What Causes Chronic Fatigue?

Video Transcript

"DR. SUSAN JEWELL: Hello. My name is Dr. Susan Jewell, and on behalf of Expert Village today, I'm going to talk to you about how to treat fatigue. Now, in this clip, we're going to talk about some of the various causes of fatigue. Now, fatigue can present itself in many different conditions and situations. For example, most underlying fatigue, when patients come in to complain of fatigue, is usually caused by emotional stress and anxiety. That's actually the number one cause because of the way that we live our lives daily in the Western culture, we put ourselves into a lot of emotional pressures whether it's financial, relational, or any other family reasons that puts us under a lot pressure to perform and to achieve, so that puts us in a lot of stress, and stress and anxiety uses up a lot of energy and that will cause fatigue. There's what we call "psychosomatic" where it's more of a psychological condition that causes the fatigue. When they think a certain thinking mode, then that sort of puts up the whole mind in that mindset, and then it translates into the body's manifestation of fatigue. So, they're sad or depressed, and then they feel apathy and lethargy and so then, they feel that they have no energy, and then that translated into a physical presentation of fatigue. And illnesses as well, illnesses like mononucleosis can cause a very long chronic condition of fatigue where the person can present with months or maybe even years of just extreme fatigue where they just have no energy no matter what they do, whether they change their lifestyle or change their diet and nutrition to a healthier where they still cannot able to manage to pull their level of their energy level up to a point where they don't have to suffer from fatigue. Drugs as well, lifestyle, sedentary lifestyle will put a person as well at a risk of getting symptoms of fatigue."