How to overcome chemo fatigue and Thrive
What is fatigue?
It’s never-ending tiredness.
It’s never-ending madness.
It’s“I get enough sleep, and I still wake up feeling tired”
It’s having to completely change your life around and feeling like your life is nothing but a mere shadow of what it used to be.
Stage III Breast Cancer Survivor
“It’s hard to explain to someone the exhaustion of waking up every morning
day in and day out with constant fatigue
and going to bed every night with constant pain.”
Cancer fatigue differs from your average form of tiredness, such as tiredness from lack of sleep, too much activity, or emotional distress.
Constant fatigue can make you feel helpless and out of touch with reality and your day-to-day.
Unfortunately, there is no medication to cure chemo fatigue, and it affects everyone differently.
The good news, however, is that there are things you can do to improve your energy and practical ways to handle the daily routines of life.
Therefore, in this blog, you will learn:
the different forms of fatigue
how to get rid of or reduce chemo fatigue
practical steps you can take to thrive and make everyday life easier
WHAT IS CANCER FATIGUE?
You may have noticed that your fatigue started with treatment and has not gone away since.
Unfortunately, every aspect of cancer treatment adds on extra fatigue; surgery, chemo, radiation, and even hormone therapy can all cause fatigue.
Each one adds on top of the other, making it seem hopeless and can continue for several years—even in patients with no apparent disease.
While there is no known reason for the fatigue, it is known that there is an accumulation effect that goes on with treatment.
For example:
emotional and mental stress, and/or depression starts through the trauma of cancer
financial stress and concerns begin to arise, causing increase in anxiety
constant fear over what to eat, sleep, and do about the cancer so it doesn’t spread
sense of hopelessness, lack of sleep, and motivation
aches and pains from treatment, leading to emotional despair
nausea and vomiting, making you weak, dehydrated, and malnourished.
tiredness, leading to constant lying down, sitting, and creating more aches and pains.
Each of these compound upon one another and completely wear you out physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
While fatigue as a result of chemo is not something easily overcome, the added fatigue from stressful life circumstances can be treated
When properly treated, it will lower or greatly reduce the fatigue and make life more manageable, enjoyable, and provide you with the ability to thrive in a new sense of meaning and purpose.
Therefore, the more holistic your approach to your treatment, the more you will be able to grow and hopefully get rid of cancer fatigue.
HOW TO FIGHT CANCER FATIGUE
1) How to physically overcome chemo fatigue
From a physical point of view, fatigue lowers your power output, making you feel weak.
Even when the muscle is not being used, you feel overly exhausted, and even attempting to accomplish simple tasks requires greater effort.
Your body and brain have to over-compensate to do daily activities.
What feels easy one day, feels extraordinarily harder on chemo-fatigued days.
More than 90% of cancer patients report having some sort of physical fatigue.
One of the most-studied ways to improve energy in the body is through the use of exercise.
Exercise—particularly in the form of weight lifting—rewires your nervous system to improve muscle activation, prepares your cells for better metabolic activity, and strengthens your body to make day-to-day tasks easier.
Weightlifting is one of the very few natural forms that can actively fight cancer by improving your metabolism, energy, and nervous system, all while preparing your body for daily activity.
2) How to mentally overcome chemo fatigue
Mental fatigue, on the other hand, is the chronic inflammation in your body that causes mental fog in your brain that disrupts your thinking.
Many times, this has been associated to depression, but research shows there is a chemo effect to the brain that accumulates over the rest.
Some people may have trouble with:
learning new tasks
remembering names
paying attention
concentrating on finding the right words
multitasking
organizing thoughts
making decisions
remembering where things are
More than 75% of people diagnosed with breast cancer say they have cognitive problems during chemotherapy.
In some cases, people can have cognitive problems several years after completing chemotherapy.
But once again, here’s another area where exercise has been shown to be an effective form of treatment for the mental strain of the disease.
Cardiovascular exercise, in fact, has been shown to be effective in reducing mental impairments.
For example, women diagnosed with breast cancer who exercised before, during, and after chemotherapy were less likely to have thinking and memory problems.
Cardio is one of the very few natural forms that can actively fight cancer by suffocating cancer cells and reducing their growth rate and the inflammation that affects your brain.
Cardiovascular exercise improves your immune system to fight cancer physically and lowers its spread to the brain, all while preparing your body for daily activity.
3) How to emotionally overcome cancer fatigue
The mental, physical, and emotional effects cancer has on your body are debilitating.
Changes in body image, loss of libido, and weight gain can all take a big toll on your body image, confidence, and motivation.
Fear, anxiety, anger, and guilt caused by cancer can all pile on and prevent your body from healing, leading to increases in blood pressure, lack of sleep, mood swings, and constant cycles of highs and lows.
It’s an endless cycle of mental and emotional despair—affecting your sleep, creating more tiredness, frustration, and greater sleep disturbance.
