Health Minute: Fighting Fatigue
Most common symptom
Health Minute Audio Summary:
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, arthritis, 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:
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 existing 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
