Iduno wrote:How do you tell if you have a fever when your "normal" is headache, being tired, and allergy-related illness? It's hot and humid now, so the sweating might be from that.
Edit: I'm not even sure why I want to know. I can't do much about it either way. Knowing why I feel like crap doesn't help, but I still want to know.
There are lots of reasons you can feel bad, and if you're feeling bad all the time it's probably something pretty fundamental to your lifestyle.
When you get a blood test, they usually look at your number of white blood cells. A high number indicates that you are fighting an infection (or just did), so it'd make sense that you'd feel bad as a result. But if there's no indication of that, there can be a host of other reasons you don't feel bad. In addition to the 'normal' things they look for, ask for them to measure as many vitamins as they can. You can feel bad due to a vitamin deficiency, and there are medical reasons you might have a deficiency even if you eat a proper diet.
Think of how silly it is to feel bad if you could find out that adding more iron to your diet would improve your energy levels
and you did nothing?
I'd also suggest you try to evaluate the quality of your sleep. If there's anyone who sleeps with you, find out if you snore. If you're overweight and/or approaching middle age, there's a good chance that you are suffocating yourself at night and you might benefit from a CPAP machine. A sleep study might be expensive depending on your insurance situation, but it could make a big difference.
When you begin to develop a chronic condition, it's easy to feel that 'this is normal'. Usually you start feeling worse and worse
slowly enough that you feel that 'this is normal'. If you feel tired and run down, but everyone you ask ALSO feels tired and run down, you might think 'that's how it's supposed to be at my age'. Don't make that assumption! It's possible to actually feel GOOD at any age. If you don't, try to find out why. Sleep, diet, and exercise are the three big ones that you can probably directly manage, but they're also REALLY hard to figure out if you're doing them right.
Get the blood test first because that's a good indication into a host of problems, but if you don't see anything obvious, approach them in that order: sleep, diet, exercise.
A FitBit can give you a sense of how well you're sleeping - that's a good starting point for hours slept and quality of sleep. Most of us spend too much time looking at blue lights that disrupt our natural sleep patterns. Trying to darken rooms 1-2 hours before you go to sleep and avoiding screen time (or using blue-light filters) may help you feel ready for sleep. Malatonin is available over the counter and may help you fall asleep faster and potentially get a more restful sleep. I don't believe it is habit forming, and it doesn't impact the type of sleep you get the way some medications do.
Your diet may need to change before you can begin an exercise regimen. If you don't feel energetic it's hard to do more physical activity. I personally appear to have a genetic predisposition to a lymphatic disorder and I have had a lot of benefit from adding a small amount of MCT Oil to my daily coffee. Everybody is different, so what works for a lot of your friends may not work for you. That said, a lot of people do benefit from adding protein and/or fats to their breakfast. A high-carb/low fiber cereal might be the 'normal' breakfast for a lot of America, but you might feel full longer with oatmeal or adding a hard-boiled egg. This can also help with regularity - my daughter has been seeing a gastroenterologist and he wants people having a bowel movement twice a day - in the morning and evening. If you can find what helps you 'go' make sure you include it in your diet. For my daughter, the 'Naked Juices' seem to help a fair bit, but getting plenty of fresh fruits really makes a difference.
I have one friend in his mid-50s that started taking just about all the supplements. He figures most of them are garbage, but if he takes them all, as long as they're not actually HARMFUL, maybe one or two of them make a difference. It seems to work for him. I'd prefer a more scientific approach, but you might think of adding one or two supplements for a couple weeks or a month to see if it does ANYTHING; if so, you can add a couple more that might help and if not, you can stop taking them as you experiment. From an evolutionary perspective, your ancestors (who starved a lot) also ate a lot of weird stuff (because they were starving), and some of that MIGHT have benefits (in small quantities). Eating a highly varied diet might be beneficial; if it's not practical then supplements probably make sense as a stop-gap measure.
