Can Copd Cause Extreme Fatigue

The Diaphragm Become Less Effective

This is a result of the progression of the disease. Lung units become dilated and expand to the chest wall. They also push down on the diaphragm. This makes it so the diaphragm is less effective. The result is that the person uses other less effective muscles to breathe, such as your shoulder muscles. These muscles require more energy than usual so they poop out easily, making you fatigued.2-4

Coping With Copd & Fatigue

Research suggests that close to 70% of people with COPD also experience extreme fatigue. When a person is that exhausted, simple tasks become challenging or altogether impossible. Fortunately, there are some ways that COPD patients can manage shortness of breath, which may help fatigue. This includes prescribed medications and oxygen therapy, as well as:

• Improving your diet. Food directly impacts energy. By maintaining a balanced diet, you can help provide your body the fuel it needs to maintain a normal energy level.
• Minimizing stressors. Stress can cause more frequent COPD exacerbations. Try incorporating stress management techniques into your daily routines to better control your reactions in stressful situations.
• Practicing breathing exercises/therapies. According to the COPD Foundation, breathing is one of the best ways to reduce stress and manage symptoms. Some of the most popular techniques include belly breathing and pursed-lips breathing.
• Establishing good sleeping habits. COPD and fatigue can interfere with your rest, so its important to stick to a sleeping routine. This can help you get a full nights sleep, which can combat feelings of fatigue.

Get Screened For Depression

Its very common for people with COPD to have depression or to just feel down, says Attaway. When you have COPD, its harder for you to get around and you may have to ask people for help, she says. That can lead to feelings of guilt or helplessness.

Its important to be aware that depression and COPD often go together, says Attaway. Be sure that you are screened for depression if you think you may be feeling down.

Set a schedule and try to keep up with friends and family, she suggests. Keep doing the activities that you enjoy and try not to spend too much time in your house, says Attaway.

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How Does Copd Cause Fatigue

COPD is a health problem that keeps your lungs from working as they should. The lungs job is to get oxygen to the body. Oxygen is a gas your body needs. The air you breathe in contains oxygen. Inside the lungs, air moves through tubes called airways. In healthy airways, air moves in and out easily. With COPD, lungs and airways are damaged. This damage causes airways to be blocked. Then air has a harder time traveling through the airways. Poor air flow means the body cant get the oxygen it needs. You may also have higher levels of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a waste product of breathing. COPD also causes inflammation in the lungs. These things can also lead to fatigue.

With COPD, lung damage is usually from breathing in irritants over a long period of time. The main irritant that causes COPD is cigarette smoke. Other irritants are pollution, dust, fumes, and chemicals.

Sleepiness Fatigue Anxiety And Depression In Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease And Obstructive Sleep Apnea Overlap Syndrome Before And After Continuous Positive Airways Pressure Therapy

• Nicholas-Tiberio Economou,

  Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Writing original draft

  Affiliation Division of Pulmonology, Department of Clinical Therapeutics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens School of Medicine, Alexandra Hospital, Athens, Greece

• Roles Data curation, Methodology, Supervision

  Affiliation Endocrine Unit, Elena Venizelou Hospital, Athens, Greece

• Lemonia Velentza,

  Roles Data curation, Investigation

  Affiliation Division of Pulmonology, Department of Clinical Therapeutics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens School of Medicine, Alexandra Hospital, Athens, Greece

• Yiannis Papachatzakis,

  Roles Data curation, Investigation

  Affiliation Division of Pulmonology, Department of Clinical Therapeutics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens School of Medicine, Alexandra Hospital, Athens, Greece

• Affiliation Pulmonary Department-Oncology Unit, “G. Papanikolaou” General Hospital, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

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Care For Your Mental Health

Anxiety and depression are common mental health issues that come along with COPD. Coping with the diagnosis alone can be difficult, and the stress of managing the disease and losing physical independence can be difficult to weather on your own.

Fatigue is a common symptom associated with both depression and anxiety, and is sometimes a major factor in COPD-related fatigue. That’s why neglecting your mental health is not an option caring for yourself and your emotions is necessary for both your physical and mental wellbeing.

