Chronic Fatigue: Common Causes

Chronic fatigue, while often associated with lack of healthy sleep, can stem from a variety of causes such as chronic disease, poor nutrition/gastric absorption, and environmental issues. At Piedmont Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, PA, we follow a simple recipe to relieve chronic fatigue. It is called “reducing total load,” which refers to reducing the total number of things that prevent a healthy lifestyle along with a true desire to get to the root cause of your problem. A reduction in total load can be accomplished by eating healthier, getting more exercise, or reducing stress in other ways. While reducing total load helps to put your body on a healing path finding, eradicating, and treating the root cause can also have a major impact. At Piedmont Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, PA, we do the assessments necessary to help diagnose your condition and offer a wide variety of treatment options to help eradicate the underlying cause.

Often with chronic fatigue there are underlying medical conditions that over time lead to failure to thrive. One of the common ailment that leads to chronic fatigue is sleep apnea, a condition that causes a person to stop breathing for 10-30 seconds at a time while asleep. As this continues, fatigue will begin to set in, causing headaches, forgetfulness, mood changes, and decreased sexual interest. Hidden, chronic infection, hormonal imbalance, and a host of musculoskeletal syndromes can lead to chronic fatigue as well.  In the end, like so many other difficult to diagnose and treat conditions, chronic fatigue usually does not have one simple solution but with effort quality of life can be improved over time.

There are regenerative medicine techniques that can treat chronic pain, medications that can help improve wakefulness, and other measures such as CPAP, which involves sleeping with an oxygen mask or nasal tube, to help you awakened feeling rested.  If you are experiencing chronic fatigue and complex chronic pain please call our office at (864) 235-1835 to set up an appointment.  Dr. Schwartz and Dr. Terzella are dedicated to helping improve function, decrease pain, and enhance quality of life.