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Chronic fatigue: how do you know if it's time for a vacation?
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
Working to the point of exhaustion, household chores, children, responsibilities to older relatives – it would seem, what’s so special about this? Everyone lives like this… However, doctors are sounding the alarm: chronic fatigue in the last 20 years has begun to develop into a clinical form and cause real, serious health problems.
The term " chronic fatigue syndrome " appeared in the early 1980s and was not initially perceived as a set of exclusively medical problems. A little later, a second term appeared - "manager's syndrome", which automatically excluded women who were not employed from the list of chronically tired people - as it turned out, in vain... Today, doctors and psychologists suggest dividing the manifestations of chronic fatigue into three phases, so that everyone can understand when it is time to stop and rest.
Evening apathy phase
If in the evening after work or finishing some household chores you do not have the strength to go to the cinema or to visit, or even just to walk around the neighborhood - this is an alarming sign. As a rule, such a state indicates the inability to automatically switch from stress mode to rest mode. Of course, if one of your family members or friends "pulls" you out to unwind - most likely, you will be able to relax and rest. But not on your own initiative.
What to do at this stage? Reduce the load, delegate tasks to other people, analyze your diet and assess your well-being. The fact is that sometimes chronic fatigue is associated with a protein deficiency in the diet, a vitamin B1 deficiency, as well as chronic liver and thyroid diseases.
Sleep disturbance phase
This is a more serious stage in the accumulation of chronic fatigue. All day long you feel a lack of energy, it is difficult for you to concentrate and you constantly want to sleep. You drink tea and coffee, try to artificially cheer yourself up, but this is not enough for long. And when you seem to have already done all your work and are heading to the pillow - sleep disappears. You either cannot fall asleep at all, or fall into a deep oblivion - a superficial sleep that not only does not give you rest, but also overloads the brain even more. Another alarming moment that you should definitely pay attention to: a sharp decrease or disappearance of libido, when, in the presence of a beloved partner, the very thought of having sex poisons the evening hours. The reason is the same chronic fatigue, which always reduces the synthesis of sex hormones.
How to help yourself? Here you need radical solutions - at least a week's vacation without any contact with work (although everyone understands that people who devote most of their lives to their duties, with great difficulty stop such contacts even for a few days). Relaxing procedures, massages, swimming in the pool - all this can help to recover, provided that these effects are pleasant for you. Those who do not tolerate tactile impact should go on an interesting excursion, in no way connected with work or everyday life. In any case - you need to radically change the "picture" before your eyes.
Phase of somatic disorders
At this stage, you cannot do without qualified medical care - long-term mental and physical stress begins to seriously affect your health. Here is a list of symptoms characteristic of the third phase: chronic headache (especially "behind the eyes" or in the occipital region), digestive disorders (constipation, pain in the epigastrium), cardiac arrhythmia, a feeling of numbness in the limbs, exacerbation of radiculitis, osteochondrosis, arthritis. In even more serious cases, women may lose their periods, begin to experience pain in the mammary glands, and men begin to have problems with potency. The cause of all these ailments is a special "redistribution" in the endocrine system, which reconfigures itself from normal physiology (when a person wants, as nature intended, to eat, drink, sleep, have sex, etc.), to an abnormal one - work. That is, a person begins to turn himself into a "cadavre" whose only function is endless work...
If you notice that something like this is happening to you, go to a good doctor and have your body fully screened – from blood and urine tests to CT scans of the brain and abdominal cavity. Alas, the body rarely forgives us for such a rejection of simple human joys…
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