pibee
Senior Member
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I don't know much about the way of life in the Balkans, but could it be that the incidence or severity of such stressful events is lower in the Balkans, perhaps due to factors like better family life and social support networks? And so in turn, there might be less incidence of ME/CFS in the Balkans?
I think recently heard divorce rate is about 25%, which is less than USA with i think 50%.
However, stress here is definitely higher than West, because of economic / poverty reasons, few years ago, not sure if still true, young adult unemployment rate was 50% (so people under 30 years).
Almost majority people in their 20ies and 30ies, if not married, still live with parents. My cousin is 39 and lives with parents. My sister is soon 34, works as MD and lives with mom and me! It is common here because of bad salaries.
Also war in 90ies, caused much stress, that generation should def have more CFS by that criteria...
People lleave country a lot due to unemployment, last years 200,000 people moved to Germany (considering size of Croatia less than 4,5 mill people this is huge).
Bosnia and Serbia has even much worse situation with more stress and 2x less salaries than Croatia.
so def stress can only contribute to numbers.
Protective factors could be: more Mediterranean food (although big parts of Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia are not Mediterranean), only part of Croatia (half) has Mediterranean food.
Less divorces. More sun than North.
But that's it.
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