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BSL WDDTY_How_To_Combat_Chronic_Fatigue Report Flipbook PDF
BSL WDDTY_How_To_Combat_Chronic_Fatigue Report
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How To Combat
Chronic Fatigue
How to combat chronic fatigue
CONTENTS 1. What is chronic fatigue syndrome? 2. What causes chronic fatigue syndrome? 3. Conventional treatment of chronic
fatigue syndrome
4. Alternative treatments for chronic
fatigue syndrome
5. ‘How I beat chronic fatigue’ 6. Useful contacts and resources
How to combat chronic fatigue
1
What is chronic fatigue syndrome? Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME, has such strange physical manifestations—everything from severe and unexplained physical and mental fatigue to memory loss, nervous system problems and even flu-like symptoms—that some scientists go as far as to label it the twenty-first century polio. For a swathe of the medical profession, what can’t be explained is often dismissed as psychological, and in the case of chronic fatigue, it’s been disparaged as all in the sufferer’s head, with an antidepressant and some talking therapy the usual prescription. This view became more entrenched with the publication, in 2011, of the influential PACE study—the largest treatment trial of CFS ever attempted. It was largely orchestrated by researchers who’d already published articles concluding that after some sort of viral trigger, patients with CFS develop “unhelpful beliefs” that prevent them from resuming a normal life. The study’s conclusion was that patients needed talking therapy like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to get rid of these limiting beliefs, and then to launch into a graded exercise program to help them to overcome their “fear avoidance” of physical exercise. After the study’s publication, the UK press started haranguing CFS sufferers to get out of bed and into the gym, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that CBT should be adopted as the standard treatment for CFS. Not surprisingly, the study provoked a great outcry from CFS sufferers and researchers alike. Although the PACE team resisted, eventually a team of researchers got access to the original data. After reviewing it, they concluded that the PACE team had inflated the benefits of CBT and exercise three-fold. There’s no doubt that chronic fatigue causes massive physical symptoms right down to the cellular level. WDDTY panel member Dr Sarah Myhill, one of the UK’s experts who has successfully treated some 5,000 patients with chronic fatigue, has amassed an abundance of scientific and clinical evidence demonstrating that CFS is a disorder of the mitochondria, the tiny power packs that supply energy to every cell.