• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Cerebral atrophy

Messages
49
Location
GREECE
Hi all,

Did recently an MRI and the doctors found I have prefrontal celebral atrophy.

3 neurologists checked the MRI and said that this is not an important finding. Many people have it with no symptoms, they said.

They also said that it does not relate to my headaches (but admitted that this is not normal for a 29 year old). Of course the bunch of my symptoms were phychosomatic (!) and CFS does not exist for them.

I did some google search and found an article that many CFS patients are found with celebral atrophy and another one that says that celebral atrophy can be caused by severe pain.

What s your insight on that? Does anybody have this?
 
Messages
64
I discovered a few months ago that i have celebral atrophy in the cortical and cerebellar areas.I am 50 years old and I have had CFS since 1991.I also have headaches.In the past few years I have been experiencing a lot of pressure in an area in the right hemisphere of the brain and difficulty in concentrating sometimes even in cooking a recipe that I had cooked plenty of times in the past and in reading and learning new Information.I used to have a passion for learning foreign languages and I felt like I had an insatiable appetite for words and other linguistic material and it was very painful to realize that I didn't enjoy learning anymore.Instead of being fun it became a struggle,a drag.It seems to have improved a little bit although I don't retain Information like I used to do.I also have difficulty remembering names.

I think I looked for studies into CFS and brain atrophy but I don't remember what I found,maybe that studies had found that other areas o the brain had been affected in other patients.I also looked into liver disease(I suspect that my CFS is undiagnosed liver damage)and brain atrophy,and there were articles regarding liver cirrhosis and brain atrophy.I got tired and I gave up before I found anything on cholestatic liver disease and brain atrophy.Maybe I also thought that there was noone I could go to even I found information that matched my test results.

I wasn't able to get another appointment with a neurologist(there weren't any appointments left until the end of 2017).Have you been told if there is a treatment,if there are any supplements that might help?
 

pattismith

Senior Member
Messages
3,931
Hi @Vickytoria1988 ,

Cerebral atrophy can occur in some diseases like Alzheimer and Multiple sclerosis, although you certainly don't have these diseases, as they are associated to a much more serious atrophy than you have: Yours is very localized and probably very light.

Any way, you may be interested to know that some doctors think that Herpes family viruses and some bacteria like Chlamydia pneumoniae, and some Spirochaete (family of the Lyme bacteria) have been suspected in these brain diseases:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2730674/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3171359/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2825657/

Fungus have also ben found in Alzheimer brain, but no one knows if they had a role in the pathology or if they were a consequence.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5514053/

Thiamine has been show to help with Alzheimer, and Nicotinamide was shown to help with Parkinson (and maybe Alzheimer), so if I had any cerebelar atrophy, I would take it both.

 
Last edited: