Fatigue: The Top Underlying Causes and How to Prevent it

Think about how you feel during a typical day of being out-and-about with friends or how you feel while you’re at work.  How do you feel when you wake up in the morning? Do you feel like you need ten cups of coffee to keep yourself energized? If you were to measure your energy level on a scale of 1-10 (1 meaning that you feel so tired that you can’t even function), how would you rank yourself?

If you rank yourself anywhere from seven or lower, drink at least three cups of coffee a day, feel as if you have to drag yourself out of bed, and live your daily life as if you’re going through the motions, then it’s likely that you are fatigued.

Fatigue is often overlooked and confused for being tired, and most people ignore it, however there is a difference between feeling tired every now and then, and feeling constant weakness every single day of your life. If you can relate to the latter, it’s possible that you could be suffering from fatigue or chronic fatigue, and you may not even be aware of it.

So what causes someone’s energy to significantly decrease? Well, there are multiple factors that could play a role into someone’s fatigue, and it’s important to pay close attention to them. So that you can be more aware, here are the top underlying causes of fatigue. 

Lifestyle

While fatigue is usually a symptom of a medical condition, sometimes it can be developed overtime due to poor lifestyle choices. These choices can include:

• caffeine overload
• poor diet
• excessive exercise
• too little exercise
• jet lag
• alcohol
• drugs
• not enough sleep or too much sleep

We recommend you see a qualified practitioner who can look at your daily routine and symptoms, and let you know if it is due to poor lifestyle choices or if there is something else going on. If it’s caught early enough, you can prevent it turning into chronic fatigue.

If someone has developed Chronic Fatigue, we recommend they start on the Paleo Diet and take BodyHealth PerfectAmino Supplements in order to gain the right nutrients to boost energy levels in a natural way. Also, we would encourage patients to exercise and to follow a sleep schedule so that your body can adjust to a consistent resting time (a schedule from 10:00pm to 6am is preferred).

Medical Conditions

Those who ignore their fatigue often fail to realize that their low energy isn’t due to just “tiredness”. Fatigue is a common symptom among various medical conditions that can range from minor to very serious. Some of these conditions include:

• Anemia
• Influenza
• Hypertension
• Diabetes
• Sleep Apnea
• Insomnia
• Lyme Disease
• Autoimmune Diseases
• Epstein-Barr Virus
• Thyroid Issues
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Cancer

Whether or not your fatigue is being caused by something as small as the flu to something as life threatening as cancer, is it really worth it to play with your life? Wouldn’t you want to know for sure where your fatigue is coming from? At LifeWorks Wellness Center, we will find the root cause of your fatigue and get you back on track to leading a healthy life.

Stress

Stress deserves a category on its own since stress can be caused by our environment and situations that cannot be easily controlled. When people surround themselves in toxic environments (such as an abusive relationship), fast-paced jobs, financial situations, chasing high expectations, dealing with a bad breakup or a situation in which they have lost a loved one, all of these circumstances cause our mental health to deteriorate, and thus can cause fatigue in the process.

According to Medical News Today, these issues develop when the body produces “larger quantities of the chemicals cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine”¹ that causes high blood pressure, sweating, and muscle tensions, making it harder for our bodies and brains to fully relax. Other conditions related to stress that cause fatigue include: Anxiety and Depression, both of which overwhelm our brains with fluctuating thoughts and emotions and causes sleeplessness. If either our body or brain feels overworked or overwhelmed for too long, we will slowly become fatigued, and if this is not resolved, it has a potential of becoming chronic.

In The End…

Fatigue and chronic fatigue are extremely difficult to detect among both patients and even practitioners. Without accurate diagnostic testing, it’s very easy to mistake it for just being tired or diagnosing it as a common virus. What makes this so frustrating is that all of these underlying causes can tie into each other. For example, someone who is feeling high levels of stress can choose to drink five cups of coffee to relieve their anxieties when in reality they’re suffering from Insomnia. Or a cancer patient can be feeling fatigued due to the strong chemotherapy treatments that their oncologist gives them. Another scenario could be a person who has lost their loved one and their emotions are causing them to eat and sleep less, which also would bring on slow fatigue. The possibilities and situations are endless when it comes to having fatigue.

If you feel fatigue but are unsure of how or why you don’t have the energy that you used to, LifeWorks Wellness Center can help you. With an accurate testing process, natural supplements, and proper guidance on following the individual’s best dietary needs, we’ve successfully helped many patients overcome fatigue and get their energy back to normal levels. If you would like to schedule an appointment, please call 727-466-6789 to speak with a New Patient Coordinator.

Reference:

1. Stress: Why does it happen and how can we manage it? (medicalnewstoday.com)