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Better Health Update #2 - Monte Kline, Clinical Nutritionist

Fighting Fatigue

We may joke about being "sick and tired" of being "sick and tired," but in reality fatigue is no laughing matter. Virtually every person that walks into one of our clinics mentions fatigue as one of their symptoms, if not their major complaint. No matter whether your malady is allergies, depression, PMS, menopausal symptoms, candidiasis, arthriitis, fibromyalgia, cancer or whatever . . . fatigue is probably one of your symptoms. Let's take a look at possible causes of fatigue, wrong approaches to resolving fatigue and effective natural medicine approaches for fatigue.

CAUSES OF FATIGUE

If you figure out what causes your fatigue, you've come at least half way toward solving it. Fatigue, like most health problems, may have physical, emotional or even spiritual ingredients. As always, individualized testing will indicate specific causes, but here are the possibilities:

1. Junk Food Diet - The food we eat is probably the number one cause of fatigue. Refined, adulterated food, such as most people consume daily, simply is not the right "fuel" for the human body. God created your body to "run" on the food He causes to grow on the earth - living, whole, pure foods.

Man always thinks he knows better than His Creator, so he turns that "living, whole, pure" food into "dead, refined, adulterated food." The reasons, of course, for thus perverting the natural food supply are to (1) improve taste, (2) improve appearance, and/or (3) to extend shelf life. In other words, make all the money you can off of the food, and who cares what the resulting health problems may be.

So what are the big offending foods when it comes to fatigue? Number one is refined sugar. Let me be blunt: you cannot be healthy in general, or fatigue-free in particular, as long as you're consuming refined sugar. The sugar has to go! Whether it's white sugar, sucrose, dextrose, brown sugar, so-called "raw" sugar, turbinado sugar, corn syrup or foods with any of these sugars added, they are all basically the same - a product refined and devoid of the vitamins and minerals necessary to metabolize it. This results in a leaching of nutrients from your body as your body in effect has to "steal" vitamins and minerals from what you already have to metabolize the sugar coming in. Therefore, sugar not only adds no nutrition to the body, but rather it depletes already exisiting nutrients, classifying it as an "anti-nutrient." This junk food diet produces nutrient deficiencies and resulting fatigue.

All of your body's nutrients go into the product of energy, and therefore any nutrient deficiency could contribute to fatigue. Having said that, though, the most common nutrient deficiencies associated with fatigue are the B vitamins. Few clients complaining of fatigue at our clinics do not test out deficient in B vitamins. Other significant "anti-fatigue" nutrients include magnesium, chromium, and occasionally iron.

2. Food Sensitivities - Perhaps the least suspected, yet one of the most common causes of fatigue are food sensitivities. Unlike the restrictive medical definition of "allergy," the term "sensitivities," as applied to foods, refers to any way eating a particular food produces an undesirably reaction. Fatigue is probably the most common food sensitivity reaction.
Though potentially any food could produce a sensitivity reaction of fatigue, some of the most common are cow's milk, wheat and baker's yeast. Again, individualized testing is essential to determine which foods are a problem and to get on a desensitizing program.

3. Adrenal Weakness - The adrenal glands, which sit on top of the kidneys, provide various stress hormones. Adrenal hormones the "emergency fuel" for stressful situations like the so-called "fight or flight" responses. We infuse ourselves with adrenal hormones whenever our body is under any kind of stress. It might be a physical stress like an infection, injury, or allergic reaction. Or, it might be (and usually is) an emotional stress reaction that triggers adrenal activity.

Because most people live in a near-constant state of stress, they're constantly demanding the adrenals pump out anti-stress hormones. Remember, the adrenals were created to be an emergency system, one required only occasionally. Is it any wonder that our adrenals become exhausted. Once that happens, you have major fatigue at the least and Addison's Disease (adrenal failure) at the worst.

4. Toxicities - Toxins (poisons) from a variety of sources may produce fatigue. We can categorize these as either, (1) External toxins, such as from chemicals, heavy metals, food additives, bacteria, viruses, and drug residues; or (2) Self-produced toxins, such as Candida albicans yeast overgrowth, or other digestive tract toxins. Whichever type of toxicity is present, fatigue is a likely result.

