The subject of Energy in its various expressions has always piqued my interest. As human beings, we are capable of sensing energy being present or absent in our mind-body and environment. I have authored numerous articles and posts about Masaru Emoto’s experiments with frozen water crystals to document how invisible energy changes the structure of water, and since we are mostly water – how energy affects every aspect of our livelihood. Today I wanted to expand this discussion to include the most common complaint we hear as doctors when patients come into the office: fatigue or lack of energy.
Fatigue from a Functional Medicine Perspective
A simple definition of fatigue is a subjective sensation of physical, cognitive, and emotional tiredness, which interferes with daily life’s activities. As a result of feeling this way, the patient will feel burnt out, miss days of work, experience brain fog, anxiety, and sometimes even depression and pain.
To a Functional physician, Fatigue represents a loss of Energy balance. The most challenging to treat are those patients who have chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). By the time they came to see me, most of them were evaluated already, and no medical or psychiatric reason was found for their chronic tiredness.
Diagnosing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Classically, for the diagnosis of CFS to be made, the fatigue must be present for at least 6 months continuously and at least 4 out of these 8 symptoms should be present:
- Tender neck lymph nodes
- Sore throat
- Joint pain
- Muscle pain
- Headaches
- Un-refreshing sleep
- Impaired memory or concentration
- Unusual malaise after exertion
An extensive list of medical diseases should be ruled out before someone receives a diagnosis of CFS. This means that a thorough laboratory and diagnostic radiology workup has been done first.
Conventional Treatments for CFS
Most patients with CFS who came to see me, desperate for holistic solutions, have already tried either antidepressants, analgesics, or antivirals. For most of them, these conventional treatments did not hold much promise. I feel that what was missing for these folks was a Functional Medicine approach because it considers all the subtle often missed possibilities underlying chronic non-specific fatigue. Special attention is paid here to Antecedent contributors, which could have been at play beyond a patient’s control, like their mother’s pre-natal stress levels, their genetic predispositions via testing, detailed family history of fatigue or other functional symptoms.
Another close consideration is given to the triggering events in a patient’s life like infections, allergic reactions, physical or emotional trauma, exposure to new medications or supplements, exposure to environmental toxins or mold, or abrupt dietary and/or lifestyle changes.
Functional doctors will take time “digging for” other perpetrators of fatigue, like family and job environment, alcohol or drug use, nutrient deficiencies and much more. We need to understand and build a solid doctor-patient relationship to understand our patient’s experience, and this cannot be a rushed process. We should then identify and remove the obstacles to the body’s normal functioning.
Lifestyle Modifications in Treating Fatigue
Fatigue is often a result of imbalanced relationships between various body systems, and the treatments often involve a detailed modification of lifestyle routines. I also collaborate with my patients on optimizing their sleep, breathing, and heart rate variability, tweaking their exercise routines, and putting together a customized dietary plan chock full of nutrients and vitamins. I see one of my healing roles as that of a holistic coach who works with my patients regularly to help them balance their interpersonal relationships and sometimes deal with stress, isolation, or grief. These especially important attributes of our consciousness are essential to how we perceive fatigue or pain…
For some patients with energy imbalances – I use Ondamed – a low-frequency pulsed electromagnetic fields technology – a painless way to deliver the right cellular electromagnetic frequencies wherever they are needed the most.
In treating CFS, the supplements I recommend are customized to each patient, provide metabolic support, maintain cellular membrane integrity, mitigate the effects of oxidative stress on the body, and provide detoxification or inflammation reduction if necessary. These supplement recommendations are uniquely tailored in their composition, dosage, and duration for each patient because I believe that a cookie-cutter approach to supplements, where people just take those vitamins and supplements, they see being sold on TV or radio, can be detrimental rather than helpful.
By empowering my patients with the tools to manage these pieces of the healthy energy puzzle, I am healing the person as a whole energetic being, rather than just treating their disease.
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