Hello
I have been browsing this forum for a few days now and I have very happy I found it. I am a 33 year old woman who lives in the UK, but I am half Italian and have had the beta thalassemia trait for as long as I can remember. I have experienced tiredness since puberty, l have ups and downs with severe fatigue, have a history of anxiety/panic attacks - lately under control and also have endometriosis. Since the birth of my second son, I have not felt well at all and lately my exhaustion seems to be overwhelming. Furthermore I have been suffering from severe intermittent upper stomach pain which cannot be clinically explained. I don't even bother going to the Dr's anymore because they think I am a hypochondriac, which I am not - I am a full-time working mother of two children that very rarely visits the GP - when I do I need to be very desperate - usually in tears from my pain and exhaustion.
As my tiredness increases, by body is starting to feel like lead and everything is a massive effort - this is affecting me psychologically as I feel my quality of life is very poor. Anyway, enough moaning about me. I wanted to share this document that I found. Please acept my apologies if you had already seen it, but I think it is very interesting. Among other things it seems that thal minors are likely to have low cholesterol - i know mine is very low and certain does not correlate to my diet. It seems that low cholesterol is linked to a variety of disorder and not necessarily as positive as it might sound. I am now wondering whether the fact that I have low cholesterol means that by body is finding it hard to absorb other nutrients and I think about starting vitamin D as per the great suggestions on this site.
This article seems to attribute many other conditions to thal minor and I believe I can relate to most of them. It is such a shame that the medical community does not take this condition seriously as I really no longer know where to turn or what to do, i would just like some energy and I gather than many of you feel the same.
I hope this article is of interest
Dom