Cancer fatigue is more than just being tired all the time, says palliative medicine specialist Dr. Stewart Fleishman. To learn more about cancer fatigue and how to cope with it, watch this video.
Cancer fatigue is more than just being tired. All of us get tired, some of us get too tired too often, but cancer fatigue is a huge amount of tiredness that comes on and can't be shaken. No amount of sleep actually improves cancer fatigue. In fact over sleeping probably makes cancer fatigue worse, so you feel ladden, people often describe that they want to do things but they just can't and the best answer joke these days is not one but three things and a combination of good nutrition, good exercise and good rest.
It comes to intuitive sometimes you need to stay active to become less fatigued but actually it's really, really important because our study shows that people who are completely solitary get more fatigue than others.
Stewart Fleishman, MD, is a cancer researcher and the author of companion books, LEARN to Live Through Cancer: What You Need to Know and Do and the Manual of Cancer Treatment Recovery: What the Practitioner Needs to Know and Do.
View Profile