Extreme Fatigue: How You Can Overcome Being So Tired
For many people today the life they expect to live has been snuffed out because they suffer from extreme fatigue. Exhaustion rules the day. They can’t expect much help from their doctors since medicine cannot define the causes and, therefore, no treatments are available.
Many doctors say it’s all in the patient’s head and think he/she is depressed and end up writing a prescription for depression drugs. Depression is a symptom of extreme fatigue but not a cause and is the outcome of suffering from being so tired.
There is little agreement as to the causes of extreme fatigue and there are many ideas about what the causes may be:
* failure to cope with stress
* a breakdown in the neuroendocrine system
* free radical damage
* immune system dysfunction
* free radical damage
* adrenal gland exhaustion
The Causes of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Have Not Been Identified
Treatment programs are directed toward symptom relief with the ultimate goal for the individual to regain some level of pre-existing function and well-being.
In all of our cells there are very small power-houses called mitochondria that produce all the energy we need to live. They process the products of food breakdown and combine them with oxygen to produce energy. Some research now implicates mitochondrial dysfunction in fatigue through a process called oxidative stress.
This is just a term that implies that fuel processing is disrupted. One potential causative agent that is just beginning to be explored is pharmaceutical drugs. We live in a drug-addicted world and the primary role of doctors is to write prescriptions.
Several targets within the mitochondria may underlie the toxic effects of some drugs. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs may disrupt function in the mitochondria. The toxicity of other drugs arises because of the production of free radicals which damage cellular membranes leading to ion flux problems.
Minerals such as potassium and sodium serve as ions and their movements in and out of cells create electrical charges. These electrical movements make life possible. The drugs used in cancer treatments often target mitochondria which produce the energy used by the body’s cells. The production of energy and electrical pulses decrease and the outcome is extreme fatigue.
In the Battle Against Extreme Fatigue We Need New Approaches
Although medicine has been trying to understand what causes chronic fatigue, its quest has failed to turn anything up. In addition, since there are no known causes, there are no known or effective treatments for fatigue and its more serious forms, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.
Modern Medicine is not the only health model that exists even though it seems to think it is. There are numerous other ways of looking at the issue of fatigue therapies by looking at the views of other schools of thought:
* exercise, particularly tai chi
* an evaluation of prescription drug use to reduce toxic exposure
* the low-carbohydrate diet to reduce inflammation
* advanced acupuncture programs such as electro-meridian imaging rather than classical acupuncture
* exercise, particularly tai chi
* the use of other products from the world of energy medicine
* homeopathic remedies, particularly the class of remedies known as drainage remedies
* nutritional supplements
* exercise, particularly tai chi
Hundreds of people were analyzed in the Body Burden Study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control. The purpose of the study was to determine the extent of how many environmental pollutants had accumulated in our bodies. The final outcome was that 98% of the people enrolled in the study had significant accumulations of over 200 tested toxins.
There was no comment about the potential damage caused by toxin accumulation. Other health-care workers who operate outside of mainstream medicine actively practice methods whose prime goal is to help people get rid of their toxins.
A major cause of extreme fatigue, not yet recognized, comes from our exposure to environmental pollutants. Only a small handful of enlightened people understand this fact. In her book, Our Stolen Future, Dr. Theo Colborn outlines many of the hazards of pollutant exposure. Modern medicine isn’t enlightened.
