Understanding Fatigue in Women
If you’re hormones are out of balance, there’s a good chance you aren’t sleeping well. Or you may not be getting the deep restorative sleep you need to feel rested during the day.
Another scenario is that you’re sleeping fine, but still feeling tired. If you’re menopausal, hormones are still the likely cause.
Causes of Fatigue
A Vicious Circle
The other symptoms of menopause and perimenopause are often to blame for fatigue.
The biggest culprit is hot flashes. Hot flashes are a 24-hour-a-day curse. When hot flashes strike at night, they wake you up. And since night sweats can leave you with a case of the chills, getting back to sleep is often difficult.
Mood issues like anxiety and depression also go hand-in-hand with menopause, and are notorious for disrupting sleep and causing fatigue. This trend becomes a vicious circle: you feel anxious and depressed, and that results in not being able to sleep; not being able to sleep results in being fatigued; being fatigued results in being even more anxious and depressed, and so on.
Diminished Hormones
Hormone imbalance is at the root of it all. Here’s why:
- Imbalances in estrogen and progesterone cause night sweats.
- Imbalances in estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and thyroid cause mood issues like anxiety and depression.
- Estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone all play important roles in regulating sleep. Inadequate quantities of one or all of these hormones can disrupt your body clock, and therefore disrupt your sleep schedule.
- Low thyroid is common during menopause and perimenopause. One of its symptoms is insomnia.
- Adrenal fatigue, as a consequence of stress and excess cortisol production, is a known sleep disrupter.
- Deficiencies in any of the hormones listed above can be responsible for a more generalized variety of fatigue that isn’t necessarily connected with quantity or quality of sleep.
Treatment For Fatigue in Women
There is relief for your fatigue. Through bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, our doctors can restore your hormones to healthy levels, and recommend other creative solutions like growth hormone therapy and injectable nutrients. You’ll get your energy back. You’ll feel like you again.