| Chronic Fatigue
(CF)
What is
Chronic Fatigue?
Fatigue - a feeling of weakness and lethargy - is a common
complaint that has many possible causes, including poor nutrition, mental boredom or
organic disease within the body.
The first considerations are diet, exercise, rest, and
emotional/mental stress. Correcting any imbalance in these areas of one's life will
usually overcome temporary fatigue. However, if the fatigue persists it becomes a chronic
condition with additional considerations. In this case, a full medical examination is
required to diagnose the cause of the problem.
Interestingly, chronic fatigue alone, without other organic
illness, was seldom reported historically before the second half of the 19th century. The
first noted sufferers, in the period from 1860 to about 1910, were referred to as 'bed
cases' or 'sofa cases' and these patients tended to be middle-class females .
Medical sources make it clear that by the time of the First
World War, chronic fatigue was a common complaint in Europe and North America. Medical
concepts of chronic fatigue since the 1930s have run along four separate lines:
(1) 'postinfectious
neuromyasthenia', going back to an
atypical 'poliomyelitis' epidemic in 1934; (2) 'chronic Epstein-Barr virus' infection, an
illness attribution that increased in frequency after the discovery in 1968 that this
virus caused mononucleosis; (3) 'myalgic encephalomyelitis', dating from an epidemic at
the Royal Free Hospital in London in 1955; and (4) 'fibrositis', or 'fibromyalgia', used
as a rheumatological description since the turn of the century.
Recently, these four separate paths have tended to converge
into the diagnosis of 'chronic fatigue syndrome' or 'ME' (2). M.E. affects an estimated
300,000 people in the UK and it was only in 1993 that it was officially recognised by the
World Health Organisation as a disease of the nervous system.(3)
If you suspect you might have M.E., it is vitally important
to make sure you get a proper diagnosis. M.E. is real disease but a notoriously difficult
disease to diagnose, so much so that for a time many doctors believed their M.E. patients
were primarily troubled with psychological disorders and the disease was not taken
seriously. Remember chronic fatigue can also be caused from an underactive thyroid gland,
dislocated temporo mandibular joint (the jaw joint), parasites in the intestines, low
blood sugar, food intolerances, varied allergies and hypersensitivities and even a
prolapsed heart valve.(4)
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Known Causes
Research has associated chronic fatigue with inflammation of
the central nervous system (5) an overactive immune system (6) and a disturbance of the
hypothalamus gland which lies at the base of the brain and controls the body's hormone
related activities.(7) One study revealed that over 80% of chronic fatigue sufferers have
damaged mitchondria - the part of each cell that creates energy.(8) Furthermore,
Candidiasis (excess yeast organisms found in the intestines) is thought to affect at least
50% of all chronic fatigue sufferers.(9)
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Conventional
Treatment
Conventional medicine is still at a loss as regards effective
treatment for sufferers. The prognosis for full recovery is approximately 20% with the
other 80% either remaining ill or not recovering to their former energy and level of
health.
Fortunately there are hopeful signs of holistic treatments
in alternative medicine...
Footnotes: -
(1) ME: is it a genuine disease? Shepherd C; Lees HHealth Visit May 1992, 65 (5) p165-7,
ISSN 0017-9140
(2) Chronic fatigue in historical perspective. Shorter EHistory of Medicine Program,
Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Ciba Found Symp (NETHERLANDS)
1993, 173 p6-16; discussion 16-22, ISSN
(3) International Classification of Diseases Ed.10 p124 (ME/PVS)
(4) Holistic Medicine, March/April 1990, p8.
(5) D Buchwald et al - AnIntMed - 1992 116,2:103
(6) LAnday et al - Lancet 1991, 338:702
(7) Bakheit et al BMJ 1992; 304:1010
(8) Behan et al Acta Neuropathologica 1991; 93:61
(9) Recognising ME - Gill Jacobs - Cadeuceus 22 p18.
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