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Symptoms of Amor Deliria Nervosa
PHASE ONE:
-preoccupation; difficulty focusing
-dry mouth
-perspiration, sweaty palms
-fits of dizziness and disorientation
-reduced mental awareness; racing thoughts; impaired reasoning skills
PHASE TWO:
-periods of euphoria; hysterical laughter and heightened energy
-periods of despair; lethargy
-changes in appetite; rapid weight loss or weight gain
-fixation; loss of other interests
-compromised reasoning skills; distortion of reality
-disruption of sleep patterns; insomnia or constant fatigue
-obsessive thoughts and actions
-paranoia; insecurity
PHASE THREE (CRITICAL):
-difficulty breathing
-pain in the chest, throat or stomach
-complete breakdown of rational faculties; erratic behavior; violent thoughts and fantasies; hallucinations and delusions
PHASE FOUR (FATAL):
-emotional or physical paralysis (partial or total)
-death
If you fear that you or someone you know may have contracted deliria, please call the emergency line toll-free at 1-800-PREVENT to discuss immediate intake and treatment.
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Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
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Pay no attention to the terrors that visit you in the night. The psyche is at its lowest ebb then, unable to defend itself. The desolation that envelops you feels like truth, but isn't. It's just mental fatigue masquerading as insight.
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Jeffrey Eugenides (Fresh Complaint: Stories)
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People without depression won’t understand that, but the fatigue of mental illness makes your very body a prison.
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Jenny Lawson (Broken (In the Best Possible Way))
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Not only during the ascent, but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goal
seems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attention
has diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is now
greater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing - and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is like death
through freezing - a pleasant one.
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Reinhold Messner (The Crystal Horizon: Everest-The First Solo Ascent)
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Not only during the ascent but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goal seems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attention has diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is now greater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing—and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is—like death through freezing—a pleasant one. Reinhold Messner The Crystal Horizon I
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Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air)
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Statistics say that a range of mental disorders affects more than one in four Americans in any given year. That means millions of Americans are totally batshit.
but having perused the various tests available that they use to determine whether you're manic depressive. OCD, schizo-affective, schizophrenic, or whatever, I'm surprised the number is that low. So I have gone through a bunch of the available tests, and I've taken questions from each of them, and assembled my own psychological evaluation screening which I thought I'd share with you.
So, here are some of the things that they ask to determine if you're mentally disordered
1. In the last week, have you been feeling irritable?
2. In the last week, have you gained a little weight?
3. In the last week, have you felt like not talking to people?
4. Do you no longer get as much pleasure doing certain things as you used to?
5. In the last week, have you felt fatigued?
6. Do you think about sex a lot?
If you don't say yes to any of these questions either you're lying, or you don't speak English, or you're illiterate, in which case, I have the distinct impression that I may have lost you a few chapters ago.
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Carrie Fisher (Wishful Drinking)
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First and foremost, depression is creative fatigue and exhausted ability.
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Byung-Chul Han (Müdigkeitsgesellschaft)
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The moments of silence are gone. We run from them into the rush of unimportant things, so filled is the quiet with the painful whispers of all that goes unspoken. Busy-ness is our drug of choice, numbing our minds just enough to keep us from dwelling on all that we fear we can’t change. A compilation of coping mechanisms, we have become our fatigue. Unwilling or unable to cut ourselves free of this modern machine we have built, we’re dragged in its wake all too quickly toward our end. The virtue of a society’s culture is reflected in the physical, mental, and emotional health of its people. The time has come to part ways with all that is toxic, and preserve our quality of life.
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L.M. Browning (Seasons of Contemplation: A Book of Midnight Meditations)
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Dear Stress, I would like a divorce. Please understand it is not you, it is me.
–Thomas E. Rojo Aubrey
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Thomas E. Rojo Aubrey (Unlocking the Code to Human Resiliency)
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Mental aerobics must be done prior to the exam. Work your mental muscle. If smart nurses fail this exam it is usually from mental fatigue.
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Laura Gasparis Vonfrolio
“
Oftentimes, what we experience as mental fatigue or emotional distress is simply a signal from our body that we’re not getting enough of something we physically need: nutrients, exercise, or rest.
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Josh Kaufman (The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business)
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Four cups of coffee a day may keep depression at bay.
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Steven Magee
“
I deserve to be loved. I deserved your love, but in your eyes, I wasn’t good enough. However, that is okay, because I have love all around me.
I am learning how to love me, and it is such a good feeling. My soul isn’t dehydrated or fatigued because I am nurturing my soul, mind, spirit, and my inner being.
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Charlena E. Jackson (Dying on The Inside and Suffocating on The Outside)
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Mental illness and chronic fatigue are comparable to a dead soul inhabiting a surviving body.
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Steven Magee (Hypoxia, Mental Illness & Chronic Fatigue)
“
I was turning into a zombie as I was aging.
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Steven Magee
“
Burnout occurs when an individual has experienced prolonged demands, chronic stress, fatigue, a lack of support, and a decrease satisfaction in what they are doing.
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Asa Don Brown
“
it’s hard to be spiritually strong and mentally alert when you are emotionally stressed or physically fatigued.
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Rick Warren (The Daniel Plan: 40 Days to a Healthier Life)
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Mrs. Astor had long held that artists of any ilk - painters, authors, actors and the like - merit no recognition unless safely dead, and that meeting them risks both needless mental fatigue and the possibility of social contamination.
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Paula Cohen (Gramercy Park: A Novel of New York's Gilded Age)
“
Pay no attention to the terrors that visit you in the night. The psyche is at its lowest ebb then, unable to defend itself. The desolation that envelops you feels like truth, but isn’t. It’s just mental fatigue masquerading as insight.
”
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Jeffrey Eugenides (Fresh Complaint)
“
You get ill, you are accused of being mentally ill, denied effective treatment, then when you campaign for ‘real science’, you are accused of terrorising those who do not believe in your illness...after all, if your message is that people who say they are suffering from ME or CFS are mentally ill, then accusing them of irrational attacks adds strength to your case.
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Martin J. Walker (Skewed: Psychiatric Hegemony and the Manufacture of Mental Illness in Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Gulf War Syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)
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This approach is supported by a growing body of research. Psychologists increasingly believe that play holds the key to true productivity, partly because it provides a sense of psychological relief. As one recent study put it: ‘the psychological function of play is to restore the physically and mentally fatigued individual through participation in activity which is pleasurable and relaxing.
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Ali Abdaal (Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You)
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Simply being in the presence of natural landscapes tends to reduce stress and promote relaxation. Such experiences lower mental fatigue and boost mental clarity while enhancing both work performance and healing. One early study found that surgery patients recovered faster and required less pain medication if their hospital room had a window overlooking a natural setting. Another found similar effects in a prison population: prisoners with windows facing out toward rolling farmland and trees had 24 percent fewer sick call visits than their counterparts with views of an empty interior courtyard.
