Change in lifestyle can ease fatigue

Do you often look at your friends and associates and wonder where their high energy level comes from? You are tired most of the time and have little zest for tackling new ideas. Some days you are just too tired to get out of bed in the morning and start the day. Your normal number of sleeping hours hasn’t helped. In fact, after eight hours of rest, you feel just as tired as you did the night before.

Mental health professionals often hear complaints of unexplained chronic fatigue and lethargy. Most of these people have already added extra vitamins, health foods and over-the-counter remedies to their daily regimen.

If you have unexplained symptoms of fatigue, you may want to examine your lifestyle and make some changes.

Mental health professionals may suggest these steps:

• A thorough examination by your family physician. Discuss with him all contributing factors, any unusual stress caused by personal events. Talk about diet, exercise, your home and work environment, heredity, past illnesses or periods of depression.

• Look at your family life. If there is a relationship within the family circle that is creating tension or unhappiness, be realistic about this situation. Do you and your spouse, your children, your parents or your siblings have a healthy communication pattern?

• Are you good to yourself? Do you plan time for yourself during the day to indulge in a hobby, read for your own pleasure, simply relax and let your pressures and drudgeries vanish from your mind? Do you give yourself a vacation? Do you mentally or physically escape on a holiday?

• Examine your chosen vocation. Are you happy and satisfied with your work? Is the pressure too great – or too slow paced? Are you bored? Do you enjoy being around your fellow employees? Is there harmony in the work force?

• Evaluate your spiritual status. Are you at peace with yourself? Many people who are involved in a constant struggle about religious beliefs, moral and ethical values or who have developed guilt complexes may need spiritual counseling and guidance.

• Have you lost your sense of humor? Laughing a little each day is a tension breaker, a way to wipe the slate clean and start over again in tackling new problems. Humor often results in mental relaxation that refreshes and produces renewed determination to take a fresh look at an old annoying problem.

Separate chronic fatigue from actual fatigue. There is a so-called “good” tired feeling that is a result of physical labor or exercise. A feeling of accomplishment and exhilaration rewards the runner who has completed a 10-K run or a swimmer who has just finished 10 laps or a person who has just mowed the lawn or washed the windows. Many of us have fond memories playing all day and halfway into the night on long, lazy summer days without every complaining of being tired.

The body’s ability to restore itself occurred after a good night’s sleep and we were ready to go like a dynamo the next morning.

Health care professionals constantly urge individuals to exercise enough to feel physically tired, a feeling that induces sound rest thereby producing energy.

When you know the reason you feel tired, it doesn’t bother you or rob you of energy. Not knowing or not being able to explain fatigue is the problem.

Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D. Copyright 1989