Has anyone been completely cured of CFS?

your doctor will say it's incurable because he/she doesn't know how to deal with the illness!

I agree with the things you have listed, except the metabolism/nutrition - and you left out stress

No.

It is a common myth. The reality is far more complicated.

Also, what is meant by stress? Stress means many different things in many different contexts. Saying that stress lowers the immune system is not exactly wrong, it is almost meaningless.

It frustrates me that "Stress" is so often bandied about in a "god of the gaps" type of way. Don't understand it? Blame it on stress.

The reality is that many of the things that people claim are explained by stress, are not in fact explained at all by such mechanisms. I've tried looking quite deeply at the scientific literature in the past and I've always been left wanting.

sorry but you are wrong. It has been proven to be the case scientifically. If you don't believe it, I can't help you!

The issue seems to be that you are confused or don't understand what constitutes stress - that's a different matter

This study looks interesting. It's called 'Evidence for a Shift in the Th-1 to Th-2 Cytokine Response Associated With Chronic Stress and Aging'.

What studies show it?

Do you believe CFS to be due to stress, as it is being proven to be linked to different viruses with more conviction then to stress.

I'm not aware of any studies that show ME/CFS to be definitely due to viruses. There are a lot of findings of the presence of certain infectious organisms (which could be opportunistic downstream factors), and a number of theories, ditto with regard to other things, e.g. leaky gut. Causes are likely to be numerous, and a different mixture of causal factors for different people.

Exactly, so how can it be just stress as th above seems to say?

There are so many theories out there. But there have been many studies where the sufferers have a virus of some sort in their blood work.

Who has said this?

It would appear Barbican1 is of the opinion that stress is the main factor to causes of CFS.

Please read again what I said. Immunity is lowered - this applies to the population as a whole. People become vulnerable to opportunistic bacteria, viruses etc, when that happens

Please define what you think stress is.

I know many stressors. Which ones do you mean?

probably all of the ones you have in mind!

try post #164 above and open the link

So Barbican1, do you think that CFS can be cured and if so how?

As that is the original topic of the thread, I thought it would be interesting to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for mentioning a study. The study is typical for this sort of thing. They used a singular measure at a singular point in time and it was a case-control study. Ideally you would use a prospective study and measure multiple measures of each aspect and do so at multiple points in time (for example, gene expression, levels of signalling/regulatory molecules in the organ in question, receptor affinity and expression levels). This is necessary if we really wish to understand dynamic systems like the immune system.

There are many different "stressors" and resulting immune shifts are not simple 'downregulations' or 'upregulations' and these immune shifts have not been clearly linked to increased risk of infection in a clear cause-effect way.

Nor are subjective reports of psychologically stressful events correlated with immune system shifts.

This is what I mean by the reality being much more complicated.

I'm not saying that stress cannot be some sort of associated risk factor, but it is not a clear cause-effect cause of any disease.

I think that the effects of chronic stress on the immune and stress hormone systems are likely to be broadly analogous to those of chronic overconsumption of carbohydrates in relation to Type 2 diabetes.

To much carbohydrate leads to extreme fluctuations in blood glucose.
Extreme fluctuations in blood glucose lead to excessive demands on the insulin secretion/response system.
Long-term persistence of these demands eventually leads to downregulation of insulin receptors.
Thus you have insulin resistance, and eventually diabetes.

By stress I think that most of us use it as a shorthand for emotional stress that leads to release of stress hormones. As others have said, there are other types of stressor that have similar effects.

So to use the diabetes analogy:

In chronic stress, stress hormones are chronically raised.
This may downregulate parts of the immune system.
Eventually the process may exhaust aspects of stress hormone secretion/response (consequences may include the low cortisol/abnormal cortisol secretion pattern that we tend to have).
Aspects of the immune system may then rebound, becoming over-active.
One result of this overactivity may be autoimmunity.

It may not have been conclusively proven yet, but is consistent with what we know about physiology.

I do not for a moment believe that any of this can be reversed by psychiatric intervention or exercise, and I use analogies (I love analogies! ) like the impossibility of mending a bullet wound by putting the bullet back in the gun.