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Scott D. Sampson (How to Raise a Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature)
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Even mild dehydration can cause headaches and fatigue, affect your concentration, impair short-term memory and impede mental function. If you want to be at your most productive, it’s important for your brain to be firing on all cylinders. Therefore, you should make sure you are sufficiently hydrated before starting work.
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S.J. Scott (Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less)
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If emotion and fatigue lowered the potency of thought, what raised it? I began to reconsider my moments of delight in terms of this statement of the problem, moments whose essential quality had been a fusing of experience, a flash of significance uniting the meaningless and separate. If one assumed that thinking was a process involving some form of energy, it seemed quite appropriate to imagine my gesture of holding back from mental action as causing an accumulation of energy which automatically raised the potency. By preventing energy from continually flowing away in a noisy stream of efforts and purposes I could make it fill up into a silent pool of clearness.
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Marion Milner (A Life of One's Own)
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Tightly focused attention gets fatigued—much like an overworked muscle—when we push to the point of cognitive exhaustion. The signs of mental fatigue, such as a drop in effectiveness and a rise in distractedness and irritability, signify that the mental effort needed to sustain focus has depleted the glucose that feeds neural energy.
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Daniel Goleman (Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence)
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To a great extent fatigue in such cases is due to worry, and worry could be prevented by a better philosophy of life and a little more mental discipline. Most men and women are very deficient in control over their thoughts. I mean by this that they cannot cease to think about worrying topics at times when no action can be taken in regard to them.
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Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness)
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Sleep apnea is known to cause mental illness and chronic fatigue.
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Steven Magee
“
If your doctors are in the habit of prescribing drugs that are doing you no good, then it is time to change your doctors.
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Steven Magee (Hypoxia, Mental Illness & Chronic Fatigue)
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A journey into self diagnosis and treatment was required when the medical profession left me suffering for years with mental illness and chronic fatigue.
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Steven Magee (Hypoxia, Mental Illness & Chronic Fatigue)
Steven Magee (Hypoxia, Mental Illness & Chronic Fatigue)
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Part of recovering your health is to break long-term toxic habits.
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Steven Magee (Hypoxia, Mental Illness & Chronic Fatigue)
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Butter tea has been known for centuries to improve health in people exposed to high altitudes.
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Steven Magee (Hypoxia, Mental Illness & Chronic Fatigue)
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Many people report reduced back problems when sleeping on memory foam.
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Steven Magee (Hypoxia, Mental Illness & Chronic Fatigue)
“
When you feel tired or fatigued, more often than not it’s either because your brain has too much or not enough glucose to convert into mental energy.
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Chris Bailey
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You do not realize how much incompetence is in the workplace until you become a supervisor.
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Steven Magee
“
I am a person suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and I am appalled that it has been given such a trivial name.
Here is a disease that totally disables most of its victims; a disease that causes balance disorders, resulting in some of us requiring wheelchairs, cognitive disorders that leave us unable to perform formerly simple mental tasks, and immune disorders that lay us open to multiple infections and to autoimmune problems.
And all the medical profession can come up with to define this syndrome to the general population is "fatigue!
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Jane Cuozzo
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Why is it so difficult--so degradingly difficult--to bring the notion of Time into mental focus and keep it there for inspection? What an effort, what fumbling, what irritating fatigue!
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Vladimir Nabokov
“
These findings show that nature can have a calming and restorative effect, giving our mind a rest from the intense and mentally fatiguing focus and concentration required in much of our day-to-day lives.
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Noel Brick (Strong Minds: How to Unlock the Power of Elite Sports Psychology to Accomplish Anything)
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A heated and often bitter debate persists over whether chronic fatigue syndrome (or myalgic encephalomyelitis (or the postviral fatigue syndrome) is physical or psychological. Although many doctors avoid controversy by stating the obvious—namely, that the mind-body split is artificial and all diseases have physical and mental components—what is really at issue is whether this illness is real or imaginary.
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Karen Prince
“
...and it's that time of the day when the fatigue sets in.
No, not the physical type of fatigue that goes with a stretching of limbs
or a session in my sauna;
which in fact is sparkling signifying it's existence for sheer aesthetics rather that practical use!
It was that mental fatigue ,
when my soul was exhausted and weary;
that I needed a shot of Gatorade;
just to calm my nerves,
stopping me from hallucinations
and let me fall asleep!
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BinYamin Gulzar
“
...and it's that time of the day when the fatigue sets in.
No, not the physical type of fatigue that goes with a stretching of limbs
or a session in my sauna ~
which in fact is sparkling signifying it's existence for sheer aesthetics rather that practical use!
It was that mental fatigue ,
when my soul was exhausted and weary;
that I needed a shot of Gatorade;
just to calm my nerves,
stopping me from hallucinations
and let me fall asleep!
”
”
BinYamin Gulzar
“
Not only during the ascent but also during the descent my will-power is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goal seems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attention has diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is now greater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing—and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is—like death through freezing—a pleasant one. Reinhold Messner The Crystal Horizon
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Jon Krakauer (Into Thin Air)
“
Most of us have physical or mental conditions that have caused us distress in the past. And when we get a whiff of one coming—an incipient asthma attack, a symptom of chronic fatigue, a twinge of anxiety—we panic. Instead of relaxing with the feeling and letting it do its minute and a half while we’re fully open and receptive to it, we say, “Oh no, oh no, here it is again.” We refuse to feel fundamental ambiguity when it comes in this form, so we do the thing that will be most detrimental to us: we rev up our thoughts about it. What if this happens? What if that happens? We stir up a lot of mental activity. Body, speech, and mind become engaged in running away from the feeling, which only keeps it going and going and going. We
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Pema Chödrön (Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change)
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Fatigue is an excellent gauge of well-being because it is a very hard symptom to mask. The only way to get rid of fatigue is to treat the underlying causes. Fatigue has many faces, but they all say the same thing - the mental and physical load are too great.
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Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett
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The world, I tell you, is bored -- bored now to the explosive pitch. It's bored by all this incessant war preparation. It is bored by aimless violence, now here, now there. It is tired of hatred politics. It's tired of fresh murders every day. It is not indignant, not excited; it is bored. Bored and baffled...
"I don't believe a man begins to know anything of politics until he realises the immense menace of mental fatigue, of world-wide mass boredom. It accumulates. It makes the most frightful convulsions and demoralisation possible. It makes them at last inevitable. Nobody wants fundamental changes in a world where hope and interest prevail. Then people accept their careers, settle down to them, rear children. But throw them out of work, in and out and no sense of security, deprive them of bright expectations, regiment them in masses, underfeed them, bore them with organised mass patriotism, and they begin to seep together into a common morass of discontent and impatience. Almost unconsciously...
