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Anyone who is undergoing cancer treatment will be able to tell you that fatigue is one of the major challenges that they face every day. A high level of fatigue prevents them from completing simple tasks that they could have easily performed on any other day. They are unable to have a more social life and this affects their personal life. All these things combined plus feeling tired all the time can make them feel depressed and hopeless. In order to treat fatigue, it is important know what causes it in the first place.
- The cancer itself causes fatigue in a person. It can release proteins that lead to fatigue or increase your body’s energy requirements and even lead to muscular weakness. All of these things will make you feel very tired.
- Chemotherapy as well as radiation therapy not only destroy cancer cells but healthy ones too, which is why you feel fatigued after undergoing the treatment. You body uses up extra energy to fix the damaged cell which is why you feel so tired. Such therapies can also cause anemia, lack of sleep and vomiting which further adds to the loss of energy and increases fatigue.
- Sometimes the treatment ends up destroying too many healthy cells or the cancer reaches your bone marrow and the production of red blood cells gets hindered. Both these situations lead to anemia. In such a state your body doesn’t get enough oxygen carried to cells which is why they don’t function as well as they should making you feel tired.
- Emotional and physical pain can be very distressing and adds to fatigue too.
