Help for Chronic Fatigue in York

There are two parts to therapy for chronic fatigue.

1. Managing Energy

This means learning skills needed to break out of the cycle of energy boom and bust. Learning to manage stress effectively is an important aspect of this.

Biofeedback and mindfulness based therapy can help.

2. Addressing Underlying Causes

The first task is to identify causes - there may be several, and people suffering chronic fatigue are not all the same. See the adjacent column. I use cutting-edge functional laboratory testing to identify the causes in each individual. This enables us to create a personalised programme of nutritional therapy, which uses both diet and nutritional supplements to support the body's healing.

Fatigue is a symptom in many illnesses. There can be several causal factors such as:

• Low thyroid function (hypothyroid) - may be "sub-clinical" (and not picked up by standard tests).
• Weak adrenal gland function (low cortisol levels) perhaps triggered by long term stress.
• Diabetes and its precursor, insulin resistance, which is assoicated with poor blood sugar control, which leads to cells being starved of fuel.
• Anaemia - usually associated with nutritional deficiency, most commonly iron but can also be e.g. vitamin B12.
• Toxic overload - the body's detoxification systems may be weakened or overwhelmed, creating a vicious spiral of toxicity.
• Poor cellular energy production, due to damaged mitochondria (the cells' energy factories). This in turn may be caused by toxic overload or by immune system imbalance leading to uncontrolled inflammation.

A related condition is fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia may be caused by some of the same factors.