"They're like that now.
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H.G. Wells (The Holy Terror)
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If the sleep disruption is repeated night after night, the actual measured impairments do not remain constant. Instead, there is an escalating accumulation of sleepiness that produces in adults continuing increases in headaches, gastrointestinal complaints, forgetfulness, reduced concentration, fatigue, emotional ups and downs, difficulty in staying awake during the daytime, irritability, and difficulty awakening. Not only do the adults describe themselves as more sleepy and mentally exhausted, they also feel more stressed. The stress may be a direct consequence of partial sleep deprivation or it may result from the challenge of coping with increasing amounts of daytime sleepiness. Think how hard it would be to concentrate or be motivated if you were struggling every day to stay awake. If children have
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Marc Weissbluth (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child)
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Then there were all the diseases one is vulnerable to in the woods — giardiasis, eastern equine encephalitis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis, schistosomiasis, brucellosis, and shigellosis, to offer but a sampling. Eastern equine encephalitis, caused by the prick of a mosquito, attacks the brain and central nervous system. If you’re lucky you can hope to spend the rest of your life propped in a chair with a bib around your neck, but generally it will kill you. There is no known cure. No less arresting is Lyme disease, which comes from the bite of a tiny deer tick. If undetected, it can lie dormant in the human body for years before erupting in a positive fiesta of maladies. This is a disease for the person who wants to experience it all. The symptoms include, but are not limited to, headaches, fatigue, fever, chills, shortness of breath, dizziness, shooting pains in the extremities, cardiac irregularities, facial paralysis, muscle spasms, severe mental impairment, loss of control of body functions, and — hardly surprising, really — chronic depression.
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Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods)
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There had been a time when the mere business of driving a car was a relief to him; when he had found in the un-reality of a long, solitary journey a palliative to his troubled brain, when the fatigue of several hours’ driving had allowed him to forget more sombre cares.
It was one of the subtler landmarks of middle age, perhaps, that he could no longer thus subdue his mind. It needed sterner measures now: he even tried on occasion to plan in his head a walk through a European city – to record the shops and buildings he would pass, for instance, in Berne on a walk from the Münster to the university. But despite such energetic mental exercise, the ghosts of time present would intrude and drive his dreams away. It was Ann who had robbed him of his peace, Ann who had once made the present so important and taught him the habit of reality, and when she went there was nothing.
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John Le Carré (Call for the Dead (George Smiley, #1))
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I take no pleasure in, and set no store by, the suggestion that Professor Wessely effectively hijacked the WHO logo to give credence to his own view of ME as a mental illness. Nevertheless, I am uncomfortable that the professor does not appear to be doing his utmost to clear the air on this issue.
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Frederick R.P. Curzon
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phase three clinical trial found that rhodiola exerts an antifatigue effect that increases mental performance and concentration and decreases cortisol response in burnout patients with fatigue syndrome; other studies have found similar outcomes including the amelioration of depression and anxiety.
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Stephen Harrod Buhner (Herbal Antivirals: Natural Remedies for Emerging & Resistant Viral Infections)
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When I went to the medical profession complaining of fatigue and forgetfulness, they diagnosed me with Mental Illness, Sleep Apnea and Small Airways Disease. What I actually had was far larger and included Altitude Hypersensitivity, Circadian Rhythm Disorder and Urea Cycle Disorder, and all of them cause fatigue and forgetfulness!
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Steven Magee
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For the last 48 years, myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) has been formally classified by the World Health Organisation as a neurological disorder but for the last 29 years a group of UK psychiatrists (known as the Wessely School) have denied it exists other than as an aberrant belief; they insist that it is a mental (behavioural) disorder that can be cured by graded exercise and “cognitive re-structuring”.
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Margaret Williams
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What, in fact, do we know about the peak experience? Well, to begin with, we know one thing that puts us several steps ahead of the most penetrating thinkers of the 19th century: that P.E’.s are not a matter of pure good luck or grace. They don’t come and go as they please, leaving ‘this dim, vast vale of tears vacant and desolate’. Like rainbows, peak experiences are governed by definite laws. They are ‘intentional’.
And that statement suddenly gains in significance when we remember Thorndike’s discovery that the effect of positive stimuli is far more powerful and far reaching than that of negative stimuli. His first statement of the law of effect was simply that situations that elicit positive reactions tend to produce continuance of positive reactions, while situations that elicit negative or avoidance reactions tend to produce continuance of these. It was later that he came to realise that positive reactions build-up stronger response patterns than negative ones. In other words, positive responses are more intentional than negative ones.
Which is another way of saying that if you want a positive reaction (or a peak experience), your best chance of obtaining it is by putting yourself into an active, purposive frame of mind. The opposite of the peak experience—sudden depression, fatigue, even the ‘panic fear’ that swept William James to the edge of insanity—is the outcome of passivity. This cannot be overemphasised. Depression—or neurosis—need not have a positive cause (childhood traumas, etc.). It is the natural outcome of negative passivity.
The peak experience is the outcome of an intentional attitude. ‘Feedback’ from my activities depends upon the degree of deliberately calculated purpose I put into them, not upon some occult law connected with the activity itself. . . .
A healthy, perfectly adjusted human being would slide smoothly into gear, perform whatever has to be done with perfect economy of energy, then recover lost energy in a state of serene relaxation. Most human beings are not healthy or well adjusted. Their activity is full of strain and nervous tension, and their relaxation hovers on the edge of anxiety. They fail to put enough effort—enough seriousness—into their activity, and they fail to withdraw enough effort from their relaxation. Moods of serenity descend upon them—if at all—by chance; perhaps after some crisis, or in peaceful surroundings with pleasant associations. Their main trouble is that they have no idea of what can be achieved by a certain kind of mental effort.
And this is perhaps the place to point out that although mystical contemplation is as old as religion, it is only in the past two centuries that it has played a major role in European culture. It was the group of writers we call the romantics who discovered that a man contemplating a waterfall or a mountain peak can suddenly feel ‘godlike’, as if the soul had expanded. The world is seen from a ‘bird’s eye view’ instead of a worm’s eye view: there is a sense of power, detachment, serenity. The romantics—Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Goethe, Schiller—were the first to raise the question of whether there are ‘higher ceilings of human nature’. But, lacking the concepts for analysing the problem, they left it unsolved. And the romantics in general accepted that the ‘godlike moments’ cannot be sustained, and certainly cannot be re-created at will. This produced the climate of despair that has continued down to our own time. (The major writers of the 20th century—Proust, Eliot, Joyce, Musil—are direct descendants of the romantics, as Edmund Wilson pointed out in Axel’s Castle.) Thus it can be seen that Maslow’s importance extends far beyond the field of psychology. William James had asserted that ‘mystical’ experiences are not mystical at all, but are a perfectly normal potential of human consciousness; but there is no mention of such experiences in Principles of Psychology (or only in passing).
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Colin Wilson (New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow & the Post-Freudian Revolution)
“
The alternative to soul-acceptance is soul-fatigue. There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the body. When we stay up too late and rise too early; when we try to fuel ourselves for the day with coffee and a donut in the morning and Red Bull in the afternoon; when we refuse to take the time to exercise and we eat foods that clog our brains and arteries; when we constantly try to guess which line at the grocery store will move faster and which car in which lane at the stoplight will move faster and which parking space is closest to the mall, our bodies grow weary. There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the mind. When we are bombarded by information all day at work . . . When multiple screens are always clamoring for our attention . . . When we carry around mental lists of errands not yet done and bills not yet paid and emails not yet replied to . . . When we try to push unpleasant emotions under the surface like holding beach balls under the water at a swimming pool . . . our minds grow weary. There is a kind of fatigue that attacks the will. We have so many decisions to make. When we are trying to decide what clothes will create the best possible impression, which foods will bring us the most pleasure, which tasks at work will bring us the most success, which entertainment options will make us the most happy, which people we dare to disappoint, which events we must attend, even what vacation destination will be most enjoyable, the need to make decisions overwhelms us. The sheer length of the menu at Cheesecake Factory oppresses us. Sometimes college students choose double majors, not because they want to study two fields, but simply because they cannot make the decision to say “no” to either one. Our wills grow weary with so many choices.
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John Ortberg (Soul Keeping: Caring For the Most Important Part of You)
“
In 1990, when the insurgency first erupted, only 1,762 people were diagnosed with mental disorders. After a decade of inexorable violence, those numbers shot up to 38,696. Behind these figures was the fatigue, mental and emotional, of a people both battered and bruised. This was their private hell, one that remained invisible to the cameras and the public gaze, this was the loneliness that came with the feeling that you were losing your mind.
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Barkha Dutt (This Unquiet Land: Stories from India's Fault Lines)
“
This is not an argument with psychiatry. Mental and physical illness are equally real and horrible. As with any long-term illness, some people with ME/CFS will develop comorbid depression and other mental health problems – where CBT can be of help alongside good quality general management. The argument here is with a flawed model of causation assuming efficacy for CBT and GET while taking no significant account of varying clinical presentations and disease pathways.
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Charles Shepherd
“
We live in the world, Jacob thought. That thought always seemed to insert itself, usually in opposition to the word ideally. Ideally, we would make sandwiches at homeless shelters every weekend, and learn instruments late in life, and stop thinking about the middle of life as late in life, and use some mental resource other than Google, and some physical resource other than Amazon, and permanently retire mac and cheese, and give at least a quarter of the time and attention to aging relatives that they deserve, and never put a child in front of a screen. But we live in the world, and in the world there’s soccer practice, and speech therapy, and grocery shopping, and homework, and keeping the house respectably clean, and money, and moods, and fatigue, and also we’re only human, and humans not only need but deserve things like time with a coffee and the paper, and seeing friends, and taking breathers, so as nice as that idea is, there’s just no way we can make it happen. Ought to, but can’t.
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Jonathan Safran Foer (Here I Am)
“
Any respiratory viral infection, any inflammation in the brain or CNS—especially encephalitis and meningitis, fatigue and weakness, especially after long illness or in chronic infections, poor mitochondrial function, chronic wasting, unproductive cough from no known cause, joint inflammation, mental fog and confusion, low libido, lung infections, kidney infections, thick mucus in the lungs that will not move, immune dysregulation, dizziness, tinnitus, nocturia, cancer. It is especially effective for mycoplasma infections.
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Stephen Harrod Buhner (Herbal Antivirals: Natural Remedies for Emerging & Resistant Viral Infections)
“
The fatigue of the climb was great but it is interesting to learn once more how much further one can go on one's second wind. I think that is an important lesson for everyone to learn for it should also be applied to one's mental efforts. Most people go through life without ever discovering the existance of that whole field of endeavor which we describe as second wind. Whether mentally or physically occupied most people give up at the first appearance of exhaustion. Thus they never learn the glory and the exhilaration of genuine effort...
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Agnes Elizabeth née Ernst Meyer
“
Grappling with a problem for which one has little aptitude or inclination (a geometry problem, say) exercises one’s power to attend. For Weil, this ascetic aspect of attention—the fact that it is a “negative effort” against mental sloth—is especially significant. “Something in our soul has a far more violent repugnance for true attention than the flesh has for bodily fatigue. This something is much more closely connected with evil than is the flesh. That is why every time that we really concentrate our attention, we destroy the evil in ourselves.
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Matthew B. Crawford (The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction)
“
Homo defessus — Never before in human history have so many people considered their everyday tiredness (because they are so busy and have so much to do) as a badge of honor. We are living in the era of Homo defessus, the exhausted man. I wonder if historians of the distant future (if there will be any) will look back at our epoch and decide to give it a name: “The Second Dark Ages,” because for the first time, humans not only deliberately sought exhaustion, but were also convinced that this mentality was their pride, an indisputable token of greatness.
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Giannis Delimitsos
“
Screw all mental illness stigma. Having the courage to admit yourself for psychiatric care to heal is phenomenal. Shrugging off a panic attack is badass. Battling through intense spells of fatigue and demotivation is incredible. Going to the psychologist to attend to your mental health is a boss move. Achieving things despite having little to no interest or pleasure is impressive. Frequently practicing self-care is fantastic. Picking yourself up after hitting rock bottom is exceptional. Openly talking about your mental health struggles is courageous. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
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K.J. Redelinghuys (Unfiltered: Grappling with Mental Illness)
“
The key to being a minimalist is making a routine out of just about everything that is not core to your mission. When decisions are automatic, you skip the conscious deliberation and associated brain activity. You move straight from encountering a situation (e.g., I need to get dressed) to performing an action (e.g., putting on the same shirt as I do every day) without expending energy in between. In a sense, you are cheating fatigue, saving your mental muscle for things that actually matter to you. The more decisions you make automatic, the more energy you’ll have for the work you deem important.
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Brad Stulberg (Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success)
“
Unfortunately, there wasn’t the same conversation about mental health back then that there is now. I hope any new mothers reading this who are having a hard time will get help early and will channel their feelings into something more healing than white marble floors. Because I now know that I was displaying just about every symptom of perinatal depression: sadness, anxiety, fatigue. Once the babies were born, I added on my confusion and obsession about the babies’ safety, which was ratcheting up the more media attention was on us. Being a new mom is challenging enough without trying to do everything under a microscope.
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Britney Spears (The Woman in Me)
“
I’m more than my anxiety,
more than my depression,
more than the things that cause my aggression.
I’m more than my guilt,
more than my desperation,
more than the things that provide me frustration.
I’m more than my resentment,
more than the emotions I try to hide,
more than the things that eat me up inside.
I’m more than my indecision,
more than my doubt,
more than the things that make me want out.
I’m more than my setbacks,
more than my fatigue,
more than the things that harm my physique.
I’m more than my loneliness,
more than my annoyance,
more than the things that cause my avoidance.
I’m more than my failures,
more than my profanity,
more than the things that cause my insanity.
I’m more than my sadness,
more than my irritability,
more than the things that cause my fragility.
I’m more than my sweaty palms,
more than my shortness of breath,
more than the things that drive me to death.
I’m more than my pain,
more than my blues,
more than the alcohol I abuse.
I’m more than my trembling,
more than my shaky voice,
more than the things that provide me such noise.
I’m more than my restlessness,
more than my tears,
more than the insecurities that have plagued me for years.
I’m more than the ear can hear,
more than the heart can feel,
more than the eye can see,
I’m beautifully me.
”
”
K.J. Redelinghuys (Unfiltered: Grappling with Mental Illness)
“
ME/CFS is not synonymous with depression or other psychiatric illnesses. The belief by some that they are the same has caused much con- fusion in the past, and inappropriate treatment.
Nonpsychotic depression (major depression and dysthymia), anxiety disorders and somatization disorders are not diagnostically exclusionary, but may cause significant symptom overlap. Careful attention to the timing and correlation of symptoms, and a search for those characteristics of the symptoms that help to differentiate between diagnoses may be informative, e.g., exercise will tend to ameliorate depression whereas excessive exercise tends to have an adverse effect on ME/CFS patients.
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”
Bruce M. Carruthers
“
When I endeavor to examine my own conduct…I divide myself as it were into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from the other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of. The first is the spectator…. The second is the agent, the person whom I properly call myself, and of whose conduct, under the character of a spectator, I was endeavoring to form some opinion. It was in this way, Smith concluded, that “we suppose ourselves the spectators of our own behaviour.” The change of perspective accomplished by the impartial spectator is far from easy, however: Smith clearly recognized the “fatiguing exertions” it required.
”
”
Jeffrey M. Schwartz (The Mind & The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force)
“
Characteristics of CFS/ME include persistent mental and physical fatigue accompanied by a range of neurological, autonomic, neuroendocrine, immune and sleep difficulties (Carruthers et al., 2003). In turn, these manifestations produce a range of functional limitations including severe cognitive impairments (e.g. problems with attention, problem-solving, concentration, memory and verbal communication) and debilitating physical difficulties such as problems with general mobility and self-care, shopping, food-preparation and housekeeping (Taylor & Kielhofner, 2005). These impairments are often acute and enduring, impacting upon an individual’s personal, occupational and social lives.
”
”
Megan A. Arroll
“
Fatigue has built up after all this training, and I can’t seem to run very fast. As I’m leisurely jogging along the Charles River, girls who look to be new Harvard freshmen keep on passing me. Most of these girls are small, slim, have on maroon Harvard-logo outfits, blond hair in a ponytail, and brand-new iPods, and they run like the wind. You can definitely feel a sort of aggressive challenge emanating from them. They seem to be used to passing people, and probably not used to being passed. They all look so bright, so healthy, attractive, and serious, brimming with self-confidence. With their long strides and strong, sharp kicks, it’s easy to see that they’re typical mid-distance runners, unsuited for long-distance running. They’re more mentally cut out for brief runs at high speed. Compared to them I’m pretty used to losing. There are plenty of things in this world that are way beyond me, plenty of opponents I can never beat. Not to brag, but these girls probably don’t know as much as I do about pain. And, quite naturally, there might not be a need for them to know it. These random thoughts come to me as I watch their proud ponytails swinging back and forth, their aggressive strides. Keeping to my own leisurely pace, I continue my run down along the Charles. Have I ever had such luminous days in my own life? Perhaps a few. But even if I had a long ponytail back then, I doubt if it would have swung so proudly as these girls’ ponytails do. And my legs wouldn’t have kicked the ground as cleanly and as powerfully as theirs. Maybe that’s only to be expected. These girls are, after all, brand-new students at the one and only Harvard University. Still, it’s pretty wonderful to watch these pretty girls run. As I do, I’m struck by an obvious thought: One generation takes over from the next. This is how things are handed over in this world, so I don’t feel so bad if they pass me. These girls have their own pace, their own sense of time. And I have my own pace, my own sense of time. The two are completely different, but that’s the way it should be.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)
“
ME/CFS has a greater negative impact on functional status and well-being than other chronic diseases, e.g., cancer or lung diseases[8], and is associated with a drastic decrement in physical functioning[9]. In a comparison study[10] ME/CFS patients scored significantly lower than patients with hypertension, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, and multiple sclerosis (MS), on all of the eight Short Form Health Survey (SF-36)[11] subscales. As compared to patients with depression, ME/CFS patients scored significantly lower on all the scales, except for scales measuring mental health and role disability due to emotional problems, on which they scored significantly higher.
”
”
Frank Twisk
“
The results of the most recent such study were published in Psychological Science at the end of 2008. A team of University of Michigan researchers, led by psychologist Marc Berman, recruited some three dozen people and subjected them to a rigorous, and mentally fatiguing, series of tests designed to measure the capacity of their working memory and their ability to exert top-down control over their attention. The subjects were then divided into two groups. Half of them spent about an hour walking through a secluded woodland park, and the other half spent an equal amount of time walking along busy down town streets. Both groups then took the tests a second time. Spending time in the park, the researchers found, “significantly improved” people’s performance on the cognitive tests, indicating a substantial increase in attentiveness. Walking in the city, by contrast, led to no improvement in test results.
The researchers then conducted a similar experiment with another set of people. Rather than taking walks between the rounds of testing, these subjects simply looked at photographs of either calm rural scenes or busy urban ones. The results were the same. The people who looked at pictures of nature scenes were able to exert substantially stronger control over their attention, while those who looked at city scenes showed no improvement in their attentiveness. “In sum,” concluded the researchers, “simple and brief interactions with nature can produce marked increases in cognitive control.” Spending time in the natural world seems to be of “vital importance” to “effective cognitive functioning.
”
”
Nicholas Carr (The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains)
“
His breath gushed from him. He pressed his palms and forehead to the cold wood, letting it seep away his fatigue. Please let us pass. His bile pulsed. Balin bit his lip, shook his head. Open, he thought. He grabbed the knob again and twisted. It held. A stiff, solid mold of brass. Balin imagined the door within his mind’s eye: the grain of the wood, the shine of the knob. The knob turned in his mind. Balin’s hand shook. Numbness seeped up from his fingertips along his palm. Open. In his mind, the handle turned. Something within him pulled taut, stretched. Open. He squeezed the door’s handle and twisted. It held. Open! He gritted his teeth, thought the door to open, demanded the door to open. That tight thing within him stretched further. A blunt ache blossomed into a sting, like a pulled muscle, but it wasn’t physical. It wasn’t mental either. Something else. Something unchartered. Open. Open. Open.
He twisted the knob.
It did not move.
”
”
Vanessa MacLellan (Awaken: A Norse Dark Fantasy)
“
The existence of reservoirs of energy that habitually are not tapped is most familiar to us as the phenomenon of “second wind.” Ordinarily we stop when we meet the first effective layer, so to call it, of fatigue. We have then walked, played or worked “enough,” and desist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious obstruction, on this side of which our usual life is cast. But if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. We have evidently tapped a new level of energy. There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third and a fourth “wind” may supervene. Mental activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue-distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own—sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points.37
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”
Steven Kotler (The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer)
“
Contrary to popular belief, the psychiatric concept of clinical depression is different from ordinary sadness. Depression adds to sadness a constellation of physical symptoms that produce a general slowing and deadening of bodily functions. A depressive person sleeps less, and the nighttime becomes a dreaded chore that one can never achieve properly. Or one never gets out of bed; better sleep, if one can, since one can’t do anything else. Interest in life and activities declines. Thinking itself is difficult; concentration is shot; it’s hard enough to focus on three consecutive thoughts, much less read an entire book. Energy is low; constant fatigue, inexplicable and unyielding, wears one down. Food loses its taste. Or to feel better, one might eat more, perhaps to stave off boredom. The body moves slowly, falling to the declining rhythm of one’s thoughts. Or one paces anxiously, unable to relax. One feels that everything is one’s own fault; guilty, remorseful thoughts recur over and over. For some depressives, suicide can seem like the only way out of this morass; about 10 percent take their own lives.
”
”
S. Nassir Ghaemi (A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness)
“
COULD IT BE B12 DEFICIENCY? The neurological symptoms of B12 deficiency that occur in young and middle-aged people are very similar to those in older people. They include the following: • Numbness, tingling, or burning sensations of the hands, feet, extremities, or truncal area, often misdiagnosed as diabetic neuropathy or chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) • Tremor, often misdiagnosed as essential tremor or pre-Parkinson’s disease • Muscle weakness, paresthesias, and paralysis, sometimes attributed to Guillain-Barré syndrome • Pain, fatigue, and debility, often labeled as “chronic fatigue syndrome” • “Shaky leg” syndrome (leg trembling) • Confusion and mental fogginess, often misdiagnosed as early-onset dementia • Unsteadiness, dizziness, and paresthesias, often misdiagnosed as multiple sclerosis • Weakness of extremities, clumsiness, muscle cramps, twitching, or foot drop, often misdiagnosed as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) • Psychiatric symptoms, such as depression or psychosis (covered in greater length in the next chapter) • Visual disturbances, vision loss, or blindness In contrast, a doctor ignorant about the effects of B12 deficiency can destroy a patient’s life. The
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”
Sally M. Pacholok (Could It Be B12?: An Epidemic of Misdiagnoses)
“
We can all be "sad" or "blue" at times in our lives. We have all seen movies about the madman and his crime spree, with the underlying cause of mental illness. We sometimes even make jokes about people being crazy or nuts, even though we know that we shouldn't. We have all had some exposure to mental illness, but do we really understand it or know what it is? Many of our preconceptions are incorrect. A mental illness can be defined as a health condition that changes a person's thinking, feelings, or behavior (or all three) and that causes the person distress and difficulty in functioning. As with many diseases, mental illness is severe in some cases and mild in others. Individuals who have a mental illness don't necessarily look like they are sick, especially if their illness is mild. Other individuals may show more explicit symptoms such as confusion, agitation, or withdrawal. There are many different mental illnesses, including depression, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Each illness alters a person's thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors in distinct ways. But in all this struggles, Consummo Plus has proven to be the most effective herbal way of treating mental illness no matter the root cause.
The treatment will be in three stages. First is activating detoxification, which includes flushing any insoluble toxins from the body. The medicine and the supplement then proceed to activate all cells in the body, it receives signals from the brain and goes to repair very damaged cells, tissues, or organs of the body wherever such is found. The second treatment comes in liquid form, tackles the psychological aspect including hallucination, paranoia, hearing voices, depression, fear, persecutory delusion, or religious delusion. The supplement also tackles the Behavioral, Mood, and Cognitive aspects including aggression or anger, thought disorder, self-harm, or lack of restraint, anxiety, apathy, fatigue, feeling detached, false belief of superiority or inferiority, and amnesia. The third treatment is called mental restorer, and this consists of the spiritual brain restorer, a system of healing which “assumes the presence of a supernatural power to restore the natural brain order. With this approach, you will get back your loving boyfriend and he will live a better and fulfilled life, like realize his full potential, work productively, make a meaningful contribution to his community, and handle all the stress that comes with life. It will give him a new lease of life, a new strength, and new vigor. The Healing & Recovery process is Gradual, Comprehensive, Holistic, and very Effective.
www . curetoschizophrenia . blogspot . com
E-mail: rodwenhill@gmail. com
”
”
Justin Rodwen Hill
“
What does a playoff team look like?.., It looks like this... A playoff team is tired. They're in pain from a long season. They're frustrated about losses. But they're full of passion. Passion that will let them overcome the fatigue and the pain... A playoff team has to have energy. They have to be prepared to do whatever it takes. to battle one-on-one late in the 3rd period. To block shots. To play 2 or 3 overtime periods, i that's what it takes to win. They have to be the 1st to the puck, Clear the net. For the next 2 months, a playoff team has to bring that energy to the arena every night... It's not just the passion and the energy. It's not just physical conditioning. It's mental conditioning too. You have to stick to the game plan. You can't let fatigue or distractions get in the way of how you play. Some of you men have never been in a playoff game. Everyone will tell you it's a whole new season. Everyone will tell you it's intense. You have no. Fucking. Idea... All of you have trained yourself to leave everything behind when you step on the ice. And that's what you have to do now... You have to make the mind shift that this is a new season. The only that matters now is what we can control -- being ready for the next game... You have to have confidence in yourself. And n your teammates... Some of you guys haven't been playing together that long. But I've seen the teamwork you all bring. The work ethic. I've seen the relationships and the chemistry develop. You have to have trust in each other... and that means being trustworthy. Being there for each other. For the team... coaching staff. Trust in the game plan. Trust in the preparation... I ave trust in you. We can do this.
”
”
Kelly Jamieson (Game On (Aces Hockey, #8))
“
I wish to clarify the situation regarding the classification of neurasthenia, fatigue syndrome, post-viral fatigue syndrome and benign myalgic encephalomyelitis. Let me state clearly that the World Health Organization (WHO) has not changed its position on these disorders... Post-viral fatigue syndrome remains under the diseases of nervous system as G93.3. Benign myalgic encephalomyelitis is included within this category.
Neurasthenia remains under mental and behavioural disorders as F48.0 and fatigue syndrome is included in this category. However, post-viral fatigue syndrome is explicitly excluded from F48.0.
”
”
Benedetto Saraceno
“
This is called decision fatigue. It’s a state in which you’re less able to make good decisions because you’re mentally exhausted from making decisions throughout the day.
”
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Damon Zahariades (To-Do List Formula: A Stress-Free Guide To Creating To-Do Lists That Work!)
“
Patients with psoriatic arthritis often complain of fatigue. It may be defined as an overwhelming, sustained sense of exhaustion and reduced capacity for physical and mental work. Fatigue
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Dafna Gladman (Psoriatic Arthritis (The Facts))
“
3) Third, is the ability to discontinue medications. Most of you will be able to reduce or eliminate your medications for high blood pressure, type II diabetes, arthritis, indigestion, reflux, and constipation, among other things. Imagine the freedom that will come with being healthy without having to depend on pills, without having to worry about paying for them, without being limited by their schedule, and without having to endure their side effects. (Please note you should NOT alter your medication regimens without physician supervision.) 4) Next, is improvement in vigor, vitality, and overall well-being within DAYS of starting the program. You will shed those feelings of fatigue, heaviness, and mental cloudiness and they will be replaced by energy, agility, and clarity. In addition, rather than crashing after a meal, feeling sluggish at best, you will be invigorated. 5) Finally, you can save thousands of dollars per year in food and health care costs. Sound too good to be true? Let’s take a closer look, beginning with research that has shown that adopting healthier eating habits can save you as much as $2000 to $4500 a year.30 Add to that the thousands of dollars per year you can save just by stopping five of the most commonly used medications (for cholesterol, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, reflux, and arthritis). Moreover, many of you have bought into the need for taking supplements to enhance your diets. Unfortunately, not all of these supplements are necessary
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Alona Pulde (Keep It Simple, Keep It Whole: Your Guide to Optimum Health)
“
As such, one of the most important traits developed by young Spartans was mental strength. The ability to push through pain, hunger, thirst, fatigue, and all the excuses for laziness tossed their way by the voice in the back of their heads. In other words, mind over matter. In
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Dominic Mann (Self-Discipline: How to Develop Spartan Discipline, Unbreakable Mental Toughness, and Relentless Willpower (Self-Discipline Books Book 2))
“
Its mental discipline, however, is by far more fruitful, and keeps one's mind in equipoise, making one neither passionate nor dispassionate, neither sentimental nor unintelligent, neither nervous nor senseless. It is well known as a cure to all sorts of mental disease, occasioned by nervous disturbance, as a nourishment to the fatigued brain, and also as a stimulus to torpor and sloth. It is self-control, as it is the subduing of such pernicious passions as anger, jealousy, hatred, and the like, and the awakening of noble emotions such as sympathy, mercy, generosity, and what not. It is a mode of Enlightenment, as it is the dispelling of illusion and of doubt,
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Kaiten Nukariya (The Religion of the Samurai A Study of Zen Philosophy and Discipline in China and Japan)
“
The men were thorough sportsmen, loving horse-racing, foot-racing, and gambling. They were graceful winners, and good losers in games of chance. And they were firm believers in luck, and in the medicine conferred in dreams. Men often starved, and even tortured themselves, in preparation for desired medicine-dreams. Then, weakened both physically and mentally by enervating sweat-baths and fatigue, they slipped away alone to some dangerous spot, usually a high mountain-peak, a sheer cliff or a well-worn buffalo-trail that might be traveled at any hour by a vast herd of buffalo; and here, without food, or water, they spent four days and nights (if necessary) trying to dream, appealing to invisible “helpers,” crying aloud to the winds until utter exhaustion brought them sleep, or unconsciousness—and perhaps a medicine-dream. If lucky, some animal or bird appeared to the dreamer, offering counsel and help, nearly always prescribing rules which if followed would lead the dreamer to success in war. Thereafter the bird or animal appearing in the medicine-dream was the dreamer’s medicine. He believed that all the power, the cunning, and the instinctive wisdom, possessed by the appearing bird or animal would forever afterward be his own in time of need. And always thereafter the dreamer carried with him some part of such bird or animal. It was his lucky-piece, a talisman, and he would undertake nothing without it upon his person.
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Frank Bird Linderman (Blackfeet Indians)
“
Many people confuse “chronic fatigue” (which is a symptom of many chronic conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, or lupus) or “general tiredness” (which is lifestyle-related), with the specific illness “chronic fatigue syndrome” (ME/CFS). To clarify the differences, here are some of the major symptoms of ME/CFS:
- unexplained physical and mental fatigue for an extended period of time
- post-exertional malaise (meaning an inappropriate loss of physical and mental stamina and a worsening of symptoms after any effort)
- sleep dysfunction
- pain
- neurological/cognitive manifestations
- autonomic manifestations, such as orthostatic intolerance
- neuroendocrine symptoms, such as subnormal body temperature
- immune system changes, such as recurrent flu-like symptoms.
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Valerie Free
“
The effects of the war going on in the unseen world manifests in our strained and damaged relationships, emotional instability, mental fatigue, physical exhaustion, and other stuff.
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Unoma Nwankwor (Mended With Love (Sons of Ishmael, #3))
“
I remembered him ranting once about how if someone coughed, they were given time off from work, but if someone was mentally fatigued, they were expected to suck it up.
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Jennifer L. Armentrout (The Problem with Forever)
“
COLD DEFINITION: a sudden or ongoing exposure to uncomfortably low temperatures PHYSICAL SIGNALS: Shivering Blue lips Yawning Eyes that tear up Chattering teeth Tingling extremities Stuttering speech Skin that’s uncomfortably cold to the touch Dry, cracked lips A stiff jaw that makes speech difficult Numbness in one’s extremities A burning sensation in the skin Clumsiness Slow, shallow breaths Lips that tremble Poor dexterity or increased clumsiness Wrapping the arms around the torso Jumping, shuffling, or dancing to get the blood flowing Clapping one’s hands or stamping one’s feet Shoving the hands deep into the pockets Red and swollen patches on the skin (chilblains) Pulling the limbs tightly into the core Slurred speech Rubbing one’s hands together Tucking one’s hands into one’s armpits Pulling a collar or scarf up over the face Huddling inside a jacket Rounded shoulders, the chin dropped down to the chest Cringing and squeezing one’s eyes shut Turning one’s back to the wind or source of cold Pulling down one’s sleeves to cover the hands Curling and uncurling one’s toes to get the blood flowing Rubbing one’s legs; using friction to create warmth Quivering breaths Slapping oneself Shaking out the arms and legs Flexing the fingers Taking deep breaths in an effort to wake up Curling into a ball; making oneself small Sharing body heat with others Blowing into cupped hands to warm them INTERNAL SENSATIONS: Low energy Fatigue or drowsiness The feeling of even one’s insides being cold A weakened pulse Nausea Loss of appetite A burning sensation in the lungs when inhaling A voice that loses strength MENTAL RESPONSES: Confusion Muddled thinking Impaired decision-making A desire to sleep Apathy CUES OF ACUTE OR LONG-TERM COLD EXPOSURE: Frostbite Hypothermia Gangrene Limb amputation Coma Heart failure Death WRITER’S TIP: Emotional attitude makes a difference when dealing with the cold. A person who can maintain mental acuity and focus will withstand the elements much better than someone whose mental condition is compromised by negativity. Return to the Table of Contents
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Angela Ackerman (Emotion Amplifiers)
“
I was riddled with memory issues that became so severe at the age of 45 that I had to apply for disability benefits. At the age of 50, my mental functioning was in decline with severe short term memory issues, concentration problems and chronic fatigue. My kidneys were testing bad on blood tests. The USA has refused all applications for occupational disease and disability benefits.
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Steven Magee
“
Due to the progressing sickness that the doctors appeared not to understand, I could only hold a job for months before I would be laid off. My manager would slowly become aware that I had health issues. Chronic fatigue and mental confusion are hard to hide on a daily basis! I was working for older electrical engineering managers and they also appeared to have health issues. One was constantly taking vitamin energy drinks, another had a brain tumor removed in the past, another would open his desk drawer and there would be several bottles of prescription medications in there, and another had been wondering the streets in confused state a year earlier! Engineering staff I was supervising had unusual personalities and issues with progressing their work. Some appeared to have health issues comparable to my own. This was the reality of my “American Dream”.
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Steven Magee (Magee’s Disease)
“
One of the important things to be aware of with supplements is that too much of certain supplements can induce symptoms of mental illness and chronic fatigue. Supplements are useful in the right dose, but too little can be ineffective and too much can make you sicker.
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Steven Magee (Magee’s Disease)
“
Working at Mauna Kea Observatories brought on chronic fatigue, irritability, and a variety of mental health problems that have plagued me ever since.
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Steven Magee
“
La plus grosse campagne de sensibilisation à la santé mentale au Canada est une publicité à peine déguisée pour une compagnie privée qui empoche des profits grâce au système carcéral, au détriment de la santé mentale des détenu·es. Tant que la psychothérapie ne sera pas couverte publiquement et accessible universellement, les décideur·euses auront de ce sang sur les mains. Tant qu’un revenu minimal ne sera pas garanti à tous les membres de notre population, iels auront de ce sang sur les mains. Tant que le système d’éducation ne sera pas repensé pour contribuer à déstigmatiser réellement ces maladies et ces troubles, iels auront de ce sang sur les mains. Gaétan Barrette a de ce sang sur les mains ; tout comme Philippe Couillard et François Legault, pour ne nommer qu’eux. Ça aura pris une pandémie mondiale pour que ce dernier refinance quelque peu le secteur. La fatigue, celle qui envahit nos corps la nuit, le jour, peu importe, quand nous restons figé·es dans nos lits, elle est politique.
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Julien Guy-Béland (Pas besoin d'ennemis)
“
In the past few decades we’ve learned to recognise the many hazards of poor nutrition: insulin resistance, obesity, susceptibility to inflammation and fatigue. All of these factors can contribute to an early death. We’ve altered our diets and learned to resist the siren call of sugar and other simple carbohydrates. We’ve now reached a similar point with the news; we think about it today much as we thought about sugar and fast food twenty years ago. News is to the mind what sugar is to the body: appetising, easily digestible and extremely damaging. The media is feeding us titbits that taste palatable but do nothing to satisfy our hunger for knowledge. Unlike books and well-researched long-form articles, the news cannot satiate us. We can gobble down as many articles as we like, but we will never be doing more than gorging on sweets. As with sugar, alcohol, fast food and smoking, the side effects only become apparent later.
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Rolf Dobelli (Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life)
“
A diet high in micronutrients decreases food cravings and overeating behaviors. Sensations I call toxic hunger—such as fatigue, weakness, mental fog, loss of attentiveness, stomach cramps, fluttering, tremors, irritability, and mild headaches—are commonly interpreted as hunger. These sensations resolve gradually for the majority of people who adopt an NDPR diet. A new, nondistressing sensation, which I have labeled “true” or “throat” hunger, replaces these toxic hunger symptoms.
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Joel Fuhrman (The End of Heart Disease: The Eat to Live Plan to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease (Eat for Life))
“
Dr John Nash Ott had reported improved health that an outdoor lifestyle can bring in his books. He believed it could cure prolonged illness. I had a similar experience. I had achieved what had been impossible during the previous decade, a return to the weight I was in my thirties. I had far more energy and far less days of chronic fatigue. I was mentally alert and suffered far less forgetfulness and confusion. I slept better on a two stage sleep cycle that Dr John Nash Ott had reported as an effect of the outdoor lifestyle. I would go to bed earlier, typically a couple of hours after sunset and wake up around 1-2 AM before falling asleep again until morning twilight. My body had automatically aligned with the twilight times. It was common in the morning to be awake in bed listening to the morning chorus of the birds and the “Cock-a-doodle-do!” of the roosters.
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Steven Magee (Magee’s Disease)
“
It was 2008, I was age thirty eight and fighting chronic fatigue and mental functioning issues daily. Coffee was my best friend! But the coffee did not fix me, it just helped perk me up to get me to work daily. I was living the “American Dream”. I had my green card work visa, I was a resident of the USA and I could work for any employer I wanted to! But I felt lousy every day. Getting out of bed was hard after a poor night of sleep.
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Steven Magee (Magee’s Disease)
“
Given the mental health stigma within the Black community that precludes many Black women from identifying themselves as needing help, the groups were advertised as women’s wellness groups, rather than as mental health treatment. The brochure listed common symptoms of depression, such as feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and irritable; having difficulty paying attention or concentrating; feeling tense or on edge; feeling unmotivated; having difficulty sleeping; and feeling fatigue. Women saw themselves in these symptoms, even when they adamantly denied being depressed.
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Inger Burnett-Zeigler (Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen: Exploring The Emotional Lives of Black Women)
“
Depression, you take me to dark places.
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Steven Magee
“
The body-brain loop works both ways. Just as physical conditioning shores up the brain’s performance, the reverse can also be true: a mental drain can impact muscular endurance. One study of Italian soccer players showed that doing fatiguing brain teasers before going to the practice field made them commit more errors in controlling and passing the ball. Another study of twenty-one young boxers showed that too much time on phones playing video games affected their speed reactions in the ring.
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Sally Jenkins (The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life)