I (28 year old male) have been dealing with various health issues since November 2013. I had some intense worries over STDs at the end of last year which turned out to be unfounded but caused a lot of stress. Following this, in January, I had an infection that gave me stomach pains which I assumed to be a bacterial or viral issue. The stomach pains were accompanied by fatigue as well but at the time were the main focus of my concern. They did not go away after the infection cleared up. I had blood and stool tests to check for coeliacs disease, crohns and h pylori. I was found to have h pylori but nothing else and so underwent the eradication therapy to get rid of the h pylori bacteria.
After completing the therapy, in June, I had a repeat test which confirmed that the h pylori was gone but I continued to have stomach problems. A doctor suggested that the issues could be IBS and in July I started taking antispasmodic pills Buscopan. The stomach pains have responded very well to these and have more or less vanished (my bowel movements -- sorry! -- have been relatively normal recently and I have only had some diarrhoea sometimes after drinking too much or having spicy food).
However, I am still experiencing intense tiredness which stops me from doing a lot of what I want to do. I have had further tests to check levels of iron and B12 which have all come back well within the normal range. I have been assured at my clinic that if digestion issues were preventing my body from assimilating important nutrients then this would be reflected in these tests. I have taken a further test today to check blood sugar levels.
I am not even 100% sure that I have IBS since I have never been given a solid answer by the clinic (they have referred me to a gastroenterologist but I am still waiting). Still, it is the only thing I have to work with since none of the tests has revealed anything.
I find it hard to find out anything about what could be causing this since if I search for fatigue-related terms then I get results for chronic fatigue syndrome. I do not think it is that because I don't have any other pains or muscle aches, it is just tiredness. It has been on and off for months, since the start of the year, but generally on.
Perhaps it is simply anxiety but it does just feel like tiredness, similar to the sensation of being up at 2am, only all of the day, rather than social avoidance or depression.
Anyway, if you have made it this far, thank you for reading and I would appreciate any pointers on what I might be dealing with. I also think that there should be big warnings about stress in general and getting into a flap over STDs, since it seems like that has been a root cause of the problems I have had this year. I might be wrong about that (maybe it was just an unrelated stomach infection) but it all seemed to happen at about the same time.