My biochemical understanding from ME / CFS

ruben

Senior Member
Messages
363
I got glandular fever in summer 1972 aged 17. My health has never returned to normal. Exercise makes me feel more ill. Alcohol makes me worse too. And eating makes me worse as well. The symptoms are with me everyday. But some days worse than others. It seems we were just the "forerunners of "long covid ".
 

southwestforests

Senior Member
Messages
1,021
Location
Missouri
My question is, why did I get ME/CFS at the same age as Dad got it?
🤔
And he is a Navy veteran of the Cold War & Vietnam era & has been to lots of other countries.
I have never been in the military and have not been to any other country.
☎️
We were talking on phone, again, about all that one day last week & Dad reiterated that both some of his health care providers & some Saudis he still knows have strong suspicion that he got it from a pathogen, virus, something, endemic to Saudi Arabia that people there have a natural immunity to but us folks from different continents do not.

I was in that life period of finishing high school and entering college during the early 1980s when Dad was with the US Navy's SNEP FIT program based in Virginia, Saudi Navy Expansion Program - Fleet Introductory Training

IF it was a case of Dad brought the pathogen home, and I was exposed that way,
WHY was it over 20 years before I showed symptoms?
WHY did I show symptoms at the same age Dad did?
What's up with that?
How does THAT work?

And that 22 year delay is even weirder when considering Dad had always had superb health up to the time of ME/CFS, farm kid, school athlete, college athlete, military Officer.
While my health has been a lesser or greater degree of imperfect since the day I was born.
🤔
 

Rufous McKinney

Senior Member
Messages
13,638
IF it was a case of Dad brought the pathogen home, and I was exposed that way,
WHY was it over 20 years before I showed symptoms?
WHY did I show symptoms at the same age Dad did?
What's up with that?
How does THAT work?
Fascinating. So strange and yet so fascinating.
I got glandular fever in summer 1972 aged 17.
After the severe food allergies at year 1, followed by sick with everything and hardly ever at school, I was first diagnosed with "mononucleosis" in 1963. And 1965 And 1968. And 1975.

Isn't this fun?!!
Why do severe patients have gastroparesis?
Now that one is tricky.

I experience rare, infrequent bouts of severe gastroperesis. Nobody has been able to explain it. Two rounds of that, close together, was correlated with my severe downturn. (I was mild for fifty years. Then boom it got WAY WAY worse).

The first few times this happened I just figured I'd caught a bug. Stomach shuts down for at least 3 -5 days. Then it recovers. High fever, all the classic Your Real Sick symptoms. But my intestines are not involved. it's 100% stomach. It stops emptying and overpowering nausea happens.

I am very PTSD about this. It terrifies me that it will happen again. I even went to the ER once. Every time it happens, I consider this might be it and I will End my Misery.

It was when I had never left the house, nobody has been there, I"m eating the same exact food, and so what is this stomach stops emptying problem?

My theories:

1) critter living in VAGAS Nerve reactivates
2)neuro- immune seizure
3) blood sugar? possibly acute hypoglycemic attack?
 

Rufous McKinney

Senior Member
Messages
13,638
3) blood sugar? possibly acute hypoglycemic attack?
blood sugar issues are known to affect the stomach emptying.

on one occasion, I had just eaten some breakfast and this nausea thing came over me and would not stop. it felt very similar to when my blood sugar gets really low. I get really strange when that happens.
 

Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
6,272
Location
Alberta
My question is, why did I get ME/CFS at the same age as Dad got it?
The problem with N=1 situations is that it may simply be random coincidence. Weird-but-meaningless coincidences do happen; that's basic probability. If multiple PWME report a similar coincidence, then it's worth looking into.
 

ruben

Senior Member
Messages
363
Is it not the case that many get glandular fever in their teens, so it's not surprising that developing ME/CFS happens to many around the same time
 
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