Ankylosing Spondylitis in Men and Women

Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Ankylosing Spondylitis Podcast. This is your host, Jayson Sacco and I hope everybody is having a fantastic day. You know, personally these last few weeks, I've been really dealing with some what seems like extra amount of fatigue. And I don't seem to be the only personal loan as I read through the Facebook forums, notice a lot of questions on fatigue and how do you handle it? What do you do and where's it coming from? It sucks and whatever else, you know, people are talking about.

So this week's Question of the Week is going to be what do I do about the fatigue? Well, we all know that with Ankylosing Spondylitis, we have increased inflammation, and that inflammation can lead to sometimes excessive fatigue depending on on the level of inflammation. So there's really a couple things we can look at now. In my case, I don't know if so much the fatigue is caused by inflammation or if I'm just not sleeping well enough at night, I think that's really my issue, not getting a quality enough sleep. When I do get some sleep, and I have a Cpap machine, and my mask just hasn't been sealing. My mask is old and I need to replace it. So I think that will fix some of the issues. But we all know that for a lot of us, the main culprit is inflammation and how does it dovetail in with creating the fatigue? Well, if you have inflamation issues, you know along your spine and your hips, wherever they can release a chemical that has a role in the fatigue that we deal with. So that's just one thing you want to think about is if you're feeling fatigued is the underlying symptom really inflammation that's just not being treated properly via medication. So we also know that with these we want to aim for sound sleep, which is me.

So this particular paper that I was reading, gave a few tips. Some of these are easier said than done. Go to bed at the same time every night, including weekends. Well, that's fairly easy to do since I don't have much of a social life. So going to bed at the same time is usually not that hard. Take breaks throughout the day instead of naps. Well, that's interesting because I tend to fall asleep in odd spot. So you know, I can just konk out in the middle anywhere. So it's not really an issue of taking a nap. It's just a maybe a power 10 minutes that I might be out. Another item is do relaxing pre bed activities, such as deep breathing exercises. Avoid sleeping in on the weekends, or vacation days. I don't generally do that. I'm pretty much up between six and seven every morning. Take a warm bath before bed. That's probably not what I'm going to try. But if it helps you, great. I'd love to have a hot tub. I think that'd be fantastic. And then regulate the temperature in your bedroom. Well, mine stays, you know chillier than the rest of the house. But that's just a function of the way that this particular place is built. So another thing you can do is check for anemia. I know I have anemia and I take 50,000 IUs of iron once a week. But if you're getting frequent headaches, dizziness, shortness of breath, or have some pale skin, that could be signs of anemia, and you want to talk to your doctor about that addressing that might help you sleep better. I think it's really a function of doing all of these but you know, address each one, one at a time. There are some dietary considerations. I know myself, my snoring, which is my sleep apnea is a function of the weight I've put on, I need to lose a fairly large amount of weight for me, and I think in doing that, I would have less sleep apnea and thereby less fatigue, and maybe less inflammation. Get some exercise....