About Chronic Fatigue - How to Combat Chronic Tiredness and Weakness

Many people go through each day feeling tired and weak in their body and mind. Often these feelings are combined with a reduced ability for mental and physical work or one does not manage to stay active for a long time before one has to rest.

Often one is not so weak as one feels, however, and the hidden strength one has can be of help to combat the chronic fatigue.

CAUSES OF CHRONIC TIREDNESS AND EXHAUSTION

Chronic fatigue syndrome is a neurological disease that often occur suddenly and often after a viral infection. The main symptoms of the disease is emotional, cognitive and physical exhaustion and feeling of being sleepy and tired. Other common symptoms are poor sleep, joint and muscle pain, sore throat and tender lymph nodes.

The symptoms tend to aggravate after a short period of activity and are not well settled by sleep or rest. The symptoms must have existed at least in 6 months for the diagnoses to be given and there must not be another specific disease present that have tiredness as a main symptom.

Common diseases that often causes tiredness are hypothyroidism, sleep disturbances, depression, anemia and fibromyalgia. Nearly any kind of chronic disease will have tiredness as a symptom. Tiredness will also often rise from conditions like diabetes, cancers, inflammatory bowel diseases, celiac disease and heart insuficiency.Chronical tiredness should always be investigated by a doctor because it can be a sign of something serious.

Often however tiredness is a result of a bad lifestyle with a poor diet, excessive work, stress, lack of exercise and bad sleeping habits. If the life situation gives constant struggle and worry, chronic tiredness will often be a result. Also where there is a specific disease causing the symptoms, lifestyle causes may contribute too.

Deficiency of vitamins and minerals often contribute to tiredness and exhaustion, and such deficiency is often directly caused by a bad diet. Many people have iron deficiency. Such deficiency will give general symptoms, for example exhaustion, before the blood count is affected.

PRACTICAL ADVICES AGAINST TIREDNESS

Here are some practical advices that may be helpful for tiredness caused by bad lifestyle and also help to decrease the tiredness by chronic diseases in addition to specific treatment against the actual disease..

- Get enough sleep. Try to go to bed before 11 o'clock each evening and sleep at least.7 hours. Taking a siesta in the middle of the day and sleep somewhat less in the night can also work well.

- Regular exercise are very effective against chronic tiredness and exhaustion, and to improve sleep quality. Condition exercises like swimming, running cycling and skiing have the best effect. The exercises must of course be adjusted to your medical situation.

The feeling of exhaustion will tempt you to stay away from physical activities. But when you overcome that temptation and start a session of exercise, you will often discover that you are stronger than you thought, and the feeling of tiredness will often suddenly decrease drastically some minutes after starting the activity.

- Do some regular yoga exercises, for example at the days you do not do condition training. These exercises stimulate the internal organs to work better. The internal organs support the whole body with distribution of oxygen and nutrients and with elimination of waste. By chronic tiredness these functions often work poorly.

- Some regular meditation can help you to relax and give you good sleep, and thereby make you less tired. Meditation also stimulates your internal organs to work better.

- A good diet with all necessary nutrients will counteract tiredness and exhaustion. You should eat 3-4 good meals each day.

In each meal there should have some ingredients giving energy like full corn bread, cereals, beans, peas, potatoes and sweet fruit. There should be some protein sources like lean meat, fish, poultry, seafood, mushrooms and lean diary products.

You should also eat some almonds, sunflower seeds and nuts. These food types both give you a healthy type of fat and protein. Each meal should also contain some vegetables and fruits.

- An extra supply of vitamins and minerals can sometimes help to overcome tiredness. It is for example important to get enough iron. Too much iron will however be bad for the health and give the opposite effect.

- You should reduce the consume of sweets, sweetened drinks, cakes, snoops and fast food.

- Some coffee and tea can help you to overcome tiredness. Too much of these stimulate however, will give you bad sleep quality and contribute to chronic tiredness.