Explaining Fatigue, Inflammation & Cytokine Sickness

Hello,

I just want to do this session on inflammation and what's often referred to as cytokine sickness,

As it came up in a consultation with a client who just asked me for more explanation,

And I thought it'd be a really good thing to just talk about and let other people know about,

Because it's one of those issues that when you kind of understand what's going on in terms of stress response and how that affects the immune system,

It can really help you to get a little topography,

A map,

Of why you feel how you feel when you do.

So going back to what this means,

Cytokine sickness refers to those kind of flu-like symptoms that we often feel when we are either overwhelmed or stress pushes us over into a sense of can't cope or ill,

And even has kind of depressive symptoms.

So it's the feeling you get when you're first coming down with something,

But also it's a feeling that you get often when we have what's referred to as leisure sickness.

So you might go through a period of stress and then you stop or you go on holiday and you just come down with something.

You don't feel yourself,

You don't feel so good.

Although this is the first time you've rested in ages and you feel you really need the recovery,

Actually you end up just feeling pretty rubbish and having to take yourself to bed.

And that's a real sign that stress hormones have kept up your cortisol levels.

So the long-term steroid hormone cortisol that kind of keeps us going,

It's motivational and we do need it in our systems for some of the time,

But ideally it comes down in the afternoon and evening.

When it doesn't,

When it tends to be kept at a high level to keep us going,

When we perceive there's a continual danger or we just keep doing,

Doing,

Doing without any sense of recovery,

What that does is it suppresses the immune system.

So it stops it from kind of coming out to play and cleaning up all the things that we are exposed to all the time,

Which is why people are given kind of cortisone and steroid medications when their immune system is kind of overacting.

It might be things like autoimmune conditions or vast sensitivities or intolerances.

So that's what cortisol does.

It suppresses the immune system and it does that because energy is finer.

We only have so much to go around at a time.

So when our body perceives that we're in,

We need to keep up that survival response,

We're in that stress reaction,

Then that's a time where we prioritize the doing,

You know,

The being able to move around with muscle,

Being able to react,

To respond.

The brain has a lot of energy,

More energy,

A lot more fuel going to it to respond.

And energy is directed away from things like the immune system,

Digestive system,

Reproductive systems,

All of those that are seen as much more long term plans because survival is short term.

So one of those things here is the immune system is suppressed,

Which means when we do finally stop and cortisol comes down,

We're able to come down from stress hormones,

Then suddenly the immune system gets that energy requisite and it's allowed to come out to play.

And often that is to clean up things that have been hanging around.

So suddenly,

You know,

A virus that has remained unchallenged will kind of rear up and you get that feeling of your immune system fighting off that virus.

What happens then is that cytokines come out to play.

So they're like immune messengers,

They flag up something is wrong and needs to be addressed,

That the immune system needs to come here and look at it.

And cytokines come with kind of putting ourselves into recovery as well.

So you get this kind of the cavalry coming in to clean up what wasn't able to be cleaned before.

And it reduces our permission to move,

Our want to move.

So this works on dopamine pathways,

Our motivation,

Our mood and motivation go down in order for us to go into recovery and to go into more parasympathetic mode,

Rest,

Recovery,

Healing mode.

So it's a really,

Really good plan for the body to put ourselves down into that place where we don't feel like moving.

We don't feel motivated in any way and even depressive.

Cytokines can go across the blood brain barrier and have that depressive effect,

Which is really useful at that point because it stops us wanting to do anything.

But it leaves us with that feeling,

You know,

Demotivated,

You know,

What's the point.

And cytokines sickness then,

Those flu-like symptoms that kind of knock us out are often where a lot of people who've gone into kind of fatigue states or exhaustion or burnout will find themselves living in as kind of response of low grade inflammation,

That inflammation that's around all the time and the immune system just kind of going into,

It's a different type of response to cleaning up invaders here,

But it's still that thing of the immune system being called on to respond pretty much all of the time.

And it's not really designed to do that.

So it can run systems at a much higher level in terms of energy output.

So it's also very fatiguing.

So when we're in that kind of cytokines sickness,

We can feel that those flu-like symptoms,

We can feel incredibly demotivated.

We can even feel kind of aches and pains and we can feel that things are very kind of,

There's a feeling of listlessness and even that we have less energy going to muscles.

So we feel even quite weak.

And once we kind of realize that,

Then we can start to pull back because all the things that are feeding into that is that it's part of long-term chronic stress,

Even kind of trauma that can be in the mix there as well in terms of that feeling,

You know,

A sense of unsafe.

So the more we can come back to grounding bodily practices,

Embodied awareness,

Focus on the breath,

Focus on self-compassion and being as present,

Grounded and safe as we can be at any time,

Whatever you need to do that is really helpful to start unravel this tone that can become a kind of default setting as normal.

So I hope that's helped.

It's slightly a slightly complicated subject,

But actually can be quite reassuring if you're finding that type of fatigue that feels kind of almost like you're wading through treacle sometimes.

That is actually a sense that your immune system and your nervous system remain in this heightened space together.

So although it can seem like there's less happening,

Less energy available,

Actually there's a lot being used up,

Which is really the reason for both mental and physical fatigue behind that.

So the more you can care for yourself,

The more you can cut down things like sugar that tend to be inflammatory and the more that you can give yourself recovery space,

The more that you can start to let energy come out slowly and your immune system come to regulate itself and have appropriate response to whatever's going on around you.

Do send me any questions through.

Often that subject kind of needs a bit of unpicking,

Especially as I'm generalizing there and individual responses can tap into different reasons,

Different triggers,

Why we can find ourselves in feeling those phases of life.

So do send me through any questions,

Anything you want to know,

Kind of on a more individual note.