Any research about ME/CFS being CAUSED by emotional trauma?

[lenin]

I did have an emotional trauma months before the onset of my CFS. This was caused by family. Moreover, I went through a very difficult break-up and a job that was consuming me. I was living abroad and I had to make choices that I found very hard. I realise that from this trauma thing and the onset of my CFS I was losing energy little by little. It took 10 months between the trauma and the onset.

That being said, it is true that my health was really bad before of that event: I was having constant throat infections; I was having already flu-like fever that would last up to a month in winter or autumn; I was diagnosed with IBS 6 years before; had pain in my joints; and I was realising already that my memory was not like before, was already suffering from brain fog that I would mitigate with drinking lots of coffee in order to concentrate more.

Meanwhile I was drinking a lot of alcohol and partying, always pushing myself in any other aspects of life. I knew my body wasn't ok, but doctors did not know what happened with me either so I continue trying to live a normal life.

I should mention I had a depression when I was a teenager that no one in my family could detect. I do not know if this has played a role on it. I got over it and the problems with my health didn't come until a few years later.

So, I can't stop making me this question... if trauma cause CFS.

I think I would have got CFS sooner or later, I think now it took me too long to get it because of the lifestyle I had.... I dont think that if I have had a normal inmune system I would have caught CFS because of the trauma or stress of that period, maybe I would have caught other disease but I don't think I would caught CFS.

 

[PracticingAcceptance]

@lenin I have some similar experiences to you. Family trauma, recurrent viral illnesses, teenage depression, pushing hard at work.

My standpoint on it now is that if there's any kind of stress over a long period of time, people would be more likely to get ME/CFS. Prolonged stress makes the immune system weaker, right? So then it would be easier to get ill, with any kind of illness.

 

[lenin]

@PracticingAcceptance I've heard some people get CFS after taking antidepressants. Did you take antidepressants when you had your teenage depression?

 

[matt321]

Theres lots of research. If you're looking for pure science, you could read "The Body Keeps the Score". If by research, you also mean individuals that have recovered by investigating why this happens and what they can do about it, there's quite a few web resources available now as well. You can also do your own research which in my view is always the best

 

[Pearshaped]

It is known that many people fall ill after a heavy bout of stress.
So guess this could be possible.
Im not talking about ME/CFS,but ilness in general.But have no evidence or study to back this up.
autoimmune deseases are said to occur often after a heavy period of stress(at least where i live it is said so) as well.
Someone I know fell ill with MS after her brother has lost a 8 year long fight against cancer.

 

[PracticingAcceptance]

@lenin I took anti-depressants aged 19 and then again 25-27. I got ME/CFS once I was no longer depressed but before I came off the pills. If anti-depressants are the cause for me getting ill, that SUCKS. I guess the risk of getting ME/CFS from anti-depressants is so low that they wouldn't put it on the packaging, even if they did prove causality.

@matt321 I've got that book but haven't been well enough to read it yet.

 

[lenin]

@Pearshaped a friend of mine contracted diabetes after a serious injury in her back. She was in bed for a few months ignoring if she would be able to walk again. She is good now, but suffered a lot of stress during that time. I think is not coincidence that she got diabetes right after that event.

 

[matt321]

@PracticingAcceptance You can read all of this in The body keeps the score, The Intelligent Body, How to Change your Mind. lots of different pharmacology books, and many web resources.

 

[Rebeccare]

This is a tough question!

My personal opinion is that, if emotional trauma plays a role in ME/CFS, a lot of other factors also have to line up in order for a person to develop ME/CFS. After all, there are many traumatized people in the world. There are so many people with abusive parents, people who live in war zones, people who live in poverty. And yet, most of them do not develop ME/CFS. My grandparents and most of their friends survived the Holocaust and none of them developed any medical or psychological issues resembling ME/CFS, whereas I was fortunate enough to not experience significant emotional trauma in my life and yet here I am. So I feel like there has to be something more than simply trauma, otherwise there would be a lot more chronically fatigued people in this world.

