Imagine going to bed exhausted. You may not have done much throughout the day but your body tells you that you must have run a marathon today. You lie down and are ready to enter the dream world when the itching begins. You scratch and itch to the point where sometimes you draw blood and naturally you cannot sleep. You end up rising again, because the sheer frustration of wanting to sleep but being unable to is psychologically draining as well as exhausting.
It may be the early hours of the morning before the itching subsides enough and allows your head to wearily sink into that pillow once more. Then what? Well, depending on your lifestyle you might have to get up and go to work, or in my case, get up and see the kids off to school. Welcome to the vicious circle of what I call the fat-itch syndrome. You're exhausted anyway and sleep deprivation from itching just makes things magnify beyond belief.
So what can you do?
Unfortunately for the fatigue there isn't really any medicine out there that can help you with that, but you can try to take some control. Here's how:
- You can get medicine for the itching. At least if you can get a good night's sleep you can recharge some batteries.
- Pace yourself. Quite often the fatigue is cyclic, meaning that you feel great for part of the day before the fatigue comes home to roost. Alternatively, there may even be days when you have no fatigue at all. Myself, I feel great until around 4 pm and then I go downhill fast. Anything I need to do, I try to get done by mid afternoon.
- Mindset - Accept that your lifestyle might have to change. That doesn't mean "giving in" to the disease, it means acknowledging that your energy level might up and leave at any time so do what you can when you can and don't sweat the small stuff.
- Exercise; Yes I said exercise. I'm not nuts honest, and I do realize that the last thing you feel like doing when you're fatigued is exercising but if you can push yourself through that fatigue barrier then exercising can build up your energy level. I'm not saying go jogging, a simple walk will suffice.
