Tiredness

[MeIAm]

For a while now I have been suffering from extreme tiredness. To the point I go to bed at 7 most nights (I get up at 6 so not an unearthly hour!) I am constantly exhausted.

This is effecting my whole life, I can barely function to do even the basics.

Am due a blood test but have had one before and it came back fine apparently. Does anyone know how I can feel normal again or is it just something I have to live with?

Hi, what is your diet like? I find if I gave a lot of sugar or meat I become very tired. Do you have a stressful job or children or other stressful responsibilities? I often feel exhausted but it’s usually down to the things I’ve just listed. Have you tried some light exercise as sometimes that livens me up for a bit.

*have not gave

How long have you been feeling like that?

There is tiredness and there is fatigue. The former is relieved by sleep and the latter is relieved by rest. So try building rest periods into your day and see if that makes a difference to you.

If you can monitor your heart rate with a fitbit or similar, rest would be spending 10 mins with your heart rate at "resting heart rate +10%".

Another thing to look at is food as there is a lot of research into the bacteria in the gut and how that affects how we feel. You could try some probiotic supplements and they might relieve some of your fatigue.

I agree with popcorn. I was having this where I'd be dead on my feet all day. Everything's fine with my physical health so not that. So I changed my diet to add more fruits and veg and less crap and then started walking through the day and doing yoga couple of evenings a week. I really had to push myself but I got into the routine of it. It also made me feel better mentally too. If you're stressed anxious or depressed all those things can make you exhausted

MeIAm - I had this. It's awful. There can be so many different causes of it, so make sure that the GP does a very wide range of blood tests.
UK NHS acceptable leves of iron are way below most countries, so the first thing worth trying is to get hold of some Iron tonic. Not the tablets, but the liquid Ferroglobin (Boots own make) or Floradix (more expensive.)

The thing that made a massive difference to me was taking Vitamin D spray. It's unlikely that you're Vit D deficient if you've had lots of sun this summer, but if you've been inside or in a rainy place, you could be. Don't bother with the tablets. The spray works far better. I've only been able to find it in Holland and Barrett. I use the strong one but friends have said it makes them queasy, so maybe try the weaker version (I've never had any problem with it.)

Cutting out sugar, alcohol and caffeine might help. I never managed to cut out caffeine but the other two made a difference, even though I don't drink much.

Hope these helps a bit, but obviously you do need proper investigation too.

chicaguapa - that's really interesting. Do you have any recommendations on where to get info about fatigue and gut bacteria? Mine started when I started to get stomach ulcers - I'd not linked the two before and hadn't heard of a link until you mentioned it, even though I'd done loads of research on fatigue. I just thought the ulcers were a result of being run down, not the other way round.

I've also had this and it's debillitating. (Sp)
I cut sugar and took ferraglobin which helped a lot.

I'm not sure where I got the gut bacteria link from tbh.

DD has CFS so I've done a huge amount of reading into it and there's a research project underway about the link between the gut and CFS.

Also there was a lady on Dr in the House who changed her diet to 'rainbow food', ie lots of different colours, which improved her fatigue levels.

And DD takes probiotic supplements which does seem to noticeably help with her fatigue levels.

Obviously she has lots of other issues at play with CFS, but if you were solely looking at fatigue, I think the gut is something well worth looking into.

Bonne thank you so much. I'm going to Google it.

As PPs have said, there can be many causes. Ask your gp to test your B12 level, it's not included as standard in a full blood count. Do you have any other symptoms other than tiredness?