 

[Wishful]

The potential for switching into the ME state, and staying there, could exist in all humans. We would just have different sensitivities to the various factors that can bias us into that state. For some it could be emotional stress, for others it could be inadequate sleep, or diet, or a chronic microbial infection or injury. For cancer, researchers have figured out some factors that can affect susceptibility to developing it. Maybe in 50 years or so, there will be some similar factors identified for ME.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Please also tell me anecdotally if you have experienced serious emotional trauma that you believe caused your ME/CFS. Or, if any of you have had serious family problems/experienced abuse/don't speak to your parents.

I am not convinced emotional trauma caused my MECFS, but I experienced extreme personal trauma (catastrophic loss of my house to a wildfire, and the loss/end of my career and all my reports, documents, library,ego, etc. )Added to the loss of most of one's personal possessions, and I was about to retire....This created a massive personal stress which on a conscious level, I was coping with it Ok, but I suspect that the body in fact WAS NOT coping with it. So I got much more severely ill. I subsequently experienced two severe bouts of gastro-intestinal illness which could not be readily explained. After those two events, my condition declined dramatically and has not meaningfully improved since.

Now, everything I "thought" I would be doing, or capable of doing, or interests I intended to pursue- these are largely infeasible, either because of the energy they require, the physicality they require, or the cognitive abilities necessary to- do most things. All this loss of things and stuff also coincided with losing contact with most people I had frequent contact with- coworkers, colleagues, etc. Evaporated.

When I retire, I'll be able to have some time for a social life I thought. That became infeasible as well. Unless its between 11 am and 2 pm, and I have 14 days to recover from "lunch", or "the conversation".

Without getting too dramatic, I"ve experienced no small share of personally traumatizing events over the course of a lifetime. Most of us don't get out of here unscathed. With decades of experiencing this illness, presumably "mild" version...all these stressors have likely further taxed my body.

 

[Grigor]

Maybe this is interesting for her?

IOM report 2015

https://www.nap.edu/catalog/19012/b...hronic-fatigue-syndrome-redefining-an-illness

"A study suggesting a role for childhood trauma in ME/CFS used the
broad empirical definition of ME/CFS, which resulted in a biased sample
with overrepresentation of individuals with depression and posttraumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) (Heim et al., 2009). The unusually high proportion
of subjects with serious psychiatric problems likely explains the study find-
ing of an association between ME/CFS and adverse childhood experiences.
No other studies have suggested a higher rate of childhood trauma in those with confirmed ME/CFS as opposed to nonspecific chronic fatigue. In a study of 22 Norwegian adolescents with ME/CFS, no participant reported
prior sexual abuse (Gjone and Wyller, 2009)."

New Castle:

Rethinking childhood adversity in chronic fatigue syndrome.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21641846.2018.1384095

" The data suggests that previous studies showing a relationship between childhood adversity and CFS may be attributable to the confounding effects of co-morbid or misdiagnosed depressive disorder"

 

[BonitaApplebum]

@lenin I took anti-depressants aged 19 and then again 25-27. I got ME/CFS once I was no longer depressed but before I came off the pills. If anti-depressants are the cause for me getting ill, that SUCKS. I guess the risk of getting ME/CFS from anti-depressants is so low that they wouldn't put it on the packaging, even if they did prove causality.

@matt321 I've got that book but haven't been well enough to read it yet.

I was just doing a search to see if anyone had read them body keeps the score’ and read your post. I was on a high dose of zoloft (300 mg) for 5 years when I was diagnosed with me/CFS. Prior to the zoloft I had never taken or been prescribed any psych meds, and had never exhibited any symptoms of me/CFS at all. While on that high dose of zoloft (for anxiety/oc behaviors but not ocd) my family/friends said I seemed kind of sedated and I did nap & sleep more than before. I have been suspecting the zoloft to potentially be a factor in the development of my ME/CFS. I recently found a published scientific journal study that showed zoloft to cause mitochondrial damage. I am currently in zoloft and had a psychiatrist recently increase the dose. Now I’m switching doctors because my therapist has made the connection between fatigue and ssri’s. We are going to wean me off of them. At this point I think I’ve been pickled and can no longer return to a cucumber as I’ve had me/CFS (moderate case but recently becoming more progressive) for almost 14 years. Hoping that coming off of zoloft, which I’ve been on off & on for almost 20 years, may give me sone spoons back.

