Healthy Women article - How to Tell if You Have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Sly Saint

Sly Saint

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
This wasn't too bad until they started trying to explain the symptoms:

"
If you have CFS, you may have:
  • Sore throat

  • Fatigue

  • Memory or concentration loss (which may come from a lack of true rest)

  • Headaches
  • Unrefreshing or lack of productive sleep (you get plenty of sleep but you're still exhausted the next day)
  • Unexplained joint or muscle pain (inflammation is your body's way of fighting infection; as your body fights the viruses that may cause ME/CFS, your pains may be signs of that battle)
  • Enlarged lymph nodes in your armpits or neck (which happens when you have a virus; in this case, you have several viruses)

  • Sensitivity to light (you get headaches from certain kinds of artificial light and have to squint to see)

  • Nausea or vomiting from normal activities that didn't used to be a problem, and it can take more than 24 hours to recover."
"Treatment
Treatment focuses on symptom relief. Many people with ME/CFS are also depressed. Treating depression can make it easier to cope with ME/CFS, help improve sleep and relieve pain. You may also be told to speak with a therapist who can help you work out the limitations that ME/CFS puts on your life. And a physical therapist can help figure out what exercises are best for you."

https://www.healthywomen.org/content/article/how-tell-if-you-have-chronic-fatigue-syndrome

I give it a C for effort.
 
This article is still on their website.
However they did update their pages on CFS in March 2019;
Myalgic encephalomyelitis, formerly known as chronic fatigue syndrome and now often referred to as ME/CFS, was recently redefined and renamed to more accurately reflect the brain inflammation and multisystem symptoms of the disease.
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With the renaming came new guidelines from the National Academy of Medicine to help primary and specialty care providers more readily diagnose and manage a condition that has traditionally been difficult to diagnose and manage.
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https://www.healthywomen.org/condition/chronic-fatigue-syndrome#tab4

all fairly OK
but then we get to 'treatment and prevention'
Cognitive behavior therapy. This therapy helps people with ME/CFS identify negative beliefs and behaviors that may be getting in the way of their recovery. With the help of a mental health provider, cognitive behavior therapy helps you replace negative thoughts with positive, healthy ones.
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and yet throughout the new updated information it says that very few people recover.
Prevention
Despite a decade of research into the origins of ME/CFS we still don't know what causes this debilitating disease. Neither are there known steps you can take to prevent ME/CFS.
Click to expand...

that's helpful then. a decade??

but in the QandA section
Supportive therapy, such as counseling, can also help to identify and develop effective coping strategies.
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which would be a much more suitable replacement to the CBT in the treatment section.

would one of our American members like to contact 'healthy-women' and request the relevant changes;

also maybe contact the Bateman Horne Center as the info is apparently
Medically Reviewed by Suzanne D. Vernon, PhD
Research Director
Bateman Horne Center
Salt Lake City, UT
 
article at same website but this time on
COVID-19 “Long-Haulers” Are Finally Being Heard
Déjà vu?
Unfortunately, if history repeats itself, a number of the patients may end up with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME / CFS), a devastating chronic neuroimmune disease that disables up to 2.5 million Americans and 17 to 20 million people worldwide — approximately 75% of whom are women.

"Looking at the history of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), the other coronaviruses, there was a high rate of people who ended up remaining sick for a long time," said Linda Tannenbaum, founder and CEO/president of Open Medicine Foundation.

In May, the foundation announced that it's conducting an international two-year study to learn what happens in the body to cause some COVID-19 patients to develop ME/CVS.

In one study, 27% of SARS patients met the criteria for ME/CFS years after contracting the disease.

"Those people that are sick and that remain sick need to know that there is this official disease that's been known for over 50 years, and it's not a new post-COVID syndrome," Tannenbaum said.

In two separate July interviews, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said there is evidence that COVID-19 patients are developing symptoms similar to chronic fatigue (ME/CFS).

Back in Texas, Witvliet still has respiratory problems and had another small seizure recently. Her current neurologist believes she is developing chronic fatigue. She has muscle pain and walks with a cane in the evening.
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https://www.healthywomen.org/your-health/covid-19-long-haulers-are-finally-being-heard

they link to the OMF for ME/CFS but then
Back in Texas, Witvliet still has respiratory problems and had another small seizure recently. Her current neurologist believes she is developing chronic fatigue. She has muscle pain and walks with a cane in the evening.
Click to expand...
which takes you to their own page on CFS (see posts above) with stuff on CBT.
 
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I wonder if anyone has considered that CBT, and attempting to 'cure' unhelpful beliefs/behaviours may actually set up negative re-enforcement patterns of thinking and behaviour, and thus turn perfectly normal post viral symptoms into ME.

Trying to fight the way nature has evolved us to think and behave when ill, and blaming us when we can't, may set up all sorts of 'issues', a constant an unnecessary pattern of trying and failing to please the shrink, and family employers, that's worse than was occuring previously, as now, it's 'officially' our fault, we ain't trying hard enough.

We're no longer sick, no longer ill, we are just pathetic undeserving failures - official

It certainly appears as if there are many more cases of ME than there used to be, before CBT and GET.

But that might just be coz the internet exists now.

Statistics may also show that ME rates are lower in countries which do not subscribe to the BPS fallacy - and do not insist that treatment is CBT/GET.

They may not, but they may.

Not as 'out there' as it may appear on first reading....if CBT/GET increase severity and disability then that might explain any increase in incidences of diagnosable ME - they may be actually creating them by subjecting people with post viral symptoms to their wackadoodle snakeoil.

Of course the question then is - are there in fact more cases of ME than there were before the BPS cabal got their snouts on the gravy train?

Are there more cases than there were 40-50 years ago?

...and are instances shadowing in any way the implementation of BPS doctrine i.e. do cases of ME increase as more and more of health services worldwide subscribe to the notion that it's 'all in your head' and should be treated with unprofessional disdain, and with CBT/GET
 
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