Jen Brea: My ME is in remission

This may be a dumb question, but I wonder if one can have the "structural potential" for ongoing brainstem compression, but it takes some kind of event like physical trauma or brain swelling from an infection to initiate this compression. I'm thinking that once it happens maybe this kind of compression may not be able to resolve itself if there are problems with ligaments or structure.

I suppose I'm trying to square certain ME onset types with such an ongoing condition.

Sorry if this makes no sense. I'm just wondering how one goes from asymptomatic to symptomatic in this hypothesis.

 

In elderly patients who may have kinking of vertebral arteries passing through cervical vertebrae immobilisation might prevent blackouts but that does not seem relevant to what we have heard so far. Vertebral artery kingpin is not normally assocaited with CCI but with age-related osteoarthritis.

Surgery may damage these arteries so have an adverse effect on brain blood flow.

But in general there should not be any significant effect on brain blood flow.

 

The boom of 'Yuppie Flu' came at a time when traders moved to computer screens. Is this just a coincidence or point to neck problems as a contributory factor.

The rise of young sufferers at an age when they are starting to interact with tech etc.

 

Fatigue is a very subjective thing to fill in a form about. Friends with MS have done trials and discussing it with them they felt the same as me. When asked to fill in a questionnaire like this you worry about being too negative in case it makes something that is really useful seem not effective.

If I was buying a supplement for myself I would give it a few weeks then not buy any more unless it had a definite effect. In a trial I would be more likely to say it might have been helping a bit. This isn't lying as such just that it is difficult to think how the fatigue or pain feel compared with other times. That is why objective outcomes are always best.

The other thing about being in a trial is that it gives you permission to be ill something we do not have most of the time. So we can leave hoovering or ask someone else to do the cooking and actually have less fatigue.

 

To my recall "Yuppie Flu" was a derogatory term applied to patients with CFS in the late '80's and '90's after the coverage of the Incline Village epidemic. Because many of the Incline Village patients were relatively well-off and because the CDC decided to disparage and downplay the severity of the illness (coining the term "chronic fatigue syndrome" was just part of the damage they did), the media began to spread the notion that "CFS" was the result of "Yuppie" burn out. I'm not aware of any evidence of a cluster of ME/CFS in day traders or tech users.

 

First time I heard it was connected to city high flyers in the early '80's.

https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Yuppie_Flu