dizziness when exercising?

Recently I've been experiencing dizziness whenever I exercise. I've been a part of a football (soccer) team for the past 5 years playing every sunday. However, at the start of this season I got very dizzy, I put it down to being unfit and thought I'd get back to normal once fitness was up. Now, about 2 months into the season I am still getting it.

Strangely enough, another person on my team complains of dizziness and lightheadedness when exercising and had a seizure one training session and had to get ambulanced to hospital, it was his first fit and nothing like that had happened previously.

In conversation today another friend of mine had got back from having a blood test with identical symptoms, minus the seizure.

What is this? Are they all coincidence or is there something wrong?

Have you asked your doctor? What did they say about it?

My doctor doesn't say much about anything. Just said not to try as hard.

My friend, as he had the seizure got taken a bit more seriously and had scans, which come back friday, but earlier scans showed nothing wrong.

Hmm, well that doesn't sound useful.

What's different in your habits now versus when you didn't get dizzy? Has your diet changed? Any new medications? New supplements?

Has the intensity of practice changed? Are you working a lot harder, more often, etc.?

Lots of factors here.

My diet doesn't have any high sugar cereals, fizzy drinks, generally much better.

No new medications, no new supplements.

I've been taking cold showers, surely that couldnt be it? My adrenals feel like they have finally given up and I need to start supplementing them soon.

Not really working any differently.

Cold showers... not sure. Best way to eliminate it: stop taking cold showers for a week and see if you still get dizzy.

What time are your practices? What are you eating before them?

How hard are you working out when you get dizzy? Is it during extreme exertion?

Are you drinking a lot of water during practice?

tooyoung,

When I train overly hard at the gym and change things up a lot I sometimes get something a trainer told me was called "sugar depletion" in my muscles.

My legs would turn to rubber, I'd get dizzy and nauseous and have to sit down so not to fall down.

This doesn't happen often to me. Only when I really change my routine and push myself past whatever my current limits are. It sounds like your practices are pretty intense. You could just be pushing past whatever the limit is your body currently has for this kind of activity. In my case, it usually goes away after the intense workout and doesn't happen again until I have a long-ish layoff or try to shake things up with more sprinting or heavier compound lifts.

From my perspective, it's totally normal when it happens to me.

tooyoung - I used to have the same exact thing, which was also when my adrenal fatigue was at its worst. I don't think it's a coincidence. I've improved my adrenals by fixing my diet, improving my sleep, and I also took Standard Process Drenamin for a couple months. Also, by cleaning up my diet and intermittent fasting, my hypoglycemia has gone away about 90%, which has been huge. It sounds like you need to fix the adrenals.

I'd be quicker to attribute it to what hadrion is saying. The idea behind some of my questions is to sort out possible causes.

Thanks for all the replies.

I have attributed this to adrenals, it has started happening even when not exercising, I always eat and drink well before exercise so didn't think it was to do with that.



thissucks - I messaged you the other day about hydrocortisone, if you've got a minute would you mind replying to me? Thanks.

I heard drenamin isnt as highly concentrated as other adrenal glands, would just an adrenal glandular from iherb work as well?

You say you improved your sleep, how did you improve it? Sleep is a problem i'm having, I always take ages to get to sleep and wake up every morning guaranteed to be unrefreshed.

Whenever I don't eat for a couple of hours I feel horrible, how long do you fast for? Do you follow the warrior diet?


Also, in regards to glandular supplements, I noticed a lot of sources are from bovine. Is "mad cow diease" a real worry? Should I try find a non bovine adrenal glandular?

I wouldn't be so quick to say it's the "adrenals," which sounds more like a scapegoat for other possible issues, given the vagueness of the symptoms of adrenal vatigue.

However, if you think you can correct this (and, subsequently, rule it out as a cause) easily, then that's your prerogative.

I mentioned my symptoms long ago, including anxiety in a thread and CS suggested it might be adrenal fatigue. If it's not I don't really know what else it could be.

tooyoung wrote:I mentioned my symptoms long ago, including anxiety in a thread and CS suggested it might be adrenal fatigue. If it's not I don't really know what else it could be.

Since I've had many of the same symptoms and was diagnosed with adrenal fatigue by Dr. Crisler, I strongly suspect that is the problem in your case.

I don't suggest hydrocortisone, which is like a bandaid. You need to fix your body.

First of all, I've completely cleaned up my diet, and simplified to a few bland foods. Sometimes I cheat, but I go long periods eating nothing but plain meat, fish, eggs, veggies, and occasionally rice or fruit. I usually start off with a 24 hour fast to clear my system. I like fasting. I have been hypoglycemic, but that has faded now. I find my blood sugar goes haywire when I start eating poorly and spiking it. With fasting, my blood sugar stabilizes and I feel pretty decent, usually just a little weak by the end, but no blood sugar problems.

