When is FATIGUE or TIREDNESS considered a SICKNESS?

Everybody has met fatigue periods but what happens when fatigue becomes so intense that our daily activities are affected, that we still feel tired all the time despite rest or that we simply feel 'lazy'?

This sort of severe and disabling fatigue affects a lot of people all over the world. It is not uncommon patients go through great extent to seek help including consulting doctors for severe fatigue.

However when fatigue is intense, when it lasts and affects quality of life, it should be treated because the root of many diseases is due to lack of energy, thus disrupting the normal functioning of our body.

We do get tired, but when is it considered normal or abnormal tiredness? Am I suffering from 'disabling fatigue'?

We suffer from tiredness when we exerts a big physical or mental effort: the body lacks energy and muscle pain appears. Likewise, we find it difficult to concentration after an emotional stress or overwork. However, this tiredness disappears in few days with good rest and refreshing sleep.

Abnormal or disabling fatigue is when the extreme tiredness we experience has no apparent reasons. It has these characteristics:

• It is not directly related to a specific effort or to an increase in activity
• It is prolonged
• It appears after an illness
• It affects normal daily activity
• It impairs quality of life

Am I suffering from 'disabling fatigue'?

Symptoms related to disabling fatigue have diverse origins that we can classify into 2 categories:

• Physical symptoms: lack of energy, lack of strength, difficulty to carry out daily tasks, alteration in cardiac rhythm, including at rest.

• Psychological symptoms: decrease in attention, learning difficulties, tiredness feeling, demotivated, feeling down, sleeping disorders.

What are the causes of 'disabling fatigue'?

• Medical cause:
• Acute infections: due to a virus (e.g.  flu or hepatitis), bacteria (e.g : tuberculosis), parasite (e.g. malaria) or fungus (e.g. ringworm). 50% of all cases of disabling fatigue are caused by infections.
• Chronic diseases (long term diseases) : diabetes, neurological diseases, cardiovascular diseases, anemia (iron deficiency), cancers etc.
• Post-surgery or post-general anaesthesia
• Hormonal imbalance: during menstruation, menopause
• Physical cause:
• Excessive physical exertion
• Over vigorous sports activity
• Psychological cause:
• Change of life (divorce, relocation, trauma)
• Psychological shock

How the muscles are affected by 'disabling fatigue'?

• Muscles stop working normally and instead of eliminating waste, they accumulate it.
• Consequences are muscular fatigue and cramps.
• If there is no action taken to eliminate waste due to muscular activities, the muscle saturates and an intense and chronic fatigue settles.

How to we treat disabling fatigue?

• Rest is necessary but not sufficient on its own for recovery.
• It is essential you consult your doctor to identify and treat causes of fatigue (infection, chronic disease…) but also to take care of the consequences and eliminate the toxic waste accumulated in the muscles.
• A combination therapy aiming at improving OXYGENATION, BLOOD CIRCULATION, NUTRITIONAL THERAPY and DETOXIFICATION would be able ideal to assist the body to heal completely.
• Come schedule an appointment at DamaiMedic Klinik dan Surgeri, Kota Kinabalu to resolve your disabling fatigue effectively.

The Value of Doing a Blood Test and Medical Check Up at DamaiMedic Kota Kinabalu

Often I get questions from patients asking what are the real differences between different medical check up or blood test packages offered in my clinic compared to other clinics, labs and hospitals offering similar tests.

Well, I am not going to explain the technicalities of the functions of different tests thus its intrinsic value. I will explain that in person during consultation.

Here, I am going to give you some principles about why and how certain medical packages are designed and thus priced.

Medical check ups and blood tests done for healthy people (no symptoms yet) are designed to screen for diseases. We screen for diseases that we think are common and relevant to patients. Screening are seldom done to diagnosed rare diseases. If they do they would probably be very expensive. Imagine there are thousands of laboratory tests checking for thousands of medical conditions. It is impractical to do everything which is likened to searching for a needle in a hay-sack.

Unfortunately we as clinicians are seeing many medical labs providing direct excess to patients by just 'walk in' and asking for a medical blood tests to be done without seeing a doctor first. Is there anything wrong with that? Well, not actually until the patient starts asking questions like:

• DO I HAVE DENGUE IF MY PLATELETS ARE LOW?
• DO I REALLY HAVE CANCER IF MY CANCER MARKER IS HIGH?
• DO I NEED TO START MEDICATION IF MY CHOLESTEROL IS ABOVE THE NORMAL RANGE?
• IS MY TIREDNESS CAUSED BY MY ABNORMAL LIVER FUNCTION TEST?
• CAN I CONTINUE TAKING THIS MEDICINE IF MY KIDNEY FUNCTION TEST IS ABNORMAL?
• WHAT SHOULD I DO IF MY HEPATITIS B SCREENING SHOWS THAT I HAVE POSITIVE ANTIBODIES AGAINST HEPATITIS B?

These questions, putting it plainly sounds like this,"So what does it mean, and what should I do next?"

These questions could not and SHOULD NOT be answered by a pharmacist, a laboratory technologist, a sales consultant or anybody who did perform a physical medical examination on that patient. Who else is competent, qualified and has the authority to examine a patient except a medical doctor? PhD doctors are not the same as a licensed medical doctor so please don't be confused.

I should say that an "unhealthy" trend is becoming rampant in our country lately whereby patients themselves order blood tests from a private medical laboratory and bring the report to the doctor for interpretation. I wonder why the patient did not go to a doctor first to check what is wrong with him/her and then decide what blood tests to order.

Let me illustrate with an analogy to help you understand better. Imagine you are trying to catch a thief who got wet from the rain and ran into a hotel with 100 rooms and the thief hid in one of those rooms. How would you catch this thief? Are you going to open and search every single room? No, of course! You would try to get clues from the foot prints the wet thief left behind and trace it to the specific room the thief is in. That way you will catch the thief by opening just one door! Well the foot prints leading to the door are comparable to a good history taking and physical examination by the doctor. Only then can the doctor be able to order the appropriate tests and come to a diagnosis with all the information obtained.

A good doctor can help you save by not wasting money doing unnecessary tests. He would know which area of the body to focus on to identify the problem. That makes a big difference in the pricing of the medical check up packages offered.

The quality and value of the medical check up does not depend on how expensive the health screening package is and not how many tests done (as if the more the better). Rather, it is how focused the tests are directed in helping the doctor arrive at a correct diagnosis. 

Medical blood test results need to be interpreted accordingly. Another analogy would be like the metal detector at the airport. If you trigger the alarm of the walk-through metal detector at the airport, it doesn't mean that you carrying an explosive. The officer will frisk you to further investigate. If it turns out that it was your metal belt buckle which triggered the alarm, the security officer will let you go without any further question. Similarly, screening blood test should not be taken as the absolute conclusive evidence of disease, nor should medical decisions be made solely on the blood results. I cannot overemphasize the importance of a good history taking and physical examination in any health screening. Many incidental findings of medical problems are picked up this way. 

Schedule an appointment for a standard medical check up today. Rest assured you will be seen by a doctor for both physical check up and interpretation of lab results. 

The blood test packages we offer are as follows: