Anti-agingdoctor

Are you tired?

A lot of people assume that they are tired because they work too hard.  It is true this may be a cause if they don’t get enough sleep but there are often other things  that are ignored because work or stress is assumed to be the culprit.

It is not normal to feel tired all the time and genuine fatigue almost always has a ‘real’ cause.  It may be due to a vitamin deficiency. I had a patient once who was so tired she couldn’t get out of bed in the morning plus she had convinced herself that she had early Alzheimer’s.  She came into the office crying because she didn’t want to have to tell her children.  Vitamin testing showed her to be extremely deficient in 3 vitamins, once we replaced those she was back working in the garden that she loved.  Another cause of fatigue is adrenal gland dysfunction. Once again this can be so severe that patients cannot stay out of bed for more than a few hours and have to nap all the time.  Bottom line: tiredness and feeling exhausted is not normal and can usually be corrected. Sometimes patients have read on line that being tired comes from a lack of thyroid hormone or low iron and once those two tests are normal they assume nothing more can be done. Others go to the local health food store and start taking all kinds of supplements and stimulants, this is like playing roulette, if you get lucky it may help. Some supplements make you feel like you have more energy for a short while but then you rebound and crash, or cant do without them. It is always best to figure out the cause of the problem and then treat it appropriately. If you have cancer or a connective tissue disease or even depression all the supplements in the world will not fix it. The sooner you get to the root of the problem the better.  If on the other hand the problem is just lack of sleep then that can be worked on too (see my blog on sleep from earlier this year).  Sleep prolongs life.

If you have a problem of tiredness, malaise or fatigue make an appointment now.