She's just so tired ....

I'm going to share a story with you about a client of mine. She is a woman in her mid-40s who was feeling tired, overwhelmed and was in constant pain. She knew something wasn't right but was having trouble getting the answers she needed. She kept pushing through the discomfort, as she had for years, but every year it was becoming harder and harder to ignore. Not someone who often asked for help, she finally broke down and scheduled an appt with her primary care doc. After running some basic labs, he told her that what she was experiencing was "just what happens as you get older". Then he told her that other than now being prediabetic and having high blood pressure, her "numbers were normal".  Because diabetes ran in her family, he gave her a prescription for metformin to help slow the progression of diabetes and another script for blood pressure medication. He sent her on her way with the prescriptions and she left with no answers or validation of how she felt. 

She tried to self-treat by drinking more coffee, trying meditation (which she hated), taking licorice root (she had heard it helps adrenal fatigue by extending the life of cortisol), and various other supplements to help perk her up, but nothing was working. It didn't matter how long she slept, she was tired and had no energy. The idea of being up and functional for more than a few hours a day was something she dreamed of but felt deep down inside was simply impossible now. She was moody, constantly argued with her partner, and had little patience with her kids or her friends. Everyone wanted something, and she was just burnt out with nothing left to give.

Sound familiar?

The reality is that many women over 40 are experiencing the same things. They are tired, gaining weight, in pain, and just not feeling like themselves. They keep trying to ignore what is going on by self-treating individual symptoms and more often than not, they are causing more damage. They believe they know what to do, but nothing they are doing is working. They keep feeling more and more exhausted, anxious, frustrated, and to make matters worse, they are either gaining weight or unable to lose the weight they have gained. They keep trying to figure it out and get quickly overwhelmed with all the information out there, trying any recommendation they read from a social media post, a magazine or influencer they follow.  They are just too tired and frustrated to try and sort through it all and they start to lose hope that they will ever "feel better".

My client, like most women, blame "stress" for why they are tired and gaining weight, and to most, stress means external stressors like work, life demands, etc.  My client had a good job and a loving family, but like many people, her life was not stress-free. She was juggling work and home responsibilities, trying to keep everyone happy, and feeling the pressure to be perfect. She was sure that once her life became less stressful, her health would be restored, and she'd feel better.

Of course, as she looked around at her life, she realized that there was no way to eliminate stress altogether. She wasn't going to leave her husband, sell her children, or quit her job and remain unemployed. While she knew she could learn some things to help her better respond to external stressors, she wasn't going to be able to remove them. This realization made her feel hopeless. 

She felt overwhelmed by all the information out there and was just too tired and frustrated to try anything else. She'd already tried so many things, and nothing seemed to work. Again, she wondered if she would ever feel like herself again. She just knew that stress was the culprit, and now that she realized she couldn't eliminate it, she felt stuck. She didn't know where to turn, and the thought of trying something new seemed too daunting.