By Cort Johnson in Health Rising. Chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and fibromyalgia (FM) produce so many symptoms that diagnosing them can be difficult for uninformed doctors. While we know that small fiber polyneuropathy (SFPN) (or small fiber neuropathy (SFN) commonly occurs in both these diseases, what I didn’t realize until I read the […]
CFS/ME
From The Tahoe Outbreak To COVID-19 Dr. Peterson And Simmaron Take On The Coronavirus – And ME/CFS
By Cort Johnson in Simmaron Research. “Testing is so important to everyone in our community, especially front-line workers and people who are at higher risk of severe disease. Simmaron is excited to serve our neighbors and lead the way to broader testing, so we help keep Nevada safe and learn more about this […]
Data Firm Zegami Joins Project To Find Cure For ME
By Agata Gurkovska in Zagami. Zegami, the Oxford University data visualisation spin-out, has joined an international team of medical researchers to try and find the cause of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). The startup believes the project could lead to the discovery of the root cause of the condition […]
Paul Garner: Covid-19 And Fatigue—A Game Of Snakes And Ladders
By Paul Garner in BMJ BMJ Blogs. It’s over, I thought! It was the beginning of May, after the weirdest seven weeks of illness I had ever had, a roller coaster of exhaustion, pain everywhere, tinnitus, headaches, and fog: I felt remarkably well, almost high. The aches had gone, my mind was alive, […]
The Blood Vessel Crunch: A Unifying Hypothesis For ME/CFS
By Cort Johnson in Simmaron Research. This is another hypothesis paper that gives one hope – and makes one wonder if the authors might have a handle on what’s happening with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). The paper proposes that a tantalizingly simple problem – an autoimmune attack on just one receptor – out […]
Trial By Error: Merck Manual Still Disseminates GET/CBT Advice
By David Tuller, DrPH The graded exercise therapy/cognitive behavior therapy treatment paradigm for chronic fatigue syndrome—also imposed on those diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis, CFS/ME, ME/CFS, and other variants–is like the undead. This concept keeps reemerging from the fetid intellectual swamplands that spawned it, no matter how many times it is revealed as nonsense. Although […]
7 Signs That You’re Running Out Of Spoons
By ME/CFS Self-Help Guru. One frustrating thing about energy limiting chronic illnesses like ME/CFS, Fibromyalgia and Lyme disease, is that energy levels can fluctuate from one day to the next. Christine Miserandino’s Spoon Theory has helped many people understand the concept of rationing out your energy by relating an energy unit to a spoon, […]
For ME/CFS Patients, Viral Immunities Come At A Devastating, Lifelong Cost
By Scott LaFee in USC San Diego Health. Mylagic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a disabling and complex illness. Affected persons often cannot pursue ordinary activities — physical or mental — because of an incapacitating loss of energy and other symptoms, and may find themselves confined to bed or house-bound for years. Anyone […]
10 Things People Don’t Realize You’re Doing Because You Have An Invisible Illness
By Kim Quindlen in Thought Catalog. Often, the hardest part of having an invisible illness is not the chronic pain or the constant discomfort or any of the other symptoms – it’s the fact that other people cannot really see or understand what you’re going through. Although the disability causes endless problems and challenges for […]
Coronavirus And Chronic Illness
What does Covid-19 mean for the chronic illness community? A guest blog by Catherine Hale with Alison Allam, Victoria Clutton and Leonora Gunn in Disability Wales. The Covid-19 crisis has us all in shock. But it has also shone a light on our social exclusion as a group of disabled people, as well as our […]
Meet The Businesswomen Whose Chronic Conditions Mean They Have To Sneak In Sleep In Toilets
Benefit Assessment Companies ‘Have Made Almost No Progress’ On Safeguarding
By John Pring in Disability News Service. The three companies that carry out disability benefit assessments for the government have made almost no progress in the last year on alerting local authorities to concerns about claimants whose safety is at risk, according to a disabled campaigner. Last year, freedom of information responses from […]
Ending The Somatization Myth In ME/CFS (Or “Who’s The Deluded One Now” ?)
By Cort Johnson in Health Rising. Ronald Reagan said to Gorbachev, “Take down that wall!” and it did ultimately fall. The ME/CFS version of that might be, “Get rid of those stubborn psychiatric ideas!” It’s a cultural problem. The authors pointed out that anytime a physician sees a patient with unexplained fatigue, their default […]
New Pathways: A Step Towards Fine-Tuning Treatments For ME/CFS ?
By Cort Johnson in Simmaron Research. Most chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) studies focus on females, but for once we have a study contrasting females and males. It makes sense that this group – hailing from Dr. Klimas’s Institute for Neuroimmune Studies, the University of Miami, the Veterans Center in Miami, the University […]
Eight Reasons People With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) And/Or Fibromyalgia Should Take Care
Do You Ever Feel Like Giving Up ?
When You Say Coronavirus Will Only Kill The Vulnerable, You’re Talking About Me
BY BROOKE VITTIMBERG in Fast Company. When news of COVID-19 started to spread, there were two popular responses. The first was to rush to the store, buying N95 masks and hand sanitizer until shelves were bare. The second was to shrug and comfort the masses because mostly immunocompromised people—people like me—would die. On Twitter, […]
M.E Myths Debunked: Part 1
Who Is Getting Sick, And How Sick ? A Breakdown Of Coronavirus Risk By Demographic Factors
By Sharon Begly in Stat News. The new coronavirus is not an equal-opportunity killer: Being elderly and having other illnesses, for instance, greatly increases the risk of dying from the disease the virus causes, Covid-19. It’s also possible being male could put you at increased risk. For both medical and public health reasons, researchers want […]
Eating Meat: Links To Chronic Disease Might Be Related To Amino Acids – New Findings
By Laura Brown and Kelly Jones in The Conversation. Plant-based diets have been popular in the media recently, but research shows that going vegetarian or vegan isn’t only good for the environment, but for our health, too. Meat-rich diets are linked to a range of health problems, from heart disease and strokes to type two diabetes and some cancers. […]
To The People Who Assume I’ve ‘Stolen’ My Disability Parking Permit
Has The “Reptilian Brain” Gone Haywire In ME/CFS ? Back To The Brainstem We Go.
By Cort Johnson in Health Rising. The most primitive part of the brain, the brainstem – a part of “the reptilian brain” – doesn’t get much respect in medical research. VanElzakker pointed out that most brain scan studies focus on the upper, more highly developed parts of the brain. Because brain imaging techniques can’t […]
My Disability Is Dynamic
By Brianne Benness in Medium. Maybe the media has led you to believe that all disabilities are visible and static. Disabilities caused by chronic illness can be anything but. The relationship between chronic illness and disability can be a complicated one. Not everyone who is disabled is chronically ill, and vice versa. And when I […]