After fasting while drinking lots of water, I eat healthy for as long as I can go without cheating - haha. Usually a week or two. I'm trying to get up to a month or beyond. Anyway, this has paid dividends. No more crap food and no spiking my blood sugar = improvement. Sometimes I only eat once a day (aka Warrior diet), sometimes I will eat two. Rarely three meals a day. Again, helps my blood sugar.

For sleep, I used to hit the snooze 10 times before waking up. Now I try to go to bed early, after relaxing and staying off the computer beforehand. I also wake up the first time the alarm goes off. My sleep habits are just generally more healthy. Sleep is still bad, but improving.

I've also addressed the thyroid with iodine/selenium/vitamin C.

All these things have been helping, and the improvement is tangible. I need to just keep working at it and I know will defeat the hell of adrenal fatigue that I have been experiencing for the last 2-3 years!

I suggest you try the same things tooyoung. Like I said in the PM, I believe that if you fix your body, you will fix also fix your adrenal fatigue. I don't think the glandulars were necessary, but they might've helped in the beginning. Anyway, just start living HEALTHY!

Good luck!

thissucks - Thanks a lot for that post. I realise I really need to sort my diet out. Do/did you not take any supps for adrenals now?

Do you have any staple diets you eat daily? Such as rice and fish? Do you eat brown rice especially? Any nuts or seeds?

Whats your general hair loss regimen like?

tooyoung wrote:thissucks - Thanks a lot for that post. I realise I really need to sort my diet out. Do/did you not take any supps for adrenals now?

Do you have any staple diets you eat daily? Such as rice and fish? Do you eat brown rice especially? Any nuts or seeds?

Whats your general hair loss regimen like?

tooyoung- Yes diet was by far the biggest factor for me. Hopefully it is your problem also. I've been struggling with blood sugar and digestion problems, food allergies, and who knows what else. I used to eat sugary cereal 1-3 times a day. Then I went to the allergist and found I actually had a mild milk allergy! So I was feeding myself poison (sugar, GMO corn, etc.) and allergy-trigger foods at the same time! Awesome, huh?

My diet is super restricted for safety. I have an itchy scalp too that is often triggered by foods. I gave up trying trial and error after a while and just narrowed it down to a few foods. My typical meal is a couple of "organic" hamburgers with some mixed veggies and either eggs or some type of carb. I used to eat only eggs (and veggies) with it, but I needed a bit more variety. Now if I have eggs for a day or two, I usually make brown rice or quinoa the next (I think those are the safest grains, gluten free). Occasionally I'll have chicken or fish instead of the beef. I try to avoid fruit because of the sugar but I'll occasionally have a piece. I think melon and berries are pretty good in terms of sugar content.

That's it. Nothing else added. Obviously it's a bit bland and gets a little bit old after a while, but it's safe and I've gotten good results. And it still tastes like good food, too. You get used to it.

I avoid nuts and seeds because that's just another variable. They might work for you however. I would definitely avoid peanuts, which aren't even nuts to begin with.

And that is my hair loss regimen! I used to take propecia and rogaine which was pure poison and messed me up majorly to begin with. I also take Vitamin D. I've done the top 6 before but I can't afford it. I don't take any other adrenal supps anymore. The Drenamin I phased out after 2 months, it probably helped but I don't think it was a necessary component. You could give it a shot.

Hope you get this sorted out!

Whenever I'd get dizziness in the past, I'd associate it with not consuming enough quality calories prior to the exercise. I'd say that this would be more common for folks on sports teams with earlier practices, as coaches tend to push them too hard given the time of day and "fuel" that they currently have in their "tanks". Hadrion pointed out sugar depletion--very good chance of that as well.

Thanks a lot thissucks, it has really helped me out. I'm going to follow a diet almost identical to that for a few weeks and see how things go with inflammation and decide from there.


nidhogge - What kind of quality calories do you now eat before you exercise?

Dont listen to the paleo nazi's on this forum. If you're an athlete you need a shit ton of carbs for intense exercise. Load up on sweet potatos, potatos, bananas, brown rice before exercise. After the workout take a high carb drink containing maltodextrin, fructose, dextrose.


Also make sure you are addressing all of the things CS suggests, iodine, metals, etc

At some point, we have seen not just carbohydrates demonized, but fats, sugars and proteins. Meanwhile the problem more than likely revolves around the quality of our food. The solution is simpler than these get-rich quick diet gurus want us to believe.

Obviously we are surrounded daily by inexpensive refined carbs. Many people cannot resist them. Meanwhile too many subsist on carbs who are sedentary, when we actually don't get enough quality proteins and fats. The truth is that it's hard to get lean on carbs vs. proteins. Moreover, when people do obtain quality proteins in their diets, there is still a chance for poor digestion, more so as we age. There isn't one diet that fits everyone.

Anyhow, my recommendation to the OP is increase vascular strength and blood flow. For starters: Vitamin C, lysine, proline, nattokinase, vitamin D3 and K2, magnesium, omega 3 and MCT oil.