The world belongs to those who have energy, but when you’re exhausted everything is a struggle.
Fatigue impacts the lives of millions of people, however in order to tackle it we need to know what’s causing it, and how to fix it!
I’m going to cover 4 common underlying problems (you’ve never been told).
Including:
- Inefficient blood flow through the heart
- Parasites
- Chronic stress
- Obesity.
What Is Fatigue?
Fatigue is a feeling of tiredness (mental, physical or both) that isn’t relieved by rest.
Physical fatigue is the inability of muscle to perform optimally and is made worse by exercise.
While, mental fatigue is the inability to maintain optimal cognitive performance due long periods mental activity.
Gaps In Medical Testing
Medical tests are fantastic, but they can miss a lot of information.
A patient could be 150kg, fatigued, sweating, migraines, emotional, can’t sleep and feels anxious, but the doctor can often tell them there’s nothing wrong.
This is because Western medicine is a fantastic disease management system, but has nothing to do with optimal health.
It’s incredible for emergency and trauma care, but inherently flawed when it comes to chronic health problems like fatigue.
Here are the 4 most common causes of fatigue I see everyday in my clinic.
1. Heart Disease
What kills most people? Cardiovascular disease.
When somebody has a heart attack, they haven’t just developed heart disease, they’ve been working on it for 30 years!
Testing for a number of heart problems is poor. This is why the first symptom of heart disease in Western medicine is a heart attack.
This means up until the point of a heart attack, a patent could be told they have a heart like a baby.
Why Is This a Problem?
One of the most common types of heart problems I see in my office is an Inefficient blood flow through the heart.
This is called “blood stasis” in Chinese medicine and is a problem that millions of people have, but don’t know it.
When the heart is clogged up, there are common symptoms/signs a patient will have: a undefined radial pulse near the left wrist, fatigue, anxiety, poor sleep and sometimes chest pains at times.
This is not a trivial problem, it will eventually kill you, but can take 30 years to do it
The reason cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death is because there needs to be a substantial blockage to trigger conventional tests.
Problems such as coronary blockages, mitral and aortic valve problems, coronary spasms or constriction and more can all be missed.
How To Know If You Have It?
Patients often know something’s not quite right but are reassured by their doctors that it’s just in their head.
The most western medicine can do is give an aspirin or a happy pill.
A treadmill stress test won’t be ordered unless there are complaints of chest pain (often not felt by patients).
An angiogram won’t be ordered unless they fail a treadmill test, which may only see blockages beyond 70%
This means a patient can pass with flying colours with a 50% blockage. This can be seen with an angiogram, but the test is dangerous and often avoided.
An EKG won’t spot this, but it will spot a bundle branch block, or an erratic heart beat from electrical problems.
In Chinese medicine, we have a reliable way to diagnose inefficient blood flow through the heart in it’s early stages, a diagnostic tool called pulse diagnosis.
This can pick up problems in the heart in their pre clinical stages and even differentiate between valve, coronary spasms and arteriosclerosis.
What Causes Heart Problems?
If the patient is thin, chronic stress is a common cause for coronary artery constriction and spasms.
But, how can chronic stress possibly cause heart problems?
During periods of stress, stress hormones are released into the blood stream. The release of stress hormone results in an increased heart rate and constriction of the vessels around the heart.
Mitral valve problems are different, often beginning in childhood from fevers that damage the heart, creating a murmur.
When this happens, when the left ventricle contracts, instead of the blood moving into the ascending aorta, some of the blood is regurgitating into the left atrium.
This means not all the blood is getting into the aorta.
Now every time the heart beats, there’s a 1-2% reduction of blood, oxygen, nutrient back into the heart muscle.
What do you think happens after 20 years? The heart becomes anaemic and weak.
This valve problem is a common cause of fatigue in up to 50% of women and can be helped with Chinese medicine.
Western medicine would know this too if they went through the data and saw that 95% of people with mitral valve problems felt fatigued.
Dietary habits also play a role in the development of heart disease, particularly eating too much sugar and processed carbohydrates.
How To Treat It?
First, differentiating between, restricted blood flow, a valve problem, coronary constriction, spasm or more is important.
