds must be used with great care because they can be quite stimulatory. The way they work is that they stimulate the body in that stage to get more energy. As you can see here, if a person used excessive amount of natural stimulatory compound—not normal amount, excessive amount—then the recovery would first appear to be quite good. In fact, the person can reach the point they’re above the adrenal systems threshold, so the person may think that they are doing very well. This is usually short lived because this energy cannot be maintained and when you hit the maximum stimulatory level and with a stressor that comes on, there’s going to be a crash. After the first crash they may be a slight recovery, but then there’s not very significant, and then it’s followed by another crash, and more and more crashes, sometimes you cannot even recover and they eventually goes into further and further weakening of adrenal state and increasing fatigue. Now, if we superimpose the body’s constitutional state, along with the people who are using excessive amount of natural compounds, you can see this black line here represent a normal person using excessive amount of stimulatory compounds that we talked about. If the person is a strong constitution, then the recovery can be very, very quick and traumatic and it can be sustained for much longer time, but eventually it will always crash down, because with age and if nothing else, it’s done to help the adrenal recover. Now, what is worse is the people who are very, very weak in constitution and at the same time they use excessive natural compound. These people, if they crash into Adrenal Fatigue stage 3C and beyond, they never really get a chance to recover significantly. Instead, the recovery is very weak and is followed by multiple setbacks and paradoxical reactions and eventually they go into a near fatal stage relatively quickly. Another scenario that we should look at is the use of prescription medication to effect Adrenal Fatigue by stimulating the body. Now, if a person is prescribed what is thyroid hormones or other steroidal, as well as non-steroidal anabolic-type hormones to generate the body’s energy for the recovery purposes, if this is done, then what you would find is that the recovery is usually quite good and steady, except that when you reach a certain level of dosage, then the body either crashes or fails to improve. At this time, usually the practitioner will give more and increase the dose of the compound. This can go on for a few steps and can go on for months or sometimes years until the person keep wanting to have more and more medication and then the medication seem to work. Especially in the beginning and the middle of the curve, you will see that many times the person will say, “Well, I’m doing better now and I’m totally asymptomatic.” The practitioner is encouraged because the more medication they prescribe, the better the person feel. The only problem is over time you keep needing more and more medication until you reach the upper doses that you cannot go any more. This is particularly true of thyroid medication where many are being stimulated so much that they’re being jittery on one hand and they’re tired on the other hand. So when they reach what we call the maximum stimulatory level, where further medication cannot be prescribed, then they kind of plateau at that level, and when there’s a stressor that comes on, either let’s say a death of a loved one or a car accident, then they have major crashes coming down back into stage 3 and the recovery is very, very poor and they just keep crashing and eventually they go into near failure. As you can see, if you have aggressive use of prescription medication and you have a strong body constitution, you will simply do better and you buy a little bit more time. However, the worse is that if you have a very weak constitution and you’re also on top of that using prescription medication excessively, then you really have a tough time because your recovery is very, very weak to start off with and not even noticeable and then you’re followed by major crashes along the way, as you can see here. The optimum recovery program, using optimum gentle nutrients can often bypass all of the undesirable patterns, regardless of the constitution, by using gentle compounds, the body is given the natural tools it needs to heal itself. The crash intensity is softer and it’s reduced significantly and there’s a soft landing On top of that, the minor unpleasantness of symptoms are maybe there, but it is not very traumatic. This is followed by a rhythmic recovery pattern back into the asymptomatic zone as you can see here in this diagram, and the person actually can use this opportunity to get stronger, for a full and complete recovery. As you can see here, even the people with very weak constitution, if it is properly conducted in terms of the recovery program, they will eventually get better and be symptom free. Those with strong constitution will even do tremendously better. In summary, you can see here how we look at the six or seven graphs. The optimum recovery program is here and you want to have this type of curve, where you have a soft landing, and fast and furious recovery. What you don’t want to do is to have this curve, which is the worst, this is when you have very, very weak constitution. Now, those people that have weak constitution and use extensive stimulatory compounds, whether it is natural or by drugs, also do not fair as well as if you just go through the normal progression. So what is important to know here, is that if you don’t know what you’re doing, if you don’t have a good recovery program, try not to use stimulatory compound, natural or otherwise, because that can actually make things worse, worse than the natural progression itself. I hope you can see how important finding out your constitution is and you can do this by talking to your practitioner. If they are good, they will take a detailed history and from there will tell you your constitution. Based on that, a proper program is key. This article is free and can be read in its entirety at www.DrLam.com. You can write to me as well and if you need personalized attention, you can call my office.