post exertional malaise WITH fevers, anyone???

i have a normally low body temp. like 97.5. for me a fever is 98.5 or more. sometimes exercise can CAUSE me to get fevers for days and days after the exercise, and have the lovely flu like malaise. it feels like the exercise causes an infection, or reactivates an infection. i would love to know what is going on in my body when this happens.

anyone else have this? or have info on this?

thanks
bigmama2 :headache:

I run low-grade fevers most of the time. If ever I'm well enough to exercise, and I sometimes do (damn the consequences!), I usually come down with a fever within a couple of days and am completely immobilized (essentially looks just like the flu).

My normal temp seems to be about 100.5, but at times when I've been afebrile, it's lower than 98.

I tested negative for blood cultures/systemic bacterial infection, and my doctor quickly dismissed the fever. My TCM practitioner addresses the fever as a deficiency illness, though I'm not sure exactly what that means in Western terms. He treats it by giving me tonifying herbs, which can't be given during a pathogen (virus, bacteria, etc.), and often this brings the fever down. Obviously, my herbs switch from tonifying to clearing depending on symptoms. So, I do believe it's possible to weakened rather than diseased, if that makes sense...? I am likely to get every upper respiratory infection around and think it might be systemic (mycoplasma?), but I don't know if that's also a sign of overall weakness. I always sort of figure that when I get the PEM, I'm super drained and with that comes a deficiency fever. I hope this helps!

I'm curious about how "normal" fever is with CFS in general.

That's a very interesting topic. I was going to start a similar topic.

My normal temp used to be 97.8 or so. Last year I had constant low-grade (99-100.5) fevers and they were ALWAYS higher when I was doing too much. My temp has settled down to a "normal" 98.6 after slowing down permanently - I had no choice.

Now I am extremely sensitive to temperature - I can't tolerate anything above about 72 degrees and sometimes feel feverish without a fever.

Any info would be appreciated including any tips on tolerating feeling overheated. :tongue:

Sorry Bigmama,

I don't know what is causing it. Exercise can led to production of different immune system agents (like TNF-a) so I always assumed that it was that.

My temp is always low but it increases sometimes as part of the post exertional illness I get (with a sore throat, glands etc, very red flushed face). Sometimes it goes really low the night / morning after exercise and then climbs up for the next 2 or 3 days. The slowly goes down again. 37 C (98) is a high for me. I'm normally 35/36 C

My initial illness had a very high fever but since then my temperature went down to 35/36 and only goes up when I am poorly with a fever.

XMRV+

I'm really glad you posted this, this is exactly what happens to me many times after exertion. I find it so strange when it goes down that night--makes me think something might be normalizing--only to get hit within the next day with a fever that last for a few days or a few weeks. What the heck is this mechanism?!

Yeah, I agree. The Light paper that came out this year showed that some people with CFS have elevated cytokines for a longer period of time after exercise compared to normal folks (some cytokines go up and others go down with exercise in healthy folks). That might explain the delayed fever. Also, Nancy Klimas' paper shows that women with CFS (she didn't study men for this one) have some cytokines that are 100-250% above normal to begin with at rest so you can imagine what happens during exercise. Fever is primarily mediated by a cytokine called IL-6 but others are also involved.

The Canadian Criteria includes as part of post-exertional malaise exacerbation of any CFS symptoms the person already has so for me, I got a sore throat initially with my CFS and get recurrent sore throats with exercise. The other part of this is that our ability to modulate our temperature appropriately is shot with this illness. People's temps probably go up normally (along with sweating/ flushed face, etc.) with exercise but they are able to dampen it pretty quickly compared to us.