Video: What is Chronic Fatigue?

Hi, Dr. Minkoff here.

Today I want to talk to you about chronic fatigue or chronic fatigue syndrome and how that’s different from just being tired or overworked or temporarily exhausted.

Chronic fatigue is a long-lasting overwhelming feeling of tiredness that just doesn’t go away with a good night’s sleep. And it really rolls over and can affect the rest of your daily life.

Unlike regular tiredness, which is usually relieved by sleep or rest, this can persist for months or even years.

So, the symptoms that someone would have are just feeling constantly tired or drained even if you did get some sleep.

It’s that heavy feeling of your body just doesn’t want to move. It doesn’t want to go.

It can affect your brain like you can’t concentrate. You might have trouble even getting through a TV show or trying to read might be impossible or be able to focus on a problem like add three numbers up, something that you could normally do and you can’t do it.

Sleep doesn’t really get you better. Often times people get what are called fibromyalgia symptoms. They might have muscle pain or aches or joint pain all over the body.

You could have headaches. You could have visual disturbances.

Some people get like a constant sore throat or feeling like the lymph glands in their neck are like swollen or tender. Other people may feel like vertigo or dizziness or light headedness and they might be unsteady.

It really affects the whole body.

And then of course mental symptoms, anxiety, irritability, depression, like leave me alone. Just let me hide. Let me just get away from everything because I just don’t feel well.

Chronic fatigue is different from just regular tiredness. You know, tired can come and go. You had a hard week. You had a hard month, but you come back. But chronic fatigue can last for long periods, six months, a year. And resting doesn’t really help.

Often times people don’t sleep well so rest doesn’t even make it better. It can make daily tasks difficult and usually a person just knows that they’re not functioning right.

So chronic fatigue often has no real clear cause. Like the person doesn’t understand why aren’t I recovering or why don’t I feel better? Why is this persisting? Like what’s wrong with me?

And part of what we do to help people with chronic fatigue is figure out what is the underlying factor. Why isn’t their body working? Why can’t their body make energy?

Now, sometimes it’s hormonal. Big one is thyroid. So, your thyroid gland’s purpose is to be able to run the energy levels in your body. And if you’re not making enough thyroid hormone, you can be fatigued. Your body can feel cold. You’ll have lack of energy.

Sometimes people have chronic low-grade infections like Epstein bar or long COVID or Lyme disease.

Sometimes they have an autoimmune condition where the body cells themselves are being attacked by the immune system and they can’t function right.

Sometimes people have sleep disorders. They have sleep apnea. You know, they don’t even know it. They’re not actually getting deep REM sleep and they’re waking up all the time. They may not even notice this and that means that they’re in sort of a fight-or-flight stress response all night long and they don’t get the rest that they need.

Sometimes nutritional deficiencies like not enough iron, low B12, they might have what we call a methylation defect where they’re not able to process their food to make the correct nutrients.

Sometimes people have a toxic overload. You know, they’ve got mercury or arsenic or chemicals or pesticides and that can poison the cells to where they can’t make energy. These toxic residues accumulate in the body and then the body can’t function. It can’t detoxify. It can’t do its normal thing. The liver and kidney and other organs which are responsible to eliminate these harmful substances just can’t do it. If a person has other overloads from processed foods or food additives or sometimes it’s even medical drugs where these things poison cells that can also cause problems.

So pesticides, heavy metals, air pollution, personal care products, people can absorb these things and their body just doesn’t function right. So when the body reaches a point of toxic overload combined with nutritional deficiency, it can result in these symptoms of chronic fatigue, brain fog, digestive issues, headaches, even chronic illness.

So when we see a patient like this, what we have to do is figure out what of these various things are the factors that are causing the body to not function properly. Look at hormone levels, toxin levels, nutrient levels, dental health. And when we do that, we can find out what are the things that are there that are causing the person to have the symptoms.

In all the people that we see, there was a prior time before they got sick that they were fine. So they have a body that if it was okay would be okay. Then something happened or some things happened that caused it to be in the state it’s in.

And those things are discoverable.

The answer is never some kind of prescription drugs. Like there is an epidemic now of doctors giving people amphetamines. Okay. Well, you’re tired. Well, just take Adderall. You know, it’s an amphetamine. It causes the same brain response as cocaine. These are poisonous. They’re toxic. It’s never the solution.

If you’re drinking 20 cups of coffee a day, it’s not a solution. What’s wrong with you isn’t a deficiency of stimulants. There’s a deficiency of cellular energy.

At LifeWorks, our approach is really simple. We find out what is the problem with creating cellular energy.

What is the root causes, the toxicities, the hormone deficiencies, the viruses, the parasites, these things are preventing the body from functioning properly and causing this cascade of health problems.

Through our methodology, we are able to detoxify the body, resupply the nutrients that it’s missing, get the cells to then produce energy the way they did before, and restore your health and therapies with IV nutrition, ozone, hyperbaric oxygen, correct detoxification we can clear out the harmful substances, replenish your body with the right nutrients, rebuild it, and you will function well.

You will regain your energy and your health.

So, our goal is to do this to get you repaired and restored so that you have good health that will be long-lasting and you can enjoy your life and move forward without some chronic illness like fatigue with what we know and what we see with patients.

When you come in here with a diagnosis of chronic fatigue, we can sort through the causes of it, handle them, your cells will restore, your vitality and health will restore, and you will feel good, and you will know it.

And my exit point for every patient that comes in here is that I just tell them what I told you. Now, a person might come in with a symptom score. It’s called a medical symptom questionnaire. And at every visit, a patient fills this out. And so, you might come in with a symptom score of 80 or 100 or 150. When that symptom score goes away, you will feel good and you will actually come in here and you will tell me, “I am good now. I’m well. My symptoms are gone and I’m ready to go after my life again. And thank you for helping me.”

That’s what I want for you.