Rapid muscle fatigue during stress

[ankietyjoe]

Hi

This has hit me hard over the last few months, peaking this week.

My life is unbelievably stressful right now, far worse than anything I've ever experienced. I think this is a contributing factor.

Right now I'm unable to perform anything remotely exertive.

For example just now I hung a stair gate on the wall. It weighs about 5kg and I had to drill 9 holes, screw 4 fixings into the wall and hold the gate up a couple of times to test. The entire process took about 15 minutes, but now I'm shaking and trembling like I've had a 2 hour bodybuilding session and almost feel too weak to stand. I also notice lactic acid pain in my forearms as I'm typing!

This started a couple of weeks ago when I had a kind of random physical breakdown after dinner one night. All of a sudden I just felt exhausted, anxious and shaky. I can handle the anxiety with my normal methods but the physical feeling has stayed with me.

I have a feeling it must be linked to the stress (CFS like?) but this rapid muscle fatigue is both annoying and frightening.

Anybody have any experience with this kind of thing?

[sial72]

I have this, but in my case it was caused by a reaction to a medicine I took.
Have you been taking any meds?

[ankietyjoe]

I have this, but in my case it was caused by a reaction to a medicine I took.
Have you been taking any meds?

Not recently, early last year I took 2-3 lots of antibiotics for the illness I had and I had a feeling that did me as much harm as good but I don't think that can still be the case. Plus I've been far more physically active since without this fatigue.

Sorry to hear you're suffering too. What medicine caused your problems and how long have you had it. Are you being treated for that?

[Katiej36]

Hiya, I've too been very stressed but over the past few months which resulted in me being less active and when I did start feeling better I had aches and pains in all of my muscles and joints.. the shaky feeling is most likely due to anxiety, when you are more aware your body is not doing as well as before you tend to get more anxious which in turn gives off other symptoms. Take it easy, but also try to stay active so you don't let your body wear itself away. I found muscle soak in a hot bath, deep heat, and magnesium suplimemts help ease some of my pain so maybe try these? If your symptoms don't go away in a couple days maybe book a doctors appointment and have a talk with them to see if your symptoms are definitely the result of your stress and anxiety. Hope you feel better soon x

[nineteen]

this has been me for a week now. my sister got married last week and i guess it was a bit too stressful for me.. ever since i have had such weak muscles. i wake up feeling weak and thats me all day. it freaks me the hell out! i could hardly lift a box of beer yesterday it felt extremley heavy. i also get the latic acid feeling too when doing very little such as lifting my mobile phone. thanks for your post tho glad im not alone

[sial72]

Not recently, early last year I took 2-3 lots of antibiotics for the illness I had and I had a feeling that did me as much harm as good but I don't think that can still be the case. Plus I've been far more physically active since without this fatigue.

Sorry to hear you're suffering too. What medicine caused your problems and how long have you had it. Are you being treated for that?

I took Levofloxacin which is a Fluoroquinolone antibiotic, this was almost 7 months ago. Recovering extremely slowly and with relapses.
The harm they do can improve and then when you have a lot if stress you can have a relapse.
Do you know what kind of antibiotics you took?

[MyNameIsTerry]

AJ,

Didn't your American GF talk about how she had issues like this due to low potassium or have I got that wrong? I'm just wondering whether she might have some advice for you as she was posting a few times about it not long ago and she seemed to have quite a knowledge of it from what I recall.

[ankietyjoe]

Thanks all.

It's definitely not plain old anxiety, I've had that long enough to recognise and deal with it.

I've actually spent the last few days looking into adrenal fatigue, which is actually very common for people in our experience. It covers most of what I'm feeling but considering I have a lengthy history of anxiety and some depression it's probably more complicated that just feeling tired.

I made the foolish mistake of feeling a bit better last week and thinking 'great, let's have a workout'. Big mistake.

Anyway, I'm looking into a joint nutriotional/meditative solution to the problem.



