I’ve been dancing with lupus for seven years now and it’s a journey full of ups and downs. Lupus is a very unpredictable disease, it’s complicated and often misunderstood. During my first year with lupus, I had a hard time coping with the disease. I, myself couldn’t understand what’s happening to me. There are days that I feel fine and there are days that I feel so weak and tired. Fatigue is one of the common symptoms in lupus patients. Often times, we get tired with no reason at all, the unexplainable weariness to do things and feeling weak even to get out of bed. Even after seven years, I still have so much to learn with this chronic illness but I have already learned quite a few things to somehow cope with it and live with lupus.

Here are some ways that may help you reduce fatigue and prevent those “bad days” of lupus:

Get enough sleep. Some people need eight hours of sleep or even more but for some, like me I just need six hours of sleep to feel okay. It is also important to sleep at night because I read from somewhere that sleeping at night helps our immune system.

Do not tire yourself out. I am often restless but I noticed that I often get tired when I engage with my daily activities, I am starting to practice pausing with every activity just to help my body rest. It may slow things down but that’s okay, just take your time.

Exercise and eat a healthy balanced diet. Do I need to explain more?

Organize and schedule your activities ahead of time. I am starting to be forgetful, I know it’s not because I’m getting older but I blame all those medicines I’ve been taking so I need to write down my schedules and keep a to-do list. Organizing your schedule helps you minimize stress and allow you to work on your time efficiently.

Finish your tasks one at a time. I am a multi-tasker. I do things all at once because I hate to just sit and do nothing but I realize that I get tired easily every time I do a lot of things at a time, so I started to just focus on one task and finish it before engaging myself with another task.

Avoid stress. As we all know, stress is our number one enemy. It’s the number one cause of our lupus flares. But the thing is how do you avoid stress? Well, don’t ask me just immediately consult your doctor once you feel stressed.

Learn to live with lupus graciously. Acceptance is the key to coping with lupus, stop asking why, stop looking for someone to blame just look up and ask for God’s guidance through your walk with lupus. It may be a chronic illness but remember there is absolutely nothing that God cannot do and you can overcome everything with Him, even Lupus or any disease for that matter. Just keep the faith!

Posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Health, Lupus, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.