 

[BonitaApplebum]

here is the journal article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5736306/

 

[keepswimming]

While stress wasn't the main cause of my CFS I think it was a factor.

The year before I got CFS was one of the most stressful I've ever had. My husband had a breakdown, and at the same time I went through redundancy proceedings at work.

The way I dealt with this was to work harder than ever, trying to be the perfect wife and deal with everything at home, and the perfect employee and make myself indispensable at work. Looking back, I can see to do this I was working myself far too hard physically and emotionally.

Then I got a bad case of EBV, which led into CFS.

While EBV was the primary cause, I think it likely the stress I'd been under was a factor in my developing CFS.

 

[Treeman]

I swapped a couple of e mails with Jonathan Kerr who researches ME/CFS in the UK. He thinks emotional stress is a big issue, I have also read others who think the same

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) reactivation and therapeutic inhibitors

" EBV reactivates (lytic phase) under conditions of psychological stress with consequent weakening of cellular immunity, and EBV reactivation has been shown to occur in a subset of individuals with each of a variety of cancers, autoimmune diseases, the autoimmune-like disease, chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalitis and under other circumstances such as being an inpatient in an intensive care unit. " https://jcp.bmj.com/content/72/10/651

I also found the following article supports the notion of emotional stress and other stresses like hormonal changes can cause ME/CFS etc.
http://simmaronresearch.com/2014/09...-child-psychiatrist-finds-success-antivirals/

I have for a while not questioned the point that many kinds of stresses can trigger ME/CFS.

 

[xebex]

my personal thoughts on it is that ME is caused by a genetic predisposition to stress and that stress can come in the form of anything; emotional, physical, viral, bacterial, chemical, oxidative etc. I got ME after 4 years of a lot of stress dealing with the aftermath of a nasty breakup, and two (emotionally) toxic work environments after another, i was also living next door to noisy neighbours who kept me awake all night for those 4 years, i socialized a lot, and was also training hard to be a competitive athlete, i got a vaccine to go travelling to Nepal, and boom, instant ME state. There are plenty of people who suffer a lot more stress and trauma than me and they don't get ME, I'm certain its genetic. I do also have antibodies for EBV and CMV as well as HSV, so maybe it's just a perfect storm of stressors on my body to make it finally give up.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

I have for a while not questioned the point that many kinds of stresses can trigger ME/CFS.

I am fairly confident that severe external stressors- took my lifetime of mild ME and sent me down several functional points on our ME scale- however I also experienced severe gastroenteritis that also transpired. So I can't separate these events. I am moderate...and if I crash too much, the spector of severe looms. Spending most of the day in bed, hardly able to wash a dish.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

however I also experienced severe gastroenteritis that also transpired. So I can't separate these events. I am moderate.

One theory- I wonder if I was somehow further TRAPPED by Nitrous Oxide produced by the gastro events. Like maybe you can send yourself down further- by experiencing an abrupt increase in the NO-3. Possibly using our tryptophan trap theory.

Disease progression- not studied.

 

[JES]

I also found the following article supports the notion of emotional stress and other stresses like hormonal changes can cause ME/CFS etc.
http://simmaronresearch.com/2014/09...-child-psychiatrist-finds-success-antivirals/

I have for a while not questioned the point that many kinds of stresses can trigger ME/CFS.

Hm, that article doesn't even mention "stress". It talks about viruses being the root cause for various neuropsychiatric symptoms, so it's the other way around according to Dr. Henderson, the underlying viral infections are the cause in his opinion.

I'm not convinced it's super useful to label stress as any pathology originating from emotions, physical issues, viral or bacterial infections, etc. I'm aware that terms like "oxidative stress" are actually real medical terms, but colloquially, stress is referred to as an emotional or mental factor that causes some form of tension. What if you had an ordinary cold and got sick with ME/CFS after that? I wouldn't label it as stress.