Anyone else perpetually tired?

I've worked in the medical field for most of my career and still my doctors could not figure out my fatigue...ever since I was in my late 20's until I was 40.

I went to a new doctor, he did all the normal screening tests (cell count, chem panel, thyroid, ...) and everything was normal. We further discussed the fatigue issue, he asked if I had been told to take iron during my pregnancy. Yes, I had. So he tested my iron, iron binding capacity, and ferritin levels. All were gravely low. So I must have rockin' bone marrow because I have never been anemic (technically anemia means your red cells do not carry enough hemaglobin or you do not have enough red cells) and used my own blood on our cell counting machine in the lab...as the normal comparator! And I was always normal!!!

My doctor believes that we generally only test American women for iron during pregnancy and that a bunch of us are walking around with very low iron levels...undetected because we haven't been pregnant for a while...and doctors don't follow up your iron levels once you have delivered anyway.

I believe that my iron is low due to extremely heavy menses and the modern diet that tends towards less red meat. Now that we have resolved the iron problem I feel great!

But a word of caution, do not go out and start taking iron to see if it works for you. Too much iron can be a very bad thing.

Other things that I would suggest for consideration with fatigue are thyroid (be sure they order TSH, T4, And T3 all together), vitamin D if you live north of the Mason-Dixon Line (anywhere that snows in the winter normally), and glucose.
 
The problem that was in that thread I linked to is that doctors are saying "your thyroid is normal" without testing free t3 and free t4 along with tsh. They just get tsh and say OK without getting the whole picture. Kind of like when doctors say you have high cholesterol and don't test for particle size.

They need to treat the symptoms, not try for some arbitrary number.
 
Well, I know the feeling. Been to three different Docs now in the past few years. First one was so stuck in his ways that he always said just take a vitamin. When I insisted, he checked me for thyroid and lupis. Nothing. His reasoning was that I had small children and therefore must always be tired. LOLOL

After fighting a constant cold and deep chest coughing problems (like over 2 yrs), I went back to this same Doc with a high fever. Well, Doc got called away to the hospital and his new Nurse Practioner took over. Great guy. Found a spot on my lung the size of an orange - pneumonia! After surviving that - and refused to be hospitalized - I went to see my original Doc's NP who was a female. What a relief! Diagnosised me with asthma and got me on allergy meds and inhalers. Man I could breath and my energy level went up! Even helped with my birth control for migraines.

Ok, so that lasted a while, but I still noticed I was dragging at certain times. So I started on a vitamin regimine - and diet with Herbalife. Love the stuff, but life has a way of making it hard to stick to. It really did help. And as someone already posted, vitamins 2 to 3 times a day is majorly helpful.

Well, this winter I have returned to a state of exhaustion. Yes, we travel a bunch with my girls competing in the ACHA. And I have a ton of animals here and all sorts of other responsibilities. However, my normal routine of diet, exercise (mainly riding and working horses) and asthma meds were not cutting it. So I made an appointment for this last Wednesday. New Doctor's office as my old NP has changed jobs.
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So new office gave me their NP who actually knows my old NP. YIPEE! And she was cool. Changed up my asthma meds and revisited issues with my headaches. Then got to looking at my records and asked why no one bothered to catch my high blood pressure!
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So now I am rearranging my diet yet again and started new medication for that. She told me to give it 3 to 4 weeks before I would feel much better. Great. Docs aren't all they are cracked up to be sometimes!

Very interesting thread and glad to know I am not alone in being forever exhausted.
 
I don't know what it is, but I fell tired all the time,too. Get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, tend animals, take a nap. Everyday. I found here recently that if I force myself to stay up all day, do some excersizes, nothing hard, stretch really I feel better during the day.
 

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