The beginners guide to fatigue.

  My intention when I started this blog, was to make the ideas I explored in my PhD readily available for a wider audience. But I struggled to find time and every time I sat down to write, I couldn't get rid of my academic language! Hence the decision to use AI to help me change my academic writing into something more user friendly. I am sure you will spot the change in tone. But please be assured - i start with my work and I ask the AI to change it into a blog format for a general audience. I also add my sources and check any that the AI has introduced.   And it helped me produce a post that I started  writing a year ago. Onwards and upwards - with a little help from my new friend, perplexity AI.

  Unraveling the Mystery of Post-Brain Injury Fatigue  " Over 100 year of research on fatigue and we are not closer to understanding it"  (De Luca, 2005). Have you ever wondered why fatigue after a brain injury feels so different from regular tiredness? It's like comparing a gentle breeze to a hurricane – they're both wind, but the intensity and impact are worlds apart. Let's dive into this fascinating topic and explore why post-brain injury fatigue is such a complex beast. The Multifaceted Nature of Fatigue Imagine your brain as a bustling city. After an injury, it's like some of the roads are closed, traffic lights are malfunctioning, and there's construction everywhere. Everything takes more effort, from simple tasks to complex problem-solving. This is where the complexity of post-brain injury fatigue comes into play. It's not just about feeling tired. It's a intricate web of factors: Physical changes in the brain Emotional state Coping mechanis...

  Photo by   Inset Agency   on   Unsplash When I started my research into fatigue, I was surprised by the complexity of fatigue and it took me a while to get to grips with the many ways it is defined. We use the one word 'fatigue' to describe a range of experiences and symptoms. When I talk to therapists and people with brain injury who live with fatigue, they identify different types of fatigue: mental (cognitive), physical, and emotional fatigue. In my current research project,  the need to label fatigue as one type or another is important because people associate different types of fatigue with different types of activity. Some researchers write about exertion fatigue and chronic fatigue, others about fatigue and fatigability, state or trait fatigue (Tseng e al, 2010, Kluger et al, 2011, Wylie & Flashman , 2018). Kluger argues that we need to separate the perception of feeling fatigued from the concept of fatigability when considering neurological conditi...

The etymology of fatigue: "1660s, "that which causes weariness," from French fatigue "weariness," from fatiguer "to tire" (15c.), from Latin fatigare "to weary, to tire out," originally "to cause to break down," from pre-Latin adjective *fati-agos "driving to the point of breakdown," https://www.etymonline.com/word/fatigue When I started my studies a few years ago, I was talking to people with brain injuries at a local support group about the word " fatigue". People commented that it wasn't a word they used much before their brain injury. In everyday life, we talk about being tired, sometimes exhausted, but less often fatigued. One man explained how in his culture, older people would never admit to being tired, they would either say nothing or say they were ill. Admitting to tiredness was generally seen as a sign of weakness. This conversation triggered several questions for me. Has our understanding of ...

A beginner's guide to the research about fatigue after brain injury Welcome to the first post of my new blog. My aim in this blog is to write in plain English about the work I did for my PhD. But more importantly, to write about the research that explores brain injury fatigue, making it more accessible to people who aren't researchers. I aim to share what I learnt about brain injury fatigue, how it affects people in their daily life and the evidence around how best to treat fatigue. This whole journey started when another researcher asked me to look into fatigue after stroke. I was working as a lecturer in occupational therapy but had worked with people with stroke and brain injury in my life as a therapist.  I was interested in fatigue because of my personal resulting from an underactive thyroid condition. When I say experienced fatigue, I mean the kind of tiredness where I couldn't take one more step and felt completely overwhelmed by daily life. It is really hard to put ...