Chronic fatigue is an elusive and complicated illness, but there’s much about it that physicians do know. One of those facts is that chronic fatigue is cyclical. By understanding the cycle of chronic fatigue, as well as its overarching impact on the overall wellbeing–physical and mental–of those who experience it, we are able to better understand what it takes to manage the illness. While chronic fatigue can manifest differently in every person, there are widely accepted approaches to its management that seem to positively impact the quality of life of those who experience it. Today, we’re taking a closer look at the cyclical nature of chronic fatigue and what that means for your overall health and wellness. Let’s dive in.
What the Cycle of Fatigue Means
When we say that chronic fatigue is cyclical, what we mean is that it hardly–if ever–presents as a monotonous and unwavering series of symptoms. Rather, chronic fatigue has periods of remission–during which symptoms are milder and more manageable–as well as periods during which symptoms are far more intense.
The cyclical nature of chronic fatigue can take a considerable toll on the mental health of those who experience it: after a period of remission, a flare-up can feel tremendously disappointing to some–or even like some kind of personal failure to others. If this is something you have experienced or struggled with, understand that you are not alone–and that your illness, however difficult to define, is a medical condition that exists independently of your worth as a person.
Just because chronic fatigue is cyclical does not mean that it is necessarily regular. While some patients may experience relatively consistent flare-ups and remissions, others may experience them more sporadically. Holistic medical treatment is often an effective solution when it comes to regulating chronic fatigue cycles, making flare-ups less intense or frequent.
What We Know About Chronic Fatigue
One of the most important things we know about chronic fatigue is also one of the most mystifying: it can vary in both cause and symptoms between individuals who experience it. Chronic fatigue often occurs in tandem with other health conditions, including kidney disease, depression, anemia, infections, lung disease, liver disease, cancer, and more.
For many patients, chronic fatigue symptoms can improve as their other health condition does. For others, the connection isn’t so cut-and-dried. For example, some patients may experience chronic fatigue in conjunction with mental health conditions that may or may not be diagnosed. The same may be true for specific illnesses or physical conditions. For others, the root cause of chronic fatigue may be a combination of genetic, lifestyle, and biological factors.
Why Our Approach Matters
The point of the above is this: alleviating chronic fatigue symptoms in a meaningful and lasting way isn’t about prescribing a sleeping medication and calling it a day; it’s about investigating what the underlying causes of the condition are for each individual, then coming up with a holistic treatment plan that addresses those conditions. Chronic fatigue is complex, but one fact is simple: it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is often inextricably tied to other factors at the physical, mental, or emotional level, and the best treatment plans are the ones that don’t try to isolate the disease, but rather treat it as the sum of its parts.
Functional medicine is an approach to patient care that seeks to go beyond symptoms at face value. Instead, it places an emphasis on finding the root cause of an illness or symptom in order to treat it for the long-term and prevent recurrence. Because this approach is so customizable based on the unique needs of the patient, it has been a successful option in chronic fatigue treatment.
What It Means for Your Care
Everybody is different, and their healthcare should reflect this. When it comes to chronic conditions, putting a damper on symptoms does little to help patients achieve long-term relief. Rather, the most important thing to do is to dig deep into a person’s medical history, genetic makeup, family history, and lifestyle habits in order to create a holistic health profile. In doing this, a skilled functional medicine physician can look for and find patterns that may be connected to chronic fatigue. From there, the physician and patient can work together to come up with a course of treatment that addresses those underlying causes and helps with chronic fatigue management in a sustainable way.
At Your Private Physician, we combine traditional medical care and the holistic functional approach in order to help our patients achieve healthier, happier lives with relief from chronic fatigue. If you’re interested in learning more about our approach and whether it might work for you, don’t hesitate to schedule your first consultation with us.