If you suffer from chronic anxiety, depression, or are having trouble coping with COPD on your own, don’t hesitate to seek help. You can talk to your doctor, therapist, or any other licensed mental health professional to get advice, support, and prescription medication if you need it.

You can also find support in group therapy, both in person and online. Your doctor or another mental health professional could help you find mental health support groups and other services in your area, or you can join one of several COPD and lung disease support groups online.

Other Causes Of Fatigue

It is possible for other things to cause feelings of tiredness besides COPD. For some people with COPD, fatigue can be a sign of an infection like the flu or pneumonia. Other causes of fatigue not directly related to COPD include:3

• Sleep apnea
• Low vitamin D
• Thyroid problems

If you think your fatigue could be caused by something other than COPD, talk with your doctor about your symptoms and concerns.

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Tips For Living With Copd

COPD has no cure, and you cant reverse the damage it does to your lungs and airways. Once the disease has progressed, you must begin treatment to reduce the damage and slow further progression.

Fatigue will require you to use the energy you have wisely. Take extra care to not push yourself too hard.

COPD symptoms can occasionally flare up, and there may be times when symptoms and complications are worse. During these episodes, or exacerbations, your doctor will recommend treatments and medications to ease your symptoms.

If you have COPD-related fatigue, try these five tips to help manage your symptoms.

Managing Your Copd Fatigue: 9 Strategies To Boost Energy

Certain techniques can help counteract the fatigue commonly associated with the condition.

Shutterstock

Life with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease can be exhausting. Just doing normal routine activities like going to the market or putting dishes away can sometimes zap all your energy, depriving you of time with friends and activities that you used to enjoy.

COPD by itself can cause a lot of fatigue, says Amy Attaway, MD, a pulmonologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. It really comes down to the fact that your body has to work harder than for a person who doesnt have the condition, she says. You lose a lot of energy because youre expending a lot of your energy or calories on breathing with your respiratory muscles.

But there are several things to try and habits you can adopt that will help bring back your get-up-and-go. Here are several tips on how to boost your energy when youre managing COPD.

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But Copd May Not Be The Cause Of Your Fatigue

There are times when someone has COPD, but something else is causing the fatigue, says Dr. Attaway. And those conditions are often treatable, through a daily medication or using a breathing mask at night.

Non-COPD causes of fatigue may include:

• Sleep apnea: Poor sleep at night can result in fatigue during the day.
• Low oxygen levels: Oxygen levels may drop at night, causing you to wake up sluggish and sometimes with a headache.
• Vitamin D: Low vitamin D is common in people with COPD.
• Thyroid problems: People with COPD may have a higher risk of thyroid disorders.

Performance Fatigability As An Index To Detect Responders To Exercise Training

Fatiguers As Responders: Experimental Evidences and Exercise Training Strategies

In view of the multitude of factors potentially contributing to the absence of exercise-induced muscle fatigue, it seems essential to promote an inter-disciplinary approach assessing the relative influence of physiological, psychological and sociological factors in impeding muscle susceptibility to fatigue. Various alternatives to classic exercise rehabilitation sessions can thus be proposed and, by limiting the negative influence of a given factor or symptom, they should theoretically lead to optimal muscle loading. Such strategies may directly aim at:

1- Modulating patients’ personal barriers and enablers to exercise training and motivation . The use of specific exercise preference inventory may also guide the choice of specific exercise modalities.

2- Acting against the negatives feelings associated to dyspnea through desensitization techniques

3- Reducing the demand imposed on the cardiopulmonary system allowing to reach higher training intensities that would not be normally possible for patients with important ventilatory limitation. They may include exercise with supplemental oxygen or non-invasive ventilation , one-legged cycling or combination of aerobic training with respiratory muscle training .

Fatiguers vs. Non-Fatiguers: Methodological Concerns

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What Is The Solution

The solution at this point in time remains a mystery. Some speculate that exercise can certainly help. Exercise, or simply staying physically active, can increase your muscle tone. This can increase the strength of your muscles so they do not tire so easily which can maybe decrease your overall level of fatigue.

