Causes of Chronic Fatigue: At Last, New Ideas for Understanding this Debilitating Disease
The medical diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is complex due to its similarity to other ill-defined disorders including fibromyalgia, Gulf War Syndrome, and Sjogren’s Syndrome. There’s a significant overlap between the symptoms associated with each of these conditions.
A large percentage of the population suffers from chronic fatigue which carries no medical diagnosis. A small subset suffer from CFS. The underlying causes of these conditions are unknown. On a sliding scale, people diagnosed with CFS (less than 2% of the population) suffer more than those who complain of chronic fatigue.
Only 1-2% of patients with chronic fatigue receive a diagnosis of CFS. CFS patients suffer from:
* headaches
* disabling fatigue
* concentration and memory problems
Multiple symptoms are expressed:
* psychiatric problems
* sleep disturbances
* feverishness
* feverishness
* tender lymph nodes
* psychiatric problems
Due to these complaints, people often face social problems, loss of jobs, and the break-up of marriages. Although these symptoms are often less severe in one with chronic fatigue (no diagnosis), the complications of living with this condition are similar to CFS (diagnosed).
The Interesting Feature of the Causes of Chronic Fatigue is that They are Multi-Factorial — Many Symptoms at the Same Time.
Chronic fatigue sufferers are vast in number and fatigue is one of the most common complaints that people have. The medical and scientific organizations are unable to determine the causes, yet continue to study the condition to see if they can find a cause.
Is it possible that vaccines are implicated in some of the chronic diseases of our time? This burning question is all over the news particularly in the condition of autism. Recent research implicated vaccines as one of the causes of Gulf War Syndrome. The idea behind vaccines is to stimulate a protective effect by activating the immune system. But if it turns-on and stays on, then it begins to do damage itself and may lead to the symptoms of CFS.
The research was clear: vaccines, such as that used to fight anthrax, were involved in the cause of Gulf War Syndrome which is just another part of the chronic fatigue classification. This goes against the prevailing viewpoint and a great deal of resistance will arise to squash this notion so it doesn’t get a strong start.
Maybe taking a page out of non-medical treatments for autism, including the use of immune system builders such as colostrum, may be a good move. This points the way to the use of many unapproved-by-medicine treatments that rely on stimulating the body’s natural healing response rather than the current over-reliance on prescription medicines.
It’s clear that chronic fatigue and CFS patients possess an immune system imbalance. There is decreased function in:
* NK cells
* NK cells
* other immune system markers
It’s been difficult to identify if there is an association between immune system markers and CFS — the picture isn’t clear at all. Because this work has gone on for more than one hundred years with no final resolution, it’s clear that another approach that differs from the one taken by mainstream medicine may be the best option to look at now.