How Chronic Fatigue Impacts Your Everyday Life

You lie in bed and reminisce about the days when you’d jump up and seize the day with excitement and energy. Now, it’s all you can do to get the bathroom. This type of chronic fatigue can have a devastating impact on your quality of life, and we want to assure you, there are solutions.

At HealthFirst, Dr. Jonathan Singer and our team focus on alternative and functional therapies that tackle hard-to-treat conditions like chronic fatigue.

In the following, we take a look at what might be behind your chronic fatigue, how it can impact your everyday life, and what we can do to help.

Behind your chronic fatigue

Chronic fatigue as a standalone condition is called myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and affects anywhere from 800,000 to 2.5 million Americans. CFS is characterized by fatigue (and other symptoms, which we’ll review shortly) that lasts more than six months and that can’t be tied to an underlying medical problem.

Chronic fatigue can also by a byproduct of another medical issue, such as:

Depression
Fibromyalgia
Lupus
Arthritis

As you can see, many of these conditions are characterized by either mental or physical pain, which can lead to chronic fatigue.

Chronic fatigue and your daily life

While it may seem obvious that the lack of energy that comes with chronic fatigue can significantly affect your life, this condition runs far deeper than simply “feeling tired.”

The fatigue you may encounter is a wall that physically prevents you from accomplishing even the simplest of tasks, which is why people with severe cases can be confined to their beds.

In addition to the exhaustion and lack of energy, you may also experience:

Pain (muscles aches and joint discomfort)
Cognitive issues, such as the inability to focus or remember
Dizziness, which is also called orthostatic intolerance
Sleep issues

The last item on this list is one that’s worth taking a closer look at. Most people assume that when you have chronic fatigue, all you do is sleep. This isn’t necessarily the case, as many people with chronic fatigue are unable to get any restorative sleep.

As a result of chronic fatigue, many people are unable to work, socialize, or take care of themselves properly.

As well, post-exertional malaise is a clear and present danger when you have CFS, which means that any exercise can make your life miserable for a few days. Exercise is important to almost every area of your health, so when chronic fatigue stands in the way, your overall wellness can suffer.

Tackling chronic fatigue

It would be no exaggeration to say that chronic fatigue, depending upon its severity, can impact almost every aspect of your life, which is why you want solutions.

There’s no “cure” for chronic fatigue, but there are ways we can better manage the condition. After an extensive assessment of your health, we use therapies that address any underlying condition while also treating your chronic fatigue.

We’ve had great success with several therapies, including:

To determine which therapy might be best for you, please contact one of our offices in Greenwood Village, Colorado, or Cheyenne, Wyoming, to set up a consultation.