Supplemental oxygen can help, as low oxygen levels might be a cause of fatigue. Machines like BiPAP can help reduce the symptoms of sleep apnea. New medicines may help block the effects of inflammatory chemicals. Future medicine may help reduce inflammatory chemicals and reduce fatigue caused by them. To understand the full scope of COPD and fatigue, more studies are needed.

What about you? Do you experience COPD related fatigue? Please share your experience in the comments below.

Comparison Of Copd Fatigue Levels With Two Other Chronic Disease Populations

The ICFS data from respiratory patients with complete datasets were compared with two previously published datasets: 1) 38 colorectal cancer patients awaiting surgery recruited from outpatient clinics at Middlemore Hospital, Auckland, New Zealand and 2) 38 HIV-positive patients recruited from outpatient clinics at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA .

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Locomotor Power Reserve In Copd

In agreement with our earlier studies , only a modest reserve in short-term skeletal muscle power production was present at the limit of tolerance in controls. Thus, the perceptual and physiological limits to exercise were closely matched. Conversely, a large skeletal muscle power reserve was present immediately following the limit of tolerance in COPD. Using a short isokinetic bout, we showed that COPD patients were capable of briefly producing ~260% of the power output required at the limit of tolerance. Thus, maximal evocable power production is not the limiting factor for exercise in COPD. While the patients are unlikely to be able to sustain this power much beyond the 5 s of measurement, the power is substantially larger than the reserve in healthy young or older adults and is consistent with a reserve in metabolic capacity of the locomotor muscles in COPD . While COPD patients have greater performance fatigue, they possess a short-term capacity for power production that exceeds the task requirement at the limit of tolerance the utility of this capacity is unknown. Without metabolic measurements of the intramuscular environment, we are unable to determine how the energy requirements are met for this brief excursion of locomotor power above the task requirement.

Make Sure You Get Enough Vitamin D

Many people who suffer from fatigue are actually deficient in vitamin D, and correcting the deficiency can significantly improve fatigue. In fact, it’s common for doctors to prescribe vitamin D supplements for people with fatigue-related disorders.

It just so happens that vitamin D deficiency is particularly common in COPD patientsup to 66 percent of patients are deficientand it is a common factor contributing to COPD-related fatigue. Studies show that vitamin D deficiency also affects patients’ bone strength and ability to breathe, and that supplemental vitamin D can help improve exercise endurance and strengthen the muscles used for breathing.

If you have COPD and suffer from chronic fatigue, you should talk to your doctor to get tested for vitamin D deficiency. Your doctor can determine if a deficiency is causing your symptoms and prescribe you a vitamin D supplement if needed to correct it.

But you don’t always need a supplement minor vitamin D deficiencies can often be corrected by increasing the amount of vitamin D in your diet and by spending more time in the sun. Just letting the sun touch your skin for ten to twenty minutes a day is enough to give you a significant boost of vitamin D.

Most people should get anywhere from 400-800 IU, or 10-20 micrograms, of vitamin D per day. People who don’t spend much time in the sun will need to get most of their Vitamin D from their diet.

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A State Of Hypermetabolism

Some are in a state of hypermetabolism. This means that their bodies use up more calories than are consumed by their diets. This is the goal when you are on a diet. This is what causes weight loss. But, its not so good when youre just trying to breathe. Compounding matters here is that they may feel short of breath while eating. They may stay less active just to breathe, further suppressing appetite.

Skeletal Muscle Fatigue In Copd Patients And Controls

Because of the large differences in power between COPD patients and controls, more absolute muscle fatigue was present in controls. Consistent with this, unlike controls, there was no decline in MDF of maximal voluntary isokinetic power production at intolerance in COPD patients a reduction in MDF is associated with muscle acidosis, muscle lactate accumulation , and fatigue . However, when normalized to a fraction of baseline Piso, muscle fatigue was not different between patients and controls. While there is a small numerical difference between the normalized muscle fatigue of COPD patients and controls , it is the heterogeneity of the responses that is most interesting, particularly the patients with no muscle fatigue. The wide variance in muscle fatigue for COPD patients is consistent with other reports in the literature, as is the presence of what might be a small subset of patients who fail to develop muscle fatigue during heavy cycle ergometry . None of our measures for pulmonary function or disease severity explained the heterogeneity in muscle fatigue. This reinforces the common finding that muscle dysfunction and exercise intolerance are only weakly or moderately correlated to standard measures of spirometric impairment in COPD , despite being independent risk factors for poor outcome in population studies.