The reason mitral valve murmurs and tricuspid valve murmurs are ignored in Western medicine is because they’re classified as systolic murmurs and considered not important. Unless the valve fails.
(Then they’ll tell you to be close to a hospital).
In Chinese medicine, this is heart disease and must be treated in order to be healthy.
For restricted blood flow through the heart, herbal medicine is prescribed to increase blood flow through the heart, and clear excess fluid build up.
For mitral valve problems, herbal medicines are used to move blood flow and strengthen the mitral valve.
In coronary constriction, herbal medicine is prescribed to widen the vessel to encourage normal blood flow.
This will be enough to return energy to normal. These problems can be helped quickly but can take 3-5 months of herbal medicine to have a long lasting impact.
2. Parasites
What did the world health organisation describe as an epidemic? Parasitic infections.
The world health organisation estimated 500million to 1 billion people are infected with parasites ( 1 in every 7 people).
These bugs are a major cause of fatigue, poor digestion and sleeping disorders.
Why Are They A Problem?
Parasites can lay dormant in the large intestine for years without causing any trouble.
However when you become overwhelmed with stress or if your immune system drops, they can take over and become pathogenic.
They can get into the liver, spleen, brain, but mostly live in the large colon.
Generally these patients are tired for a few days, then fine. They don’t feel sick, but they don’t feel well either.
People can forget what it feels like to be normal, as if someone has sucked the life out of them.
How Do You Get Them?
Overseas travel, eating street food, swimming in rivers, drinking the water in underdeveloped countries.
Trips to Mexico, Egypt, KL, Indonesia, South America India, Kenya, Bali, Fiji, Malaysia, Nepal, China, and Africa will increase your chances.
These countries are filled with parasites, however it’s possible from drinking rain water from home water tanks and pets that lick your face.
How Do You Know If You Have Them?
1. A stool test over three consecutive bowel motions.
The problem is standard stool tests often don’t identify a common type of parasite called entamoeba’s because they don’t leak off into the stool.
The best way identify entamoeba’s is to swab the side of the large colon because they live in the mucoid.
2. Chinese herbs are designed to make you feel a lot better, It’s long been known in China that when patients get strange reactions to Chinese herbs, it’s may indicate parasite.
3. Digestive issues that aren’t getting better with treatment or dietary changes, accompanied with poor sleep, fatigue, dark circles under the eyes and no vitality in their face.
How To Treat Them?
One problem is doctors aren’t trained to treat them until they’re abscessed in organs such as the liver.
In fact treatment is often better in underdeveloped countries because they know what they’re looking for.
Some parasites are difficult to spot because they look like white blood cells, such as entamoeba histolytica.
The problem is there aren’t many doctors that have a strong track record of identifying entamoeba’s.
Therefore it’s important to find someone, usually a gastroenterologist that can identify and treat them.
They have to be killed with strong drugs.
In Chinese medicine “Wu Mei Wan” would be prescribed to these types of patients due to the odd reactions to previous herbs, their digestive upset, reflux and poor sleep.
It will help symptoms but it won’t completely kill the bugs.
Some natural health practitioners will tell you that Wormwood (Qing Hao), will kill them but I’m not fully convinced.
Therefore, I would not rely completely on herbal medicines to do the job.
Anti-parasitic/antibiotic drugs do a reliable job, such as Tinidazole, Paromomysin, Flagyl, and metronidazole.
Once the parasites are gone, now is the optimal time to use Chinese medicine to rebuild the patients health.
3. Chronic Stress
I see this a lot in in my clinic. A large proportion of these people have experienced trauma in their life.
This is a low grade fight or flight response continuing beyond the traumatic event, resulting in constant worry and fatigue.
What Causes It?
During times of stress the blood stream is flooded with stress hormone (epinephrine, adrenalin, cortisol), and the body is pushed into a sympathetic dominant state to survive the threat.
If we survive, we’re is supposed to go back to normal, but many people that don’t go back to normal. They stay in low grade stress response.
They have cortisol, adrenalin, epinephrine being released into the blood stream, from the adrenal gland. This makes their mind overactive.
This should not be confused with a mental problem, because it’s mostly physical.
The adrenal gland has been so overworked for so long that it becomes fatigued.
What happens when the adrenal gland becomes weak? It releases more stress hormone into the blood stream!
