Making Positive Lifestyle Choices
What Does Fatigue Feel Like
What is fatigue, and what does it feel like? How can we tell if we have it if were just experiencing regular old tiredness? To differentiate, we first need to become familiar with the symptoms associated with fatigue.
Fatigue is a persistent sensation of weariness, exhaustion, and low energy. Unlike regular physical tiredness, you cant get rid of fatigue by simply getting a good nights sleep. Fatigue often happens as the result of some type of disorder, disease, or condition. For example, a hormone imbalance can eventually lead to chronic fatigue if it isnt corrected. Fatigue can also be a natural consequence of an unhealthy lifestyle.
If you persistently experience the following symptoms, theres a good chance that youre dealing with chronic fatigue syndrome. This syndrome is characterized as extreme fatigue that lasts for at least six months.
- Weariness
- Low motivation to get things done
- Sudden and unexpected bouts of exhaustion that may go away but always come back
Many women with chronic fatigue syndrome dont feel like themselves anymore. It is almost like they are being pursued relentlessly by a thief who wants to steal their vitality and joy.
Summary: Boost Energy And Reduce Fatigue The Healthy Way
In summary, there are a number of interesting things that you can do be improve your energy levels and beat fatigue. The first and most important step is to start by understanding the underlying cause of your fatigue. Is it due to lifestyle factors or due to underlying disease or ailments? This will help you to better understand what course of treatment to pursue.
Regardless of whether your fatigue is caused by an underlying medical condition or is solely due to lifestyle factors, changes in the way you live may help to improve your energy levels. These include stress management, ensuring that you get adequate sleep, improving your eating habits, reducing alcohol consumption, and quitting smoking. In addition, there is a wide range of dietary supplements and nutraceuticals that may be beneficial, depending on the type and cause of your fatigue.
Read Also: What Can Cause Severe Fatigue And Tiredness
No Alcohol Before Going To Bed
This might come as a shock to you. Alcohol damages your sleep quality. Many would say the opposite that drinking alcohol makes them tired but try having one or two glasses of red wine at night and you will want to cuddle up and fall into bed immediately. It is true that alcohol can make you feel tired and help you fall asleep. But, your sleep will be negatively affected from drinking alcohol as your body has to produce adrenalin in order to break down alcohol. And adrenalin is probably the last thing you want while you sleep. It agitates your body and disrupts your sleep, leading thus to a restless night. Staying away from alcohol at night is therefore advisable in order to have a peaceful sleep.
What Can I Eat To Fight Covid
If you have not lost your appetite during or after COVID-19 infection, it is important to avoid high-fat, salty, and sugary foods and eat healthy meals with a balance of:
- Protein, such as meat, poultry, fish, eggs, beans, or nuts
- Dairy, such as milk, yogurt, and cheese
- Whole grains
If you have a reduced appetite, the following guidelines can help:
- Eat smaller meals more frequently
- Sit in an upright, comfortable position while eating
- Eat at a slower pace to allow time for digestion
- Get some fresh air before eating a meal to help increase your appetite
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Eat Little And Often Throughout The Day
Eating small meals and snacks can help to keep your energy up.
Experts recommend four to six small meals a day, which includes healthy snacks, to help keep your blood glucose steady.
Protein shakes, protein bars, or a handful of unsalted nuts make great snacking options, and are ideal before doing any exercise too.
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Make Your Own Energy Drink
Dont turn to store-bought energy drinks. They are, I think, one of the most ridiculous marketing schemes to take over in recent years. Youre paying an absurd amount for something that is doing you more harm than good-and its really not going to wake you up in the long run. It will, in all reality, probably make things worse. So make your own instead-theyre delicious, satisfying, good for you, and will give you the wonderful long lasting energy youre looking for.
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Fight Fatigue With Fluids
Water is essential for carrying nutrients to your bodys cells and taking away the waste. Approximately 60% of your bodys weight is water and you lose it through sweating, urinating, and breathing. When your body is low on water, you will feel drained and weaker than normal. Drinking a tall glass of water when you are starting to fade will likely reverse the fatigue. Replenishing water and fluids throughout the day will help replenish the water you are losing and help you maintain a steady energy level.
Keep In Mind The Following Fatigue Tips And Questions:
Content ratio: The higher the sugar and the lower the fiber the worse the carbohydrate. Use that as a general guideline to indicate which carbs are good or bad.