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Data Management And Statistical Analysis

Missing data of questionnaires will be minimised using RadQuest, since items cannot be skipped. In case of missing data for other variables, the likeliness of this being missing at random will be assessed. If missing data are random, we will use appropriate imputation methods.32

All statistical analyses will be performed using statistics software . First, to characterise transitions over time in fatigue, we will use latent transition analysis.33 Second, to identify the factors that precipitate and/or perpetuate fatigue in patients with COPD, mixed model analyses will be applied for continuous outcomes measures and generalised estimating equations for dichotomous outcomes measures. Third, to study the impact of exacerbation-related hospitalisations on fatigue and its perpetuating factors we will use mixed model analyses. Fourth, to better understand the extent to which baseline fatigue is related to 2-year all-cause hospitalisation and mortality, Cox proportional hazard models will be applied. At last, to identify whether there are diurnal differences in fatigue and what factors are associated with these variations, we will use hierarchical linear modelling as items are nested within moments and moments are nested within individuals. The responsiveness and sensitivity of the fatigue questionnaire versus EMA data are compared with effect sizes for the component of observed change derived from model parameters. A priori, a two-tailed p value of < 0.05 is considered significant.

Can Fatigue Be Treated

There is no medicine or treatment that can directly address feelings of fatigue. However, there are steps you can take to feel more energetic.

If you are feeling tired, it can be hard to motivate yourself to exercise. But regular exercise leads to increased energy over time. People with COPD may want to follow an exercise routine such as walking or biking for 30 minutes a day. This can increase energy levels.3

Eating well can also increase energy levels. Try to eat lots of high-fiber foods, as well as healthy fats and proteins. Avoiding simple carbs and sugars can also keep your energy more constant throughout the day.3

You may need more help handling your fatigue besides at-home solutions like eating well and exercising. Oxygen therapy, or the use of supplemental oxygen, provides extra oxygen for your body. This can help you have more energy and make physical tasks easier. Your doctor may or may not suggest oxygen therapy depending on your symptoms. There are risks to this therapy if not used correctly, including problems with breathing.1,3

Pulmonary rehabilitation is a program to help people with COPD. Through the program, you will learn ways to handle COPD with methods like breathing exercises, diet, and nutrition. People who complete pulmonary rehabilitation tend to have more success managing COPD symptoms like fatigue.1,3

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Increase Your Carbohydrate Intake

One way that the body gets depleted of the nutrients needed to fuel your muscles is a lack of carbohydrates. Carbs are the main fuel that your muscles use when you exercise, and not getting enough carbohydrates in your diet can cause muscle pain and cramping.

If your muscles don’t have enough carbs to use for energy, they have difficulty contracting and relaxing normally. If you continue to exercise without the fuel they need, your muscles can get stuck in a cramped, contracted position.

This is a problem for COPD patients in particular because many people with the disease avoid carbohydrates in order to protect their lungs. Low-carb diets that favor of fats and protein can actually reduce respiratory strain and fatigue and make it easier for people with respiratory diseases to breathe.

However, a certain amount of carbohydrates is always necessary to provide your body with the nutrients and fuel it needs. If you have COPD and experience frequent muscle pain or cramps, you might be in need of some extra carbs in your diet.

However, not all carbohydrates are equally healthy. Simple carbs are like empty calories they don’t provide long-term fuel for your body. Instead, choose complex carbohydrates like those found in vegetables, unprocessed grains, and whole-grain foods.

Here are some good sources of complex carbohydrates to add to your diet:

• Whole grain pastas, breads, and crackers
• Starchy vegetables
• Beans, legumes, and peas
• Green veggies
• Quinoa
• Yogurt