I have heard Bonsai descibed in many ways - art, horticulture, minitrisation, illusion, even torture.

Bonsai trees that are well kept are extremely vibrant and healthy, and in many cases will long out live their 'natural' family - many bonsai can be traced through many generations and can be 100's of years old.

Personally for me bonsai is not only a passion, but its also a metaphor: My personal experience with my health (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) has many parrells with bonsai, I hope to explore these in this Blog.


Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The Differnt Faces of Fatigue

It was not until my time at the Fatigue Clinic UNSW That I finally understood the different types of fatigue that i needed to address – each with a different approach, reason and differing strategies to help alleviate them.

I’m going to talk briefly about 2 of them
- Mental Fatigue
- Physical Fatigue


I cannot express my gratefulness to the staff at the Fatigue Clinic particularly Dr C who worked with me in regards to physical fatigue, and Dr S who worked with me in regards to the mental side of fatigue and helped with coping strategies.

Mental Fatigue I will address in the next post

Physical Fatigue is really hard to define, it is different to being run down or tired, but similar. One of the most common responses I have gotten from people as we have talked about my chronic fatigue condition is – “why don’t you just get some more rest” or “everyone gets tired why can’t you just push through it”

To explain – I can sleep but the sleep is not refreshing or restful. When I wake up in the morning i feel unrefreshed and more tired than when i went to bed. I do not feel refreshed, energised or rested after sleeping. This is not just every now and then but every night – and it seems to have a cumulative and compounding effect as in – being Tired, sleep, wake tired, got to bed tired, wake up more tired, and so the cycle continues (and has been continuing for some years now)

Other physical things are muscle soreness, aches, endurance and strength.

Later i will talk specifically about
Pacing
Programming
The fatigue cycle


SB

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