Typically, a solid night of sleeping has you popping out of bed before the sun rises the next day. Yet, there are days when you’re running on fumes and can’t seem to get into gear. When your fatigue drags on (and takes you with it), there’s likely a health problem behind it.
Dr. Michael Skardasis at Optimal Performance Medicine specializes in identifying the medical condition that’s causing your fatigue and addressing it with treatments that support your overall wellbeing. Here, we’re taking a closer look at five of the most common medical causes of fatigue and how we can help you find relief.
Fibromyalgia is a pain disorder known for causing widespread musculoskeletal pain. Beyond the whole-body aches, 4 out of 5 people with fibromyalgia also experience severe fatigue as well as sleepless nights. Many refer to it as “fibro fog” because it often comes with a fuzzy-headed feeling that disrupts your thoughts and causes you to get distracted and forget things.
It’s not quite understood how fibromyalgia causes fatigue, but it’s likely that your body’s reaction to constant pain makes you lethargic and chronically tired.
To help you combat the effects of fibro fog, we may recommend starting a regular exercise program. While that may sound counterintuitive, exercising strengthens weakened muscles and over time reduces your fatigue.
You don’t have to join a gym or become a cross-trainer because consistency rather than intensity is key. Depending on your needs, we may supplement your workouts with IV hydration therapy or vitamin B12 injections.
If you have depression, anxiety, or other mental health conditions, even a good night’s rest might not be enough to get you through the day. The stress, poor diet changes, sleep problems, and even medications that accompany certain mental health conditions can all contribute to chronic fatigue.
We offer IV hydration therapy, B12 injections, and Myer’s cocktail to help you manage your fatigue and focus on getting support for your mental health.
Arthritis refers to conditions in which the cartilage — a protective, cushioning substance in your joints — wears down, leaving your bones to rub against each other. The chronic pain and inflammation that stems from arthritis often cause you to feel rundown, but fatigue isn’t always directly related to arthritis. Other sources of arthritis-related fatigue include:
We help you make positive lifestyle changes and provide you with holistic treatments that help you address the direct and indirect causes of arthritis and fatigue.
Your thyroid gland is a small but important structure in your body. It releases specialized hormones into your body that facilitate and stimulate a variety of functions, most importantly, regulating your metabolism.
Your metabolism is the system by which your body converts the food you eat into usable energy. When your thyroid is underactive (also known as hypothyroidism), your metabolism grinds to a halt and leaves you feeling fatigued, among other frustrating symptoms.
We often recommend hormone therapy combined with other treatments and therapies to support your overall health and help balance your hormones.
Diabetes, a condition in which your body can’t properly process sugar in your blood, is one of the most common health conditions impacting Americans today. In fact, 50,000 Georgians are diagnosed every year. If left untreated and unmanaged, it can lead to several serious health conditions, including nerve damage, heart disease, kidney disease, stroke, and dental disease.
Many individuals with diabetes also live with chronic fatigue that stems from blood sugar changes, being overweight, mental and emotional issues, and other complications and symptoms of diabetes.
Fortunately, Dr. Skardasis and our team are renowned for our ability to take patients off diabetes medication and put them on a path to a healthier life.
We specialize in helping diabetics like you lose weight, make necessary lifestyle changes, and ultimately feel better inside and out.
If you’re ready to start feeling more energized, more active, and more like yourself again, don’t hesitate to request an appointment online or over the phone at our Woodstock, Georgia, office.
