The thrust of my thinking here has been to ask people to re-consider ( ie think about - nothing more than that ) their ME symptoms and see if they could be caused by EDS.
Thanks for the clarification, Allyson.
If I understand you correctly, you think that EDS might be the
cause of the symptoms in some ME patients, right? This is not a controversial statement. But it's a much different statement than EDS may be the
cause of ME. Those two statements may sound similar but I think it's a very important distinction.
In past posts I mistakenly thought that you were saying that ME is caused by EDS. [And in
one post I thought you were suggesting that standing was the cause when you wrote,
"... has standing as the cause of ME been tested." This was in those early posts discussing mostly Orthostatic Intolerance (OI) issues.]
The way the word "cause" is used in some of these posts can be confusing. I don't think there is any scientific data supporting the statement that EDS causes ME. At least, I don't believe that there's a causal link in the way that we would say that HIV infection causes AIDS.
So, maybe it's all just been a confusion of terminology? And how different people use the word cause? I'm glad that you clarified the point and sorry for any earlier misunderstanding. It makes sense to say that EDS might cause some of the symptoms in ME patients (patient has co-morbid EDS). Or that EDS might be an alternative diagnosis in some cases (patient has EDS but not ME).
Providing additional information about EDS is quite helpful. I like learning more about it! Thank you for posting information about it.
But the thread title (
Is ME due to Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome "stretchy veins"), and several of the posts, have sounded a bit like, "EDS is the root cause for
all cases of ME and OI." That's a different statement than, "EDS is important, and it applies to a
large subset of ME and OI patients, so you should definitely learn more about EDS in case it applies to you."