Chronic fatigue or exercise intolerance syndrome

Fatigue is often a symptom of an asthenic illness, not a pathology in itself. What happens is that for a high percentage of patients it is impossible to identify the cause of their fatigue.

"And when this exhaustion from an unknown cause lasts more than three months and also greatly affects someone's everyday life, then we would be talking of an illness, specifically the chronic asthemia syndrome, something that is very disabling and mostly affects women," said Dr Nicolás García, a specialist in Internal Medicine at the Clínica Universidad de Navarra (CUN).

Unlike spring asthenia, or fatigue which is caused by another pathology, in this case the tiredness remains more or less at the same level throughout the day.

"In other words, these are people who feel tired when they get up, even though they have slept well. It is also unusual in that it is a type of fatigue that gets worse with any physical activity, so it is also sometimes known as exercise intolerance syndrome. Sometimes just taking a shower is enough to make these people tired. We could say they wear themselves out doing nothing," said Dr García.

Chronic asthenia is a "very disabling" illness for someone who suffers from it because it affects all aspects of their life, at work as well as personally and socially.

"There is a great deal of stigma associated with this condition, because it is often misunderstood. Patients who have it suffer a great deal, not just because of the illness itself but because nobody takes any notice of them. They don't go yellow, they don't bleed, nothing is broken... and in addition, when the doctor sends them for a blood test the results are normal. Other people often accuse them of laziness or making it up, but they're not, they really are worn out. It's an illness which affects a large number of people and we have to be able to help them," explained Dr García.