Here’s where the benefits of stress-reduction techniques and sleep play a great role.
Sleep plays one of the greatest roles in overcoming emotional fatigue.
Cancer affects your body by disrupting your circadian rhythm, which is your body's “biological clock.”
These rhythms typically have a 24-hour cycle and are sensitive to your environment (e.g., alterations in light and dark) and psychological factors (e.g., stress, anxiety, and illness), all of which affect your sleep and create more fatigue.
One of the best ways to overcome cancer fatigue is by improving your sleep.
Better sleep improves your cortisol levels, hormone balance, and immune function and reduces inflammation.
Research shows that the better the quality of sleep, the less fatigue and more energy during the day, allowing you to thrive while overcoming chemo fatigue.
4) How to spiritually overcome chemo fatigue
Feelings of hopelessness, loss of control, and uncertainty around survival and death can also have a detrimental impact, bringing to light the spiritual weight of your mortality, which can take anyone to despair, isolation, and hopelessness.
The constant anxiety, worry, stress, and fear affects your sleep, increases your pain, creates cravings, and increases the risk of depression.
Around 49% of cancer patients suffer from cancer depression due to hopelessness, and 75% of patients go untreated.
Yet research shows, that your faith to survive, to move forward, to persevere, and to help others helps reduce the effect and outlook cancer has on your body.
PRACTICAL STEPS FOR FIGHTING CANCER FATIGUE.
Targeting each aspect of fatigue can sound overwhelming at first. But don’t worry.
Your body is specially designed as a whole being, so much so that when one aspect of your body, mind, or soul is improved, the rest is also alleviated.
For example. While exercise is a physical form of treatment, exercise has also been shown to lower depression, improve sleep, reduce anxiety, and decrease emotional stress.
It’s a holistic approach that helps all aspects of your being.
The same goes for sleep.
Sleep has been shown to improve your metabolism, better your mood, and reduce stress.
Everything is connected.
Pick a habit, and see how it improves other aspects of your life and well-being.
So here’s what helps:
1. SET A TIME FOR EXERCISE
Realistically figure out how many days a week exercise is possible for you
Establish the minimal & maximal amount of time you can exercise
Work your way up to the maximum amount your schedule allows
2. SET A COOL-DOWN ROUTINE
Give yourself 2-3 hours at the end of the day for yourself to relax
Create an ambiance to tell your body, “It’s time to relax.” Get green tea, set chamomile aromatherapy on (helps soothe), and set the temperature between 68-72 F
Read a book, journal, or listen to music to prepare you for sleep
3. CARDIO WITH WEIGHTS
Choose 2-3 days a week to do circuit training.
1-2 min rest per round, 3-5 rounds per workout, 6-15 reps per exercise
Have fun and enjoy the workout
4. MEAL PREP
Cook or have someone help you make easy, storable meals, such as soups, chili, cut-up fruits and veggies
Get extra protein and calories through your smoothies by adding protein powder, milk, Greek yogurt, or peanut butter
Eat in small quantities throughout the day rather than focusing on having big meals when cancer treatment side effects are at play.
5. ENERGY BALANCE
Do the most important tasks at times you have the most energy. (Keep in mind: it will tire you out. That’s ok)
This doesn’t have to be task-based. It can also be something meaningful to YOU.
Choose activities that require less energy on time when fatigue hits the hardest
6. SUPPORT
Join a support group through your hospital or an organization. Talking to like-minded individuals will help give you a sense of belonging
Find an organization to join. They can provide you with free ride shares, social events, gift baskets, and help financially
Get out and socialize when you can—travel and enjoy nature.
7. SELF CARE
Set a time to go get a mani-pedi, makeover, or massage therapy through an oncology-certified massage therapist.
Find a hobby you enjoy: scrapbooking, knitting, dancing, or photography to get your mind off things
Get help or find someone to help. Maybe that is a younger cancer patient, a homeless person, or the nurse at your chemo unit. Find ways to be a light to someone else.
Cancer is a disease that affects you mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
While cancer treatment physically causes fatigue, there’s much to be done that can help reduce the fatigue you feel and continue to thrive in everyday life.
Sometimes, when it comes to fatigue, fatigue reduction comes from taking off certain weights from your life.
So, by focusing on improving your body and fighting the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual stress, you will be helping yourself feel joy and rejuvenate your spirit to keep going.
Free Exercise Guide
If you are ready to exercise but don’t know where to start, check out our free exercise guide with 101 exercises to get you started.
This will provide you with 2 exercises each week for a year.
Click below to receive your free gift.
Hey!
Welcome, I'm your trainer, JC 🤓
Thanks for stopping by the blog!
You'll find lots of resources on health, fat loss, nutrition, exercise, and cancer prevention.
P.S. don’t forget to grab your free gift below.
Enjoy
