Over the years we’ve seen a lot of patients who suffer from both digestive problems and fatigue. It’s probably the most common combination of symptoms that I hear patients talk about. And the good news is that they are generally directly related, meaning that the digestive problems are usually causing the fatigue, and that the fatigue goes away when the digestive problems are solved, which should always be your expectation when seeing a doctor about your digestion.

Digestive problems can cause fatigue, including very debilitating fatigue, in several ways, so let’s talk about why people with digestive problems often have fatigue.

There are at least five reasons that people who have digestive problems can cause fatigue. Some are super obvious, and some are hiding below the surface but just as profound. We’ll start with some of the more intuitive, and then get to ones that might surprise you.

First, there is your sleep. If your digestive problems are causing you to have trouble getting to sleep, staying as asleep, or causing you to get up early because you have to go to the bathroom, then your sleep is being disturbed by your digestion. This can be as straightforward as have pain in the abdomen or stomach that is preventing you from sleeping well, having heartburn or reflux that is preventing you from lying down, or having to rush to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

And even if you don’t have any of those, if you have to get up early in the morning because it takes a long time to have a bowel movement, then that is also affecting your sleep time. We all know that sleep is critical to having good energy, but sometimes it’s easy to forget how much your digestion is affecting your sleep.

Second is simply being sick. Being sick is exhausting. And if you have digestive problems, especially IBS, then you are sick a lot of the time. And that is going to sap your energy and make it a lot harder to do all of the things that you want to do.

Third is pain. You can be sick and not have pain, but if you have pain, then it’s even more exhausting. Because now you are constantly fighting to not only get through your day, but to ignore or put up with the pain.  And pain can completely exhaust you even if it’s relatively subtle pain, because it takes a lot of energy to deal with pain.

The fourth reason that digestive problems cause fatigue is one that I think is the most profound and most overlooked. And it’s this. If you have poor digestion, then by definition you aren’t breaking down your foods well. And if you aren’t breaking down your foods properly, then you probably aren’t getting the nutrients out of those foods that you would otherwise have gotten out of them.

When this happens, you are essentially malnourished, even if your diet is good and your weight is fine. It’s a modern conundrum. You don’t look malnourished, but at the cellular level you can be highly deficient in many important vitamins and nutrients. This can be tested, but it’s never tested by regular doctors. They only test your blood. That is not at the cellular level.

And finally, there is one last super critical reason that people with digestive problems are often very tired, and that’s inflammation. Inflammation is always tiring. No one has inflammation and great energy, because inflammation requires energy. Inflammation is a sign that your immune system is working hard to fight something. And when you have digestive problems, you usually have inflammation, even if your blood work doesn’t show it.

How do we know? Because again, it’s been shown at the cellular level. And you have to do the right kind of lab work to see it, which most doctors don’t do. So, you often still have inflammation, even when your basic inflammatory markers look normal.

All of these things add up too. So, the more of them you have, the more likely you are to be tired. So, it’s no surprise that digestive problems like IBS often cause fatigue.

I hope that you found this information helpful for understanding the relationship between digestion and fatigue. If so, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel for more valuable information about your health.

And if you’d like personalized help for your digestive problems or your fatigue, give us a call at the IBS Treatment Center at 206-264-1111 and we can work with you via telemedicine regardless of where you live. We’ve been helping people around the world since 2005, and we’d love to help you too.

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