Know the good from the bad: The word carbohydrate has been tossed around a lot, first we hear they are good, then all of a sudden theyre bad for you. The answer is they are both, but we can easily separate the good from the bad. You need the good, so educate yourself and dont steer clear of carbs altogether or youll get drained.
Fiber, fiber, fiber and more fiber: Foods high in fiber are digested slower than foods with very little fiber, avoiding spikes in blood sugar levels. Examples are whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and beans.
Is it refined? Is it processed?: Foods like white bread and white rice are stripped of fiber and full of simple carbs. Avoid along with the obvious things like fast food, sugary goodies, soda, etc.
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What Else Can I Do Prevent And Overcome Fatigue
The good news is that for most of us fatigue doesnt have to be a fact of life and there are plenty of simple everyday things you can do help boost your energy and banish long-term tiredness for good.
Nutrition
Adequate nutrition is essential for a healthy lifestyle and balanced diet, and can help boost your energy. Be sure to always eat breakfast: a healthy breakfast such as rolled oats topped with banana and blueberries provides you with vitamins and minerals that stimulate the process of energy production.
Some examples of energy boosting foods include:
- Rolled oats
- Whole grains like quinoa and amaranth
- Leafy greens
- Baked potatoes.
Ensure that you’re also drinking plenty of water to prevent dehydration, as this is known to decrease energy.
Take a look at our article for more nutrition tips to help increase your energy levels from AXA Health Registered Nutritionist, Georgina Camfield.
Sleep
Sleep is arguably the most important contributing factor affecting our energy levels, but something thats frequently sacrificed thanks to a busy lifestyle. The Sleep Councils latest survey found that almost three quarters of people in the UK sleep for less than 7 hours a night .
Much of how you feel when you are awake is impacted by the quality of your sleep, so getting long-lasting, good quality sleep is essential for our body to rejuvenate, build muscle and grow, as well as to resynthesize hormones and maintain energy levels.
Some tips for improving sleep:
Exercise
Tip #: Pay Attention To Your Diet
Even as you being to come out of the physical and mental fog of pure fatigue, remember to eat as cleanly as you can. Try to avoid foods with an abundance of sugar, carbohydrates, fats or sodium.
A well-rounded diet can help you move faster into a state of mind-body balance. Plus, you wont experience the ups and downs of sugar crashes, which can lead to further sleeping issues.
Read Also: What Can I Do For Extreme Fatigue
General Suggestions For Exercise
- Regular, light exercise such as walking has been shown to reduce fatigue as well as nausea and vomiting, and can help some people to sleep better
- Plan some activity or light exercise into your day
- If exercise is impossible, try to stay active in your daily routine
- Pay attention to how your body reacts to exercise: how did you sleep? How did you feel the next day?
- Drink plenty of fluids before, during and after exercise
- Perhaps keep a record of your activities to share with your doctor or nurse, so they can help monitor your progress
- It’s important to find a balance between activity and rest, and to exercise in a way that allows the muscles to recover after activity
- Dont exercise if you feel unwell, are in pain or have any other symptoms that worry you, such as feeling breathless. Let your doctor know if you feel unwell or have worrying symptoms
If Your Child Is Having Treatment
Some types of exercise that can fight fatigue during active treatment include:
- Jumping rope,
- Dancing, and
- Karate.
A good goal is about 20 minutes of exercise each day, or more if your child feels well enough. At first, your child might not be able to exercise for 20 minutes. So a few minutes a day is OK. With time, your child could get stronger and exercise longer. Talk to the doctor if you are concerned about how much your child can do.
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Ways To Help Your Child Sleep Better
Sleeping better can help your child feel less tired, or fatigued. You can have your child try the activities below.
- Have a bedtime routine Such as putting on pajamas, brushing teeth, using the bathroom, reading, and lights out.
- Go to bed at same time every night, and wake up the same time every day.
- Avoid drinks with caffeine in the evening, such as sodas, coffee, or tea. Avoid chocolate, because it also has caffeine.
- Take naps earlier in the day, if your child takes naps. The nap should be less than one hour. If it lasts longer, your child may not sleep as well at night.
- Avoid playing video games or using a mobile phone or tablet in bed. The bright lights might keep your child from falling asleep.
- Keep lights on and blinds open during the day, even in the hospital.
- Do activities that lower stress, such as yoga.
- Take a warm bath before bed.
