Information on fatigue and insomnia

by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP

In both my professional and personal life, I’ve learned first hand that stress has the tendency to feed on itself. This means symptoms of stress — like insomnia, fuzzy thinking and fatigue — often lead right back to stress and make it worse. At times it seems like you’ll be stuck in the stress loop forever!

The truth is that we have to address each woman’s stress individually, looking closely at emotional and lifestyle patterns. Conventional practitioners rarely have the time to sit and discuss a woman’s personal and emotional well-being, so they hand out prescriptions for antidepressants and sleeping pills or encourage patients to “simply relax,” when we all know it’s not really that easy! On the contrary, being told to relax can lead to more anxiety and stress — and prescriptions for depression, anxiety, or insomnia are just short-term solutions that don’t address the real problem and may even make it worse.

Many women who feel chronic fatigue and stress ask, What’s wrong with me? It’s as if they’ve somehow missed out on a secret for juggling competing needs. The bottom line is that we’ve all experienced stress, and many of us have seen the negative effects it has on our bodies. There are no secrets — except that each woman has to find relief on her own terms.

The articles in this section of our website look beneath the surface of fatigue, insomnia and stress to help you understand how these conditions arise in your body and what effects they have on your health. Gaining insight into the physiology of sleep, stress, and fatigue will allow you to begin charting your own course to recovery. We offer suggestions for restful sleep, restoring energy, and relieving stress. But keep in mind that what works for one woman may feed the stress loop in another. We’re all impacted by our personal histories in different ways. It won’t happen overnight, but I promise working toward restoring yourself will give you insight into your body and help you to feel better than ever!

Our most popular resources on fatigue, insomnia and stress

To access an article, just choose from the list of excerpts below. To find more articles, use the search function below. Don’t see a topic that’s important to you? Let us know.

• Chronic fatigue — get your energy back!
  Experiencing constant fatigue can seem like a normal state after months or years of enduring it, but you don’t have to feel depleted all the time. Learn about the many ways to address chronic fatigue, and renew your energy.
• What you can do about fuzzy thinking
  Many women worry about greater implications when it comes to memory lapses and trouble focusing, but fuzzy thinking can be very common during perimenopause. Here’s a look at some root causes that may be leading to your brain fog and what you can do about it. Includes links to our pages on ADHD and Alzheimer’s disease.
• Insomnia in women: reset your inner clock
  Sleep is essential for your body to restore itself, but in today’s constantly “plugged-in” world it’s easy to disrupt your circadian rhythm and end up awake during the hours you want to be sleeping. Here’s a commonsense approach to resetting your rhythms and getting the sleep your body needs and deserves.

 

Last Modified Date: 04/20/2011
Principal Author: Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP