Fatigue Can Wreck You
As a medical term, fatigue seems suspiciously unspecific. Is it just the common tired we all feel, but extra? Is it more like a bad, long day? A state of mind? This lack of clarity made me assume that “fatigue” was a medical mystery and thus impossible for doctors to diagnose or treat. In this episode of Radio Atlantic, former Atlantic staff writer Ed Yong disabuses me of that idea. I was surprised to learn the medical establishment actually knows quite a bit about the mechanisms of fatigue. What often gets in the way of understanding or treating it can be based more in bias than in an absence of knowledge.
As ambitious Americans, we tend to attach value to productivity. Good capitalists that we are, we can’t help ourselves. This bias forces a lot of sufferers of fatigue to hide their symptoms, or fall prey to bad medical advice that tells them to exercise or grind their way through their symptoms. As the number of people with long COVID increases, understanding fatigue, a symptom of the chronic illness, is more crucial than ever. The pandemic was a shared experience. The aftermath is lonely. Yong’s reporting aims to make it less so.
Every single time I write one of these pieces, hundreds of people will write in saying that, for the first time, they have read something that actually explains their experiences that they have tried so hard to explain to doctors, to employers, to friends and family with no success. — Ed Yong
Listen to the conversation here:
Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts
The following is a transcript of the episode:
Hanna Rosin: I’m Hanna Rosin, and this is Radio Atlantic. In theory, a conversation between a doctor and a patient should be pretty straightforward. Doctor, I have this thing. Okay, patient, I can help you out in this way. But sometimes it doesn’t go that way.
Because the doctor may have some baggage—like outdated medical knowledge or cultural stereotypes—and the patient might have some baggage—like shame or not quite the right words—and all of that gets in the way.
This is a condition whose sufferers could very easily be overlooked in part because many things about their condition hide
