Increasingly, I encounter people who describe that they feel a terrible sense of fatigue and a loss of energy.  Many people lose their zest for fun things in life because of lack of energy. At our weight loss centers, a lack of energy impairs people’s efforts to exercise and lose weight.  It interferes with many aspects of life and with enjoyment of life.  Certainly, it interferes with a person’s motivation level to try to successfully work on any weight loss program.

With fatigue being so common, are there causes of it that can be fixed?

Indeed there are.  Finding the cause is important to a weight loss physician as part of a medical supervised weight loss plan.  Without investigating some of these potential root causes of fatigue, it may be difficult to get out of the starting blocks and begin losing weight.

Here just a few of the treatable causes for fatigue that a doctor might help you to diagnose and treat:

Hypothyroidism (low level of circulating thyroid hormone treated with a common medication: thyroid replacement hormone).
Anemia (low circulating red blood cells, often as a result of iron deficiency).
Depression (often markedly improved with medication and psychological counseling).
Viral illness (one example is mononucleosis).
Diabetes.
Heart condition.
Liver dysfunction.

and
Vitamin deficiencies.

Here are some common vitamin and mineral deficiencies that can cause fatigue, sometimes, profound fatigue:

• Vitamin B6.
• Vitamin B12.
• Iron deficiency.
• Vitamin D

In future discussions, I will explore how some of these causes can be identified and corrected in many cases. Some times, people experience dramatic improvement in their energy level after identifying these problems.

Tags: vitamin deficiency, weight loss

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 7:56 pm and is filed under Medical Weight Loss, Weight Loss Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.