- Use the bathroom before bed.
Your child can also get help from a psychologist for more tips. Or she may benefit from having a sleep study. Some doctors specialize in sleep problems. If your child feels very sleepy during the day and falls asleep easily when she does not want to, talking to a sleep doctor could help.
How To Fight Fatigue And Get Your Energy Back
Fatigue is only vaguely defined, and we all feel fatigued from time to time. But chances are if you’re here, you may be dealing with chronic fatigue.
Chronic fatigue is a brutal mix of constantly feeling weak with no energy or motivation. This kind of unrelenting exhaustion is a nearly constant state of weariness that reduces energy and motivation, even sapping your ability to concentrate. Fatigue with this consistency impacts your psychological and emotional well-being.
Unlike temporary or circumstantial fatigue, what makes chronic fatigue so tough is that these feelings dont typically go away with sleep and rest.
It’s not clear how many people experience chronic fatigue in the United States given its varied definitions and symptoms. Researchers estimate somewhere between seven and 45 percent of adults are fatigued frequently.
Fatigue is challenging to study because most people dont even know something is “wrong.” Getting older means your body changes, work or family stresses mean less sleep, and many people just assume that feeling fatigued is part of life.
But chronic fatigue is not normal and could signify a much larger problem.
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Tip #: Get Extra Hydration From An Iv Drip
Worried you might be especially dehydrated? IV hydration sends fluids into your bloodstream, getting your hydration levels higher rapidly. In fact, IV therapy for hydration always works more quickly than orally taking in water.
You dont have to go to a hospital or urgent care facility to get an IV drip, either. Rocky Mountain IV Medics will deliver IV drip packages wherever you are in the Denver area.
What Options Are There For Those With Chronic Fatigue
Those of us with chronic fatigue have a few options available to us. We can continue with life as it is and try to hobble our way through it, we can see a doctor for prescription medication and therapy, or we can make lifestyle changes to improve our overall health and reduce our fatigue.
In some cases, temporary professional treatment for chronic fatigue may be necessary while we work on the sidelines to get our overall health under control. Our goal should be to make healthier lifestyle choices until we can eventually go off of all fatigue-related medications. Depending on the severity and underlying cause of fatigue, some of us may be able to recover more quickly than others from the damaging impact of chronic fatigue syndrome.
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Remedies For Fatigue & When Youre Feeling Tired
Our existences are anything but simple, and most of us will find ourselves overworked and exhausted from time to time-or all the time. Fatigue, true fatigue, is much more than feeling overworked and just being sleepy, although it can make you want to curl up in bed and forget the rest of the world. It creeps into everyday life and effects your physical and mental well-being making it very difficult, if not impossible, to get things done. My own personal struggles with fatigue at point strained relationships-it is hard for people to understand that horrible exhaustion unless they experience it themselves. To the outside world, you just look lazy when all you want to do is lie in bed.
Fatigue is a difficult thing to manage, as it is such a vague symptom or condition. Theres physical fatigue, emotional fatigue, fatigue as a symptom or as a disease in and of itself. There is a good chance theres an underlying medical condition causing fatigue, for example depression or low blood sugar, and this must be addressed before you can hope to get rid of the exhaustion. But if you havent been able to pinpoint the cause of your fatigue it can often times be traced back to a number of habits and lifestyles that seem to have a tendency to develop in the modern world. If you find it dogging your footsteps and dragging you down, dont sink into despair, there are plenty of changes you can make and natural remedies you can utilize to fight the feeling effectively.
Expert Tips On How To Beat Covid
To aid your recovery from COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the following: Take over-the-counter medications like acetaminophen or ibuprofen to reduce fever and muscle aches drink lots of water or get intravenous fluids to stay hydrated and get plenty of rest.
McClelland recommends practicing three principles the 3 Ps to manage your fatigue:
Pace. Pace yourself and dont push yourself to exhaustion. If you overdo it, it can make recovery harder and set you back in your progress. Make sure you build rest into your activities, even for small things like walking up the stairs, McClelland says.
Plan. Map out your activities for the day and the week. If you find that your energy or ability to concentrate dips at certain times, strategize accordingly, suggests the United Kingdoms National Health Service.
Prioritize. Figure out which items on your to-do list are essential and which can wait. When youre fatigued, dump the stuff that doesnt have to get done, or ask someone to help you, says McClelland.
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