Harvard: "Fight fatigue by finding the cause"

[WillowJ]

novel concept, that.

Komaroff on CFS:

That is an unusual illness and an uncommon cause of persistent fatigue, says Anthony Komaroff, M.D., professor of medicine at Harvard, world-renowned expert on chronic fatigue syndrome, and medical editor of a new Harvard Special Health Report, Boosting Your Energy.

About 4 to 8 of every 1,000 adults in the United States suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, which is about twice as common in women as in men.

The causes of chronic fatigue syndrome are still unknown, and there is no accurate diagnostic test.

However, scientists have found abnormalities in the brain and peripheral nervous system, in the immune system, and in energy metabolism in people with this syndrome.

*I gave every sentence a separate paragraph

Read the entire article: http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fight-fatigue-by-finding-the-cause-201107062952

 

[kurt]

Interesting article. Also, the referred link on causes of fatigue was good:

http://www.health.harvard.edu/special_health_reports/boosting_your_energy#excerpt

The section on anemia caught my eye. CFS patients who have low blood volume but normal RBC counts should probably be considered anemic, as the standard CBC test only measures concentration of RBCs and not the body mass or volume of RBCs. I suspect most of us have this, it should be called 'hypovolemic anemia.'

 

[gregf]

I sometimes say to doctors "stop calling it fatigue or you will not understand this illness".

It's not fatigue, we are not tired.
It's not chronic, we do not have a lifestyle problem.
It's not a syndrome, it is a single disease.

Perhaps if more American patients called it ME, we would get somewhere.

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/showthread.php?12652-July-is-quot-Call-it-ME-quot-month.
Help me guys.

 

[WillowJ]

I sometimes say to doctors "stop calling it fatigue or you will not understand this illness".

It's not fatigue, we are not tired.
It's not chronic, we do not have a lifestyle problem.
It's not a syndrome, it is a single disease.

Perhaps if more American patients called it ME, we would get somewhere.

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/showthread.php?12652-July-is-quot-Call-it-ME-quot-month.
Help me guys.

but this article was not specific to ME/CFS. It was about figuring out what is wrong with any patient who presents with "fatigue". Many other causes of "fatigue" were discussed, such as anemia, heart disease, kidney failure, and so on. The point they were making is that you figure out what's wrong. This is a very important point. You don't just say, oh well, "many people are fatigued" (I have been told this exact thing by my doctors and shown the door, visit over... it's no wonder it took 9 years for me to get any kind of diagnosis!).

Komaroff said ME/CFS is a real disease, but a rare cause of "fatigue". It's true that "fatigue" is not a good descriptor of what's going wrong, though! I have taken to saying "weakness." (this recently seemed to cause one of my doctors to diagnose me with ICD-9-CM 780.79 "Other malaise and fatigue", described as "asthenia", which means weakness, apparently instead of using 790.71 CFS which I'd already been diagnosed with)

 

[Gemini]

CFS patients who have low blood volume but normal RBC counts should probably be considered anemic, as the standard CBC test only measures concentration of RBCs and not the body mass or volume of RBCs. I suspect most of us have this, it should be called 'hypovolemic anemia.'

Do you know if the Vanderbilt reseachers or others studying ME/CFS hypovolemia have considered this?

Any idea why hypovolemia is not part of a standard diagnostic workup? There's an available test and
patients report improvement on IV saline.

 

[Enid]

Quite agree Willow - fatigue is such a vague thing at the moment - ME/CFS should never have been consigned.