Can Fatigue Cause Nausea?

Yes, fatigue can definitely make you feel nauseous or even cause vomiting.

This is a response of your nervous system to extreme exhaustion or fatigue,  

with the manifestations of nausea , headache and even diarrhea sometimes.

These unpleasant symptoms can be prevented effectively by keeping yourself well hydrated and sleeping adequately, as far as there is no underlying health condition which is specific to causing these symptoms.

Feeling fatigued and nauseous are quite distressing on their own. Sometimes,

they overlap in some health conditions, and at times, they appear as a separate entity without a person essentially having any underlying disease. Well, discussing their association with one another, a question usually comes in one’s mind that does fatigue cause nausea or is there any relation between the two? The answer to this is not so simple, and it depends on a person’s underlying health status.

If you’re healthy enough with essentially no significant underlying health condition, then as a response to general fatigue or exhaustion for example by continuous stress, work overload and a lack of a good quality sleep at times, an imbalance of the elements of our nervous system occurs, namely sympathetic and parasympathetic. This, in turn, causes nausea or even sometimes brings other symptoms along with it, including headaches and diarrhea.

However, on the other hand, exactly these two symptoms also tend to appear

at the same time in association with an underlying pathological issue, signalling towards the disease which might be causing these symptoms. In such a case, these symptoms can not be held responsible to directly cause the other, and general preventive measures usually are not of any great importance in resolving these. Rather, a proper workup by your doctor consisting of laboratory tests and diagnosing the condition is essential to solving the issue.

Common Conditions associated with fatigue and nausea

It is worth mentioning here the common conditions that are associated with fatigue, if worse enough, can cause nausea and even headaches. Following are a few common examples:

• Common Cold which is also called Flu or more specifically Upper respiratory tract infection.
• Lack of sleep
• Anxiety
• Migraine
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• Pregnancy
• Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS)

Most of these can be managed conservatively as discussed above. The point here is for us to figure out the symptoms in discussion, that can be sorted out by taking consevative measures rather than stressing it out further and rushing to the hospital. However, conditions like migraine and chronic fatigue syndrome may require clinical attention for further management, if conservative measures fail.

Less common causes

• Addison Disease
• Chronic Kidney disease
• Chronic Liver disease
• Rheumatoid Arthritis

According to the Merck Manual, these conditions are strongly associated with nausea and fatigue and therefore, it can be concluded that these symptoms appear exclusively because of hormonal and chemical imbalance as a result of these pathologies, and not because of one another, and they are almost always managed as an in-patient except rheumatoid arthritis.

Further continuing the discussion, there have been several studies carried out in an effort to find the associations between fatigue, nausea and headaches.

One research study on people with migraine headaches and it’s association with nausea and fatigue was published by BMC in 2014, highly suggesting that these symptoms appear as a result of multiple areas of brain stimulation causing nausea and fatigue pre or post migraine attacks.

Another research based evidence is that low blood pressure resulting in people suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is responsible for causing fatigue and nausea. This is to say that the autoimmune system is thought to be stimulated once the blood pressure drops, resulting in a person feeling a need to throw up and become exhausted.

In short, people do not need to worry about these unpleasant symptoms when they occur occasionally in the absence of any significant health condition. However, they should consult a doctor if they interfere with their daily activities. Also ,as literature has indicated that these symptoms usually come up together in a number of disease processes, it is quite difficult to conclude that they can cause each other.