4. Poor Elimination - When the sewer backs up into the kitchen your home doesn't function so well. The same thing happens in the body with lack of bowel regularity - the toxins really need to get out to have good health and good energy. Now think about it for a moment: If you eat three meals per day, yet only have one bowel movement every day or two or three, can that possibly be healthy? Obviously not. Those who study primitive peoples eating whole, natural food diets find that they generally have the same number of bowel movements per day as there are meals. Otherwise, you're just recycling toxins and that's going to make you fatigued.

5. Emotional Stress - Here's two questions to assess your emotional stress levels: (1) Are you happy? and (2) Do you like yourself? When you're unhappy and have low self-esteem, you're not going to have a whole lot of energy. Your mindset can deflate your energy levels in a few moments, in some cases. Other emotions like anger, bitterness, resentment, fear, or feeling overwhelmed effectively shut down your body as a escape mechanism.

Mental attitude is a choice. You decide whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. But if you really want more energy, you'd better decide to see the glass half-full. Instead of problems, see possibilities and opportunities. Truly vibrant people know this and do this.

6. Spiritual Roadblocks - If you're not a Christian, you are disconnected from the grace, love, forgiveness, and power that come from being "in Christ." That can mean fatigue. But if you are a Christian and are not walking with the Lord, again you invite a lot of problems including physical fatigue. The Bible describes the spiritually fatigued person this way:

"The backslider in heart will have his fill of his own ways, but a good man will be satisfied with his." (Proverbs 14:14)

Restore your fellowship with God through confession of any known sin (I John 1:9) and turning from it. A side-benefit of this will be more energy.

WRONG APPROACHES TO FATIGUE

1. Drugs - Illegal drugs like cocaine, crack, LSD, marijuana, speed, and the like have often been tried by the foolish who want to feel better. But now, legal drugs like Prozac and other anti-depressants are routinely prescribed for low energy. There's one basic problem, though:

You're not fatigued because you're body is deficient in Prozac!

Taking drugs, whether legal or illegal ones, only covers up the symptom while concealing the root cause of your fatigue. Don't you really want to know why you're fatigued and solve the underlying problem? I hope so.

2. Caffeine - Caffeine is, of course, a drug, but I've included it separately because it's usually thought of (unfortunately) as a food. Caffeine is not only in coffee, but also in black tea, colas, and chocolate. It is an adrenal stimulant that basically makes you feel good by giving the body a shot of adrenalin. This constant, overstimulation of the adrenals eventually exhausts the adrenals . . . and then you're really fatigued.

3. Sugar - Refined sugar has, unbelieveably, been promoted as an "energy food," of all things! How many of us as kids ate candy bars for energy? Just the opposite is true. Eating refined sugar produces a drug reaction that sends the blood sugar high only to quickly come crashing down. That, of course, requires another "fix" of sugar. This rapid "up and down" blood sugar curve produces extreme fatigue at the low end of the curve, not to mention weakening or even destroying the pancreas.

NATURAL APPROACHES TO FATIGUE

1. Better Diet - Avoiding refined sugar, refined carbohydrates (white bread, white rice, refined cereals, etc.), and caffeine helps greatly.

2. Avoid Sensitive Foods - Though you might get some idea of which foods make you tired by careful observation, testing, such as we do in the clinic, greatly helps in identifying these problems.

3. Improve Bowel Elimination - If you're having less than one bowel elimination per day, you definitely need help. Most often our Pro Bulk M psyllium/herbal supplement works well for correcting this.

4. Vitamin/Mineral Supplementation - Though many different supplements are possible, most people test favorably to our multi-vitamin/mineral, Ultra Preventive III, for covering their main deficiencies. Extremely fatigued people will sometimes need an additional B-Complex on top of the multi, such as Hypo B-50.

5. Adrenal Supplementation - Because most people have weakened, if not exhausted adrenals, an adrenal glandular supplement can greatly help energy levels. At the clinic we use Adrenplus 300 with a high percentage of our clients.

Other supplements are possible, but the above are the basics that are most often used. A combination of the right diet, compatible nutritional supplementation, release from emotional stress, plus a vital spiritual life can solve your fatigue problems.

DISCLAIMER: The information contained in this publication is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose illness nor prescribe treatment. Rather, this material is designed to be used in cooperation with your nutritionally-oriented health professional to deal with your personal health problems. Should you use this information on your own, you are prescribing for yourself, which is your constitutional right, but neither the author nor publisher assume responsibility.