My CFS experience: anyone with similar symptoms?

I take the Baschetti powder.  As far as effectiveness, it's certainly not as potent as Cortef, and I'm not hugely fond of it, but if you didn't notice any effect you might not have taken enough.  If you take enough, you should be able to notice something.  Even if the adrenals aren't your problem, you should be able to notice the effects of too much adrenal hormone (and these effects are not pleasant), because licorice at a high enough dose has definite physiological effects.

Still, I don't think that licorice is necessarily the most important supplement, and I don't think that supplements are the most important part of the healing process.  For many years after becoming sick I continued bad habits that I had developed when I was healthy, such as a poor sleep schedule, drinking, eating junk food, and working too many hours in stressful situations.  For me, removing certain foods such as wheat and milk has also been important, as well as lowering my carb intake in general.  If adrenal fatigue is your problem, half of the solution is removing whatever overworked your body in the first place (and the definition of "overwork" will vary widely depending on the innate strength of your glands).  The supplements are useful to speed the process up, but I don't think they are powerful enough to do the job on their own.

The exception is Cortef, which is by far the most potent pill in my treasure chest.  I mentioned in my other post that I haven't been taking it lately because of concerns about side effects.  Well, I may start it up again at very low doses (say 10 mg a day) just for the sake of my well-being now.  I still have to watch what I eat to avoid overstressing my digestion, but the support provided by Cortef is obvious and immediate.  Theoretically, licorice should provide the same support, but in my experience it has not been quite as effective (though I can tell it works).   

I had a similar experience with coffee in the semester preceding my crash.  My health had been declining (fatigue, breathing, sinuses, and digestion), but I could still get by and I felt much better when I drank coffee.  My consumption increased to six or seven cups a day, and I was also drinking alcohol fairly regularly, too--I kept a bottle of whiskey in my dorm room all the time.  Alcohol also increases cortisol levels, and it made me feel healthy again, though of course on a very temporary basis.  Only recently have I entirely given up alcohol.  I drank on St. Patrick's day after a couple months of abstention, but knew the next morning that I was just setting back my healing process.  This is a great shame, because I love beer (though I became a very moderate drinker after the age of 22), but when I understood the effect of alcohol on the adrenals I knew I had to give it up entirely until I make a complete recovery.    

Have you ever tried digestive enzymes?  I have a little, but wasn't too impressed with them, besides feeling that they were sort of a fad.  I've just started thinking more about them, though, not as a final solution, but as a way to reduce digestive stress and speed the healing process.  I've been looking at a brand called Enzymedica, because their products seem more potent than others, but I can't find any non-sales related information on the web.  Do you know anything about their stuff?

By the way, I should add how important I'm discovering bedtime to be for my health.  On my own, I will not usually go to bed until 2-3 am, and I will then sleep late and nap during the day.  But I know I function better if I can get to bed early (ideally by 10 but realistically pre-midnight).  This is the hardest lifestyle change for me, but I suspect one of the most important.  I few years back I was feeling much better than usual and I think it was because of an early bedtime connected with an exercise regime that made sure I was ready to sleep by 10 each night.

After a little bit of research, I tried the enzymes.  It's only been a couple of days, but already I'm feeling better than normal.  I worked out hard this morning, which would usually have made me want to go home and take a nap, but I never had that desire.  Of course, I also took 10mg of cortisol this morning, which must have had an effect, too.  The reason I give some credit to the enzymes is because I have purposely been eating foods that gave me problems even after I started taking cortisol (mainly starches), and they seem to be okay now.  By the way, stomach acid will only destroy certain enzymes, such as the animal-based enzymes sold as pancreatin.  Different enzymes work at different pH levels, temperatures, etc. 

If bad digestion doesn't affect your fatigue, then there's no reason to try enzymes.  But if you have bad digestion (and any kind of food intolerance suggests this), then I can't see how energy levels wouldn't be affected.  By the way, I'm certainly not trying to pressure you to try them.  It's just that your history sounds similar to mine, and I think that I am finally making progress after being sick (and reading about being sick) for more years than I would want anyone else to be.      

Looking back i have a suspicion my illness may have been caused by an undetected gluten allergy which damaged my gut resulting in malabsorption of vitamins/minerals etc resulting in my illness. I did not start to recover at all until i strictly adherred to a gluten free diet (and even then recovery was very slow indeed). I also supplemented with vits/mins especially magnesium and omega 3s.

If you suspect wheat etc is causing you a problem it might be worth a shot - hoever, believe me any halfhearted attempt will not work..

Good Luck, Paul