Fatigue is one of the most common lupus symptoms that may affect your day-to-day quality of life. Lack of sleep can cause inflammation in the body and make your pain, stress, or fatigue worse. To keep your energy levels in check, make sure you get 7 to 9 hours of restful sleep each night.
Having lupus can make everyday life challenging. When your lupus is active, symptoms like joint stiffness, pain, fatigue, confusion, or depression can make simple tasks difficult — and sometimes impossible. Since these symptoms aren't visible, the people around you may have trouble understanding how you feel.
Muscle and joint pain.
You may experience pain and stiffness, with or without swelling. This affects most people with lupus. Common areas for muscle pain and swelling include the neck, thighs, shoulders, and upper arms.
With close follow-up and treatment, 80-90% of people with lupus can expect to live a normal life span. It is true that medical science has not yet developed a method for curing lupus, and some people do die from the disease.
Many lupus patients aren't able to do intensive physical work, like waitressing or working in a grocery store. Jobs that involve standing for long periods, like working a cash register, greeting customers, or being a hostess at a restaurant, can be physically tiring as well as rough on the joints.
Lupus flares can be mild to serious, and they do not follow a pattern. However, with treatment, many people with lupus can manage the disease. Anyone can get lupus, but women are more likely to get the disease than men are.
Lupus nephritis tends to develop within 5 years of the appearance of initial lupus symptoms. The condition affects about 40% of people who have SLE and can lead to end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) in 22% of patients over a period of 15 years.
Kidneys About one half of people with lupus experience kidney involvement, and the kidney has become the most extensively studied organ affected by lupus. Lungs About 50% of people with SLE will experience lung involvement during the course of their disease.
Lupus and the muscles. Lupus often causes myalgia, or aches and pains in the muscles. Less often, lupus can cause myositis, or inflammation in the muscles — usually in the hips, thighs, shoulders, and upper arms.
According to the Lupus Research Alliance, about half of all people with lupus experience cognitive difficulties with thought processes. Around 1 in 5 people experience headaches, memory loss, mood swings, and stroke. Blood clots might also develop. These might also lead to dangerous complications, such as stroke.
Up to 80% of people with lupus say that fatigue is a primary symptom. About 40% of people with lupus have fatigue that's severe and doesn't go away.
Common triggers include:
Being out in the sun or having close exposure to fluorescent or halogen light. Infection. Injury. Stopping your lupus medicines.
Is Autoimmune disease a disability that qualifies for financial help in Australia? Autoimmune disease is a disability that qualifies for financial help in Australia. Help is available through the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) which is administered by Centrelink.
Lupus can cause serious kidney damage, and kidney failure is one of the leading causes of death among people with lupus. Brain and central nervous system. If your brain is affected by lupus, you may experience headaches, dizziness, behavior changes, vision problems, and even strokes or seizures.
Symptoms and diagnosis occur most often between the ages of 15 and 44. Symptoms of lupus will occur before age 18 in only 15 percent of the people who are later diagnosed with the disease.
Whole-body symptoms — Most people with lupus experience fatigue, fever, and weight changes at some point in their illness. Fatigue — Fatigue is the most common symptom of lupus and can be debilitating. Almost everyone with lupus experiences fatigue at some point, even when there are no other symptoms.
Exposure to certain factors in the environment – such as viral infections, sunlight, certain medications, and smoking – may trigger lupus. Immune and Inflammatory Influences.
Lupus can be difficult to diagnose because it has many symptoms that come and go and can mimic symptoms of other disorders or diseases. When speaking to your doctor about your symptoms, be sure to include symptoms that may no longer be present.
Since lupus affects so many parts of the body, in so many different ways, everyone's situation is different. Some people with systemic lupus can work for years with few issues. But others need some type of accommodation, such as flexible work hours or more frequent breaks.
It is vital that people living with SLE practice these habits along with getting 7-9 hours of sleep (a little more for children) in order to prevent lupus flares, limit fatigue, and keep the body's mechanisms healthy, especially the immune system.
The best way to describe it is a yo-yo. When I'm good, I have minimal symptoms and can do most things that I'd like to do. Flares are a different story. During a flare, I'll get joint pain, chest pain, swelling, fatigue, insomnia and brain fog (can't think clearly and forgetting things).
Most people with lupus who are old enough to drink alcohol can do so in moderation. Be aware, however, that alcohol can change the way the body uses or metabolizes certain medications, rushing them into the bloodstream. This can intensify both the good and not-so-good effects of medications.