Tiredness, Fatigue, and Exhaustion as Perceived by Recreational Marathon Runners, 2018, Olsen et al

Paywalled at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1049732318785360?journalCode=qhra

 

oooo you wouldnt want to do that <sharp intake of breath> ... that'll be boom & bust n you want to avoid that!

for anyone unclear that was sarcasm.


Interesting article.

 

amazing how people can have careers in stating the bloody obvious .

 

This experience of fatigue is a cultural construct. Members of indigenous African and South American tribes have run ultra-long distances for generations and there are no systematic reports of them feeling anything like this. It's clear to me that this exercise-behavior serves as a ritual performance that allows the individual(s) to disengage from their surroundings and feel fatigue and other Conversion symptoms in a socially-sanctioned and even celebrated manner by providing a culturally-plausible excuse for their manifestation. It is a defense mechanism for the individual's psyche, allowing them to explain the Conversion symptoms non-psychogenically and thus justify abnegation of reflective self-examination which, if undertaken earnestly, would reveal the true causes of the symptoms - though at the cost of subsequent likely diminution of self-esteem due to revelation of inadequacy or neurosis due to mental weakness; and/or psychic pain caused by repressed memories of abuse.

It is suggested that these runners work through their existential issues using Graded Marathon Therapy. In the RACE Trial treatment arm, participants will be administered a combined exercise program and talk-therapy treatment that will help them to increase the number of marathons they can perform without producing Conversion symptoms. Participants will start low, at just one marathon per day, and will be administered either Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or psychoanalysis when they begin to feel Conversion symptoms. The goal will be to detach the feelings of fatigue and other Conversion symptoms from exercise-behavior, allowing the participants to address the root causes of their Conversion symptoms while enabling them to perform marathons unencumbered by bodily distress. By the end of the treatment, it is hypothesized that participants in the treatment arm will be able to perform marathons virtually constantly without experiencing Conversion symptoms.

 

A disturbingly accurate parody.

Well played, sir.

 

Actually could be a useful study, in that it shows that clearly healthy and fit people can quite easily get similar physical sensations and problems (limitations?) after intense physical challenge, so it cannot automatically be ascribed to delusional thinking.

It may actually be a result (in ME/CFS patients) of a pathophysiology in the energy production/utilisation process.