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i have the same issue beside high blood pressure and fast heart beats and taking meds for them helped a little, and i have very bad fatigue
Talking wipes me out.
- Thread starter minkeygirl
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Inca
Senior Member
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- 370
I had a stammer as a child and difficulty getting words out but since getting ME as an adult I find having to speak absolutely exhausting. I struggle to work out what people are saying to me too and have constant Tinnitus so the concentration needed to make sense of a conversation and get a reply out uses a ridiculous amount of energy for me.
I can do more on a good day when I'm home alone and don't have to talk to anyone. A couple of hours having to sit up without a break and having long conversations absolutely wipes me out!
I can do more on a good day when I'm home alone and don't have to talk to anyone. A couple of hours having to sit up without a break and having long conversations absolutely wipes me out!
Sidney
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- East Sussex, U.K.
Listening is as bad for me - worst of all, for me, is writing an email, trying to say what I really mean…Texting easier but I find often that I’ve spent 5 minutes wording a short one. Choosing emojis takes almost as long as finding the right words…after any of these I am truly wiped out… 
Just to toss in my 2 cents - talking wipes me out as well. On the plus side - it is one of the few places where my doctor can witness what happens to me firsthand, as I can't get through an explanation of why I've come before I have to stop and pant for a while. When I CAN continue speaking, it is with much less force, sometimes down to a whisper.
Dysfunkion
Senior Member
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- 367
This also happens to me and it seems to be related to some informational processing barrier an d when it's crossed all of that information becomes hard to navigate noise. It'll happen with reading, thinking, and talking. I'll know I hit it when I'm talking when I start to lose a little control over how I can form words and the words I can string together. The more it goes on the more social skills I lose and start to get overwhelmed. Even normally in conversation things can be a bit hard because of my troubles with finding words on the fly and pulling things out of my memory but I can generally keep myself spontaneous enough socially to navigate around that. Sometimes socially things can be a bit awkward but it's fine until I hit "the wall" and then I'm almost completely socially dysfunctional. What's the most embarrassing about it is I'm fully aware of what is happening but can't control it and if someone first interacts with you during one of those times you already have likely tanked your image to them.
Exactly all of this - information processing. A mindless YT video is fine. Trying to learn something is more difficult. Talking on the phone even more difficult. And I use the same description when talking to friends, because I hit 'a wall' and sometimes rather suddenly. If I stop, then I usually recover in about a day. If I don't stop, then I'll end up in a 2-3 day crash or longer.
If I could fix this one symptom and was still housebound, etc - my life would be much improved. Almost nothing seems to improve it, though.
Dysfunkion
Senior Member
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Yeah it's among one of my worst and like you if I let it get out of control can lead to multi day energy crashes. There's no emotional factor to it either, it seems to be some purely functional thing about how my brain works (or doesn't for that matter). I haven't found anything myself that improves it, it's one of my most indestructible symptoms.
Information processing. A mindless YT video is fine. Trying to learn something is more difficult. Talking on the phone even more difficult. And I use the same description when talking to friends, because I hit 'a wall' and sometimes rather suddenly. If I stop, then I usually recover in about a day. If I don't stop, then I'll end up