JemPD
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
yes its interesting isnt it. I wonder if it's a severity thing? Not saying you're mildly affected Tigerlilea just saying about myself...Totally agree with this. I don't get PEM from cognitive exertion or sensory stimulus. I never have. For me it is about overdoing physical activity that sets off PEM.
When i was 'mildly' affected at the very beginning (i say mild as opposed to mainly house/bedbound as i am now, not suggesting anyone who is considered mild is only sufffering mildly!) but at that stage I didnt have any kind of sensory issues, i was in denial that i was even ill, & with PEM being delayed my symptoms made no sense at all.
But i pretty sure I didnt have PEM triggered by cognitive stuff on it's own. It was only when i went rapidly downhill & became severe that i started to have sensory issues & cognitive induced PEM.
I do wonder though if the reason I think i didnt have it when milder is that it was difficult to ever do enough cognitive sensory exertion on it's own (appropriate to the much looser limits of being mild - i mean then i could have walked maybe a mile, I did a full day's work - unable to do anything else & often off sick for a couple wks at a time with what dr called 'a virus'... but i did work full time then. God it was hard.
But there would have been no instance of doing enough purely cognitive exertion - which, appropriate to my then level of severity would have been lying down reading for a couple of days straight - to be able to notice it giving me PEM. Because there was always need to be doing something physical long before that - getting a meal for example. So i'm not sure how i ever would have tested whether cog. exert. alone caused it or not.
To further explain what i mean... For example in overly simplistic physical terms... if you had to walk 2miles before PEM onset, but only ever got the opportunity to walk 1, you'd never find out that walking 2 triggered PEM. I never had cause/opportunity to discover if cognitve activity alone would have caused PEM when i was mild because i never did enough of it on it's own.
Just ruminating.