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Donald Trump Is Tired, and It Won't Be Easy to Fix [article mentions CFS]

Ignore the fact, if you can, that the article is speculating Trump's health. I'm posting this due to the articles fairly reasonable treatment of ME.
If Trump is suffering from fatigue, he can count it as another thing he has in common with the rest of America. Fatigue takes both acute and chronic forms and is a common complaint among the general population. The former type is the sort of tiredness that usually results after an experience that’s especially physically or emotionally taxing; in a 2015 article in Biological Psychology, researchers, defining fatigue as a “subjective state of exhaustion, tiredness, weakness, and lack of energy that impairs daily activities,” showed evidence for a link between stress and next-day fatigue that was linked by the quality of a person’s sleep. Preventing stress and intervening in sleep-stress cycles, the researchers write, can usually remedy acute fatigue. If this is what he is suffering from, it would probably not hurt for Trump to try getting more than his usual four hours of sleep.

And then there is chronic fatigue syndrome, a more serious, long-term condition affecting over 1 million Americans. It is, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also not particularly well understood and has a lot of overlap with other conditions, so it’s hard to diagnose. All we know is that it’s the kind of tiredness that won’t go away after taking a nap and lasts for six months or more. It manifests in different ways, both physical and mental. In addition to feeling joint and muscle pain, people with chronic fatigue syndrome tend to have sleep problems, headaches, and issues with memory and concentration.
https://www.inverse.com/article/31907-donald-trump-exhausted-tired-fatigue-middle-east
 

Diwi9

Administrator
Messages
1,780
Location
USA
In general. I think the term also puts too much emphasis on a word that doesn't really describe our symptoms or energy issues well. I've never identified with it. It almost seems like a different illness.
Agree! The article could well have differentiated between acute fatigue and chronic fatigue...and left ME/CFS out of it. Our disease often gets obfuscated and lumped in with "chronic fatigue" because a handful of uninformed researchers labeled and mischaracterized our disease with a weak and misleading name: "chronic fatigue syndrome."
 

Sushi

Moderation Resource Albuquerque
Messages
19,935
Location
Albuquerque
Speaking of Trump:
From the article:
The Trump administration is taking aim at billions in grant funding distributed each year to universities and research institutions to cover the overhead costs of running their labs.

University administrators say they rely on these grants, which amounted to more than $6 billion last year, to keep their research running smoothly; the funding pays to keep the freezers running, the lights on, and their laboratories stocked with supplies.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
I have a (highly speculative) theory that the same virus which triggered my ME/CFS, and which caused mild fatigue and word recall problems as permanent symptoms in all my friends and family who caught it, that this virus may have been circulating in White House staff since around 2014, for reasons I will explain. My virus is most likely a nasty strain of coxsackievirus B4 (based on symptoms and my blood tests), and is detailed on my website.

If President Donald Trump has caught this virus that I speculate may be circulating in the White House, then you might see more fatigue and word finding issues in Trump in future.

My theory about why this virus is circulating in the White House is as follows: First of all, I observed that my virus often causes a chronic low level sore throat that is mild but lasts indefinitely (for decades) in people who catch it. Normally when you get a sore throat, it may last some days, but will then go away. But in several people, including me, my virus caused a sore throat that lasted indefinitely.

Now, in around December 2014, President Barack Obama developed a mysterious sore throat that would not go away (see for example this article which says: "President Obama reportedly had a mysterious sore throat for weeks"). Obama consulted medical specialists, who could not find any cause, so they blithely dismissed it as acid reflux (acid reflux is the usual wastebasket diagnosis that ENT specialists give when the cause cannot be found — if they can't find the cause, I think they will often just say "acid reflux" by default). But I believe the cause of Obama's chronic sore throat might be viral, and might well be due to the coxsackievirus B4 that I caught.

So OK, Obama's sore throat story on its own does not amount to much. However, I could not help but notice that after Obama's chronic sore throat first appear in around December 2014, his verbal fluency, and particularly his speed of word recall, dropped quite noticeably in his speeches and press conferences.

Remember that my virus caused fatigue and word recall problems in all my friends and family, such that everyone with my virus started experiencing that "tip of your tongue" phenomenon, when you temporarily cannot bring to mind the word or name you are looking for. So the speed and fluency of verbal speech slows down, because it takes longer to find the words you need.

This slowdown in the speed and fluency of verbal communication appeared in Obama's language, in his speeches and press conferences, soon after his sore throat first appeared. So I think Obama may have caught a sore throat virus that also affected his mind to a mild extent, as these viruses do to all ME/CFS patients, but just much more severely.

For example, if you look at this videoed press conference in November 2014, which was just before his sore throat, Obama is on great form, displaying the sort of effortless, fluid and fasting thinking use of words that he was always characterized for. And alongside this easy eloquence, you also see his bright and animated facial expressions gracing his speech. This is what Barack Obama was like in the early years of his presidency.

But now fast forward to a press conference in May 2016, a year and a half after catching his sore throat, and you notice a slowdown in verbal delivery, and you notice a certain difficulty that he has in fishing out the right words, so he tends to say "er..." more, and tends to leave long pauses, as he is trying to bring the word he wants to mind. He is just not as verbally surefooted as he used to be; and what's more, you notice that his facial expressions are a little flatter, less animated, and almost fatigued looking sometimes. My speculative theory is that these changes were all due to the sore throat virus I believe he may have caught.

A complete list of President Barack Obama's speeches and press conferences is found here. You will notice a difference between the early speeches before around 2015, and the later speeches afterwards.



I would really like to see some research on the general (and often subtle) effects that the ME/CFS-associated enteroviruses (coxsackievirus B and echovirus) have on the energy levels and mental faculties of the general healthy population. I think these viruses may be having a mildly pernicious effect on everyone who catches them.
 
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I would really like to see some research on the general (and often subtle) effects that the ME/CFS-associated enteroviruses (coxsackievirus B and echovirus) have on the energy levels and mental faculties of the general healthy population. I think these viruses may be having a mildly pernicious effect on everyone who catches them.
I've also had 3 coxsackie virus B's about 14 years ago. Have not been tested for it recently. I wouldn't be surprised if it's related.
 

Sushi

Moderation Resource Albuquerque
Messages
19,935
Location
Albuquerque
This thread went way off topic: the opening poster said:
Ignore the fact, if you can, that the article is speculating Trump's health. I'm posting this due to the articles fairly reasonable treatment of ME.
But the thread became political and way off the topic of the original article in question. Many posts have been removed and the future of the thread is yet to be decided.