BUPA (British United Provident Association): What is chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS)?

[Sly Saint]

author
Dr Luke Powles
Associate Clinical Director, Health Clinics Bupa Global and UK
20 July 2023
Next review due July 2026

Myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a complex condition that affects multiple parts of the body. It can make doing normal activities such as work or school more difficult. It’s more than just feeling tired, because with ME/CFS sleeping doesn’t help.

Treating ME/EFS involves managing the amount of energy you use, but there is currently no cure for it. In this article, I talk about what ME/CFS is and how it can be managed.

What is the main cause of chronic fatigue syndrome?
The exact cause of myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), is not yet completely understood. Some theories are that it is a result of a virus, a problem with your immune system, or it could be related to hormones.

Many people with ME/CFS are generally healthy before developing ME/CFS. It’s not caused by emotional stress or another condition you might have.

What are the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome?
ME/CFS symptoms include extreme tiredness after activity that does not go away with sleep or resting. You may find it hard to do your normal activities such as work, school, or having a social life. You might find that you’re tired all the time, or you may experience flare-ups where tiredness symptoms come and go.

Along with tiredness, other ME/CFS symptoms include:

• forgetfulness or confusion
• sore throat
• muscle and joint pain
• headaches
• dizziness
• problems with balance
• flu like symptoms
• unrefreshing sleep

What are the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome?
ME/CFS symptoms include extreme tiredness after activity that does not go away with sleep or resting. You may find it hard to do your normal activities such as work, school, or having a social life. You might find that you’re tired all the time, or you may experience flare-ups where tiredness symptoms come and go.

Along with tiredness, other ME/CFS symptoms include:

• forgetfulness or confusion
• sore throat
• muscle and joint pain
• headaches
• dizziness
• problems with balance
• flu like symptoms
• unrefreshing sleep

One way of coping with ME/CFS is energy management. This means setting up the daily limit of energy you use on all kinds of activities including physical, mental, and social. You’ll need to make sure not go over the energy amount you’ve set, otherwise this may worsen your symptoms.

You can discuss with a health professional what your daily routine will be and you may be able to gradually increase the energy amount.

One way of managing energy is pacing. This is when you divide your daily activities with periods of rest in between. Pacing can help you to understand your energy levels and gain stability and a sense of control over your day. You should only do exercise that has been agreed with your ME/CFS team.

There is also mental health treatment for ME/CFS, such as talking therapies. An example is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). In CBT, you work with a therapist to challenge thoughts and behaviours. This type of treatment can help if need psychological support in managing your ME/CFS symptoms.

Overall not too bad but having said it's not just feeling tired he continues using 'tiredness' (probably because that's what the NHS says). Good tho that he says it's not caused by emotional stress.
PEM not mentioned.

 

[Creekside]

My "extreme tiredness" occurs before activity too. It's there before sleep and after sleep, and before activity and after activity. The only way it changes is if something in my ME changes.

 

[rvallee]

Treating ME/EFS involves managing the amount of energy you use

One way of coping with ME/CFS is energy management

Typo aside, those are very different things. Coping is not treating, and pacing is coping in the same way as not buying stuff is coping with poverty. It obviously doesn't treat it. No sane person would ever argue that. And yet here we still are, otherwise smart professionals essentially saying that.

This isn't all bad, but it's still failure to remain this ignorant and be unable to process and pay attention to details. I'm completely sick of the endless excuses MDs use to justify it. Every other profession manages to do better, there is no excuse to remain unable to pay attention to basic details, such as pretending that the CBT typically recommended for ME has been the denying/gaslighting type, with the very explicit goal of denying its reality.

There is simply no reason at all for CBT to be relevant here. There are no thoughts and behaviors to challenge, simply supporting people struggling with a terrible situation is what's needed, but of course it gets very awkward considering that medicine is entirely responsible for most of that hardship, has done massive deliberate harm.

Again, professionals are supposed to do better than this. This deserves a grade of C-. C- grade is a passing grade, but for a profession that requires A students, this is not nearly good enough.

Small progress, yay, but still, professionals everywhere do better than this, only in medicine is there this endless stream of excuses not to do their job competently.

 

[Amw66]

PEM??