For example. A child exposed to alcoholic parents and their antics every night, doesn’t know what the next night will bring.
Their little bodies are flooded with stress hormone necessary to survive the violence.
The problem is their stress hormones were supposed to return back to normal, but don’t.
They become stuck between a low grade and full blown fight or flight response.
Now, their brain is on red alert. They can’t relax and become tired and anxious.
How Do You Know If You Have it?
In Chronic cases, blood tests show sometimes show elevated stress hormone.
A fast and reliable way is through Chinese pulse diagnosis, it can palpate the activity of the adrenal gland within seconds.
Patient’s with this problem have an uneasiness about them, a subliminal fearfulness.
They have a history of PTSD, a failing business, childhood trauma, car accidents, seeing somebody die, military combat and more.
These people have a facial expression that resembles a deer in the head lights and produces behaviours that are controlling.
It’s the control that helps them feel safe.
They stay busy, because if they sit down, the fear comes. To avoid that, they stay busy until they drop.
They cannot relax and it’s not their fault, it’s their overactive adrenal gland. They’re being run by adrenalin.
They can become very successful but they will drive everyone around them nuts.
These people are scared, and find it difficult to trust others. They talk themselves out of everything.
They have to do everything on holidays, they can’t sit still, they have lots of energy but it’s borrowed energy.
Why Is It A Problem?
The long term impact of high stress hormone flooding the body is quite remarkable.
Including high blood pressure, heart disease, damage to muscle tissue, growth inhibition, poor sleep, suppression of the immune system, damage to mental health and more.
Having too much cortisol and epinephrine in the blood stream weakens the heart overtime and leads to heart problems.
The endocrine system releases epinephrine, causing the blood vessels to contract and the heart rate to increase.
Cortisol (a stress hormone) causes glucose levels in the blood to rise. This is designed to give the body more energy during times of duress.
Unfortunately, this chemical activity is continuous, causing wear and tear, and premature ageing.
How To Treat It?
The adrenal gland is strange in that when it’s weak, it pumps out more hormone.
Therefore, we need to strengthen the adrenal gland to calm the stress hormones.
When the adrenal gland is strengthened and the stress response is calmed down, patients feel more calm.
Unfortunately there’s nothing in western medicine that can fix this.
They can give you happy pills but as long as the adrenals are releasing stress hormone, there will always be uneasiness.
I’ve helped many patents with Chinese herbal medicine to reduce stress hormone levels in the blood by calming the sympathetic response and strengthening the adrenal gland.
4. Excess Weight
It’s estimated for every extra 4.5kg of weight on the abdomen, blood flow through to our organs is cut by 50%.
Considering that blood carries everything our organs need to function properly, means excess abdominal fat has huge implications to our internal health.
With a restricted supply of blood, oxygen and nutrient, the patient will feel fatigued.
The heart is forced to push harder to pump blood through squashed vessels.
E.g. What happens when blood flow slows through the portal vein and hepatic artery that feeds the liver?
It increases the likelihood waste product building up. There will be physical and mental fatigue.
The probability of developing non-alcoholic liver disease skyrockets.
When the liver is clogged up it can turn serious. Leading to liver damage and cells may be replaced by scar tissue.
How Is It Treated?
There’s no treatment in Western medicine. Losing weight and exercise is recommended.
In Chinese medicine this can be treated.
When the physiology is improved, so too will it improve the physical and mental fatigue.
Treatment includes moving the garbage out of the liver by strongly increasing blood flow through the liver.
Pushing blood flow throughout the body will improve the patients energy and return their motivation to follow a effective dietary plan to drop excess weight.
Occasionally, the thyroid is involved and requires attention.
3 Points To Remember
1. Fatigue has a number of underlying factors such as heart dis-ease, parasites, chronic stress and obesity.
2. Chinese medicine has a strong track record in supporting all of these problems by restoring the bodies normal function.
3. Reading this article has given you great insight into some of the causes of fatigue. Take the next step by booking an appointment with me here.
About The Author
I’m a registered Acupuncturist and Chinese medicine practitioner in Melbourne, Australia, and have written a number of eBooks including The Pocketbook guide to Chinese medicine. Connect with me on Facebook and Instagram
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