Burn out & Chronic fatigue

"In the course of recent years, the physically frail blue-collar worker has been replaced by the mentally exhausted white-collar worker." (Author not known by name)

Burn-out describes the state of persistent mental exhaustion, usually resulting from a chronic stress load and excessive demands. This is accompanied by various psychological symptoms such as restlessness, concentration problems, sleep disorders, irritability, reduced performance, fatigue, depression and anxiety. The accompanying physical symptoms (e.g. palpitations, chest tightness, digestive complaints, pain sensitivity, etc.) not infrequently lead to misdiagnosis and overtreatment. On the other hand, of course, not every exhaustion syndrome is the result of chronic stress, but can also occur as an accompanying symptom of other diseases (e.g., Lyme disease or cancer). A careful differential diagnosis is therefore important.

In most cases, the first indications are already provided by the symptoms and the medical history. The physical symptoms may require further diagnostic clarification, as does the possible presence of a psychiatric illness (e.g., endogenous depression).

Until now, it has not been possible to objectify the symptoms subjectively described by the patient by means of a measurement procedure. If the diagnosis of the physical symptoms did not reveal any pathological findings, the patient was often relegated to the "psychological corner".

We can close this diagnostic gap with an analysis of the autonomic nervous system (VNS analysis). The autonomic nervous system (VNS) controls all bodily functions and can be differentiated into a part that is responsible for tension (sympathetic nervous system) and a part that is responsible for relaxation (parasympathetic nervous system). In a state of rest, the parasympathetic nervous system should be more activated. This is often not the case in patients with burn-out syndrome; in many cases, the sympathetic nervous system is overexcited even at rest, as if the patient were in a permanent stress situation. This overexcitation can be detected by the VNS analysis and is often the first "proof" for the patient that there is indeed a serious illness. In addition, VNS analysis can be used to verify successful therapy.
Therapeutically, the focus is on reducing or eliminating the causes of stress. This often proves to be difficult, since occupational or family stresses usually cannot be changed in the short term. For this reason, in addition to efforts to reduce stress, measures are required that enable the patient to cope better with such stressful situations. All the therapeutic options listed below aim to reduce the permanent overexcitation of the sympathetic nervous system and to strengthen the parasympathetic nervous system, so that the autonomic nervous system regains its balance. In our practice, the following measures, among others, are used for this purpose:

• Phytotherapy (from valerian to St. John's wort) and complex homeopathy
• Orthomolecular therapy (e.g. potassium-magnesium preparations)
• Breathing therapy (a certain breathing frequency, which can be learned by applying a breathing rhythm, leads to a significant calming of the VNS)
• Acupuncture (achieving a balance of yin and yang has been the therapeutic principle of acupuncture for over 2000 years)
• Bioresonance therapy (a therapeutic method that uses the body's own and substance information to influence the body's self-regulating forces)
• Autologous blood treatment (the oldest known regulatory therapy can be optimized in its effectiveness by homeopathic or anthroposophic remedies)
• Procaine base infusion (procaine is a very well tolerated neural therapeutic agent with strong efficacy on the VNS. Since procaine has an additional pain-reducing effect, procaine base infusion is mainly used in patients with disturbed VNS and additional pain symptoms).

For patients with exhaustion syndrome, the analysis of the VNS offers for the first time the possibility to determine the extent of the vegetative overload with an objectifiable finding and at the same time to check the success of the therapeutic measures.

Since both stress-reducing measures and psychotherapeutic treatment are often only possible to a limited extent in the short term, the symptom-adapted therapies listed above can actively support the patient in coping with the disease process.