AJ,

Didn't your American GF talk about how she had issues like this due to low potassium or have I got that wrong? I'm just wondering whether she might have some advice for you as she was posting a few times about it not long ago and she seemed to have quite a knowledge of it from what I recall.

Nope, that's wasn't me! :)

[MyNameIsTerry]

Ah sorry, I think I got you mixed up with AnxietyDJ :doh:

What type of nutritional things are you looking at? I would be interested too because I keep going through cycles of adrenaline increase out of nowhere for several days which are followed by fatigue. I never had these cycles before my current med but I think my sleep cycle plays a part too as it worsened (the fatigue became worse) with it's decline over the past year.

Adrenal fatigue is an interesting subject, like candida overgrowth, but the medical world seem divided on it.

[ankietyjoe]

Ah sorry, I think I got you mixed up with AnxietyDJ :doh:

What type of nutritional things are you looking at? I would be interested too because I keep going through cycles of adrenaline increase out of nowhere for several days which are followed by fatigue. I never had these cycles before my current med but I think my sleep cycle plays a part too as it worsened (the fatigue became worse) with it's decline over the past year.

Adrenal fatigue is an interesting subject, like candida overgrowth, but the medical world seem divided on it.

Out of interest what kind of adrenal symptoms do you get? I often notice an over excited feeling if I laugh (like Christmas morning as a kid), but this can also happen if I'm having a conversation or even out of the blue. There are also random and regular injections of what I assume is adrenaline into my stomach, like the feeling you get before an exam or public speech etc.

I've been looking at a lot of videos on Youtube about adrenal fatigue, but you need to be really careful about the clueless 'lifestyle' channels. I mean no offence by this, but a lot of them are American 'you can do it' type things. You know, the kind of people that think Dr Phil is credible.

Anyhoo, take a look at these. But be mindful of the fact that a lot of these guys have something to sell. I still think there is expertise behind their information though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fbVgryAjFE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOulFw08K3c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eUXDZZZZXA&index=28&list=PLmwyXe7X5PcQEeValI5QopidEJiJEqVrx


The general consensus is that a combination of stress, modern life, lack of sleep and poor diet over a period of time can cause adrenal problems. I've also been looking into nutrition (which all AF experts really focus on) and this leads me to suspect that a lot of the fruit and veg we buy isn't as nutritional as we think it is. It does sound a little bit 'tin foil hat' but modern farming apparently removes huge percentages of minerals through chemical use (kills bacteria in the soil, which are the organisms that create and spread the minerals).

Again, you need to pick and choose what information you choose to believe, but I'm happy to add nutritional supplements and more organic produce into my lifestyle. For the sake of an extra £20 a week it's a no brainer for me.

And of course, meditation seems to be a universal magic bullet.

I take no meds btw, it's not a road I ever wanted to go down.


edit :-

I also forgot to mention that all of them universally eschew the modern notion that salt and fat are bad. They don't promote the idea that you should go out and eat a load of crap, but they do say that there's no need to overly avoid salt, good quality fats (including some saturated fat) and especially fish oils, olive oils and seed oils etc. These elements in the diet are crucial to healthy brain function.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Thanks, I'll have a look at them. Yeah, I know what you mean about the marketing articles, I tend to look at various articles to spot the common elements first.

For me I have a few days where my anxiety increases without any triggers and I have a load of aggitation. I never had aggitation as an anxiety symptom until I went onto the dose of my SNRI that interacts with adrenaline, and it started the next morning. After about 10 days it subsided but I keep having cycles of this followed by a couple of days of serious fatigue and then things average out and I'm feeling better again. It literally happens every 7-10 days regardless of my routine being the same hence not often triggers are involved.

Yeah, I've read about depletion of minerals in the soil when I was looking into magnesium issues a while back. Thesedays I use transdermal magnesium which is working well for my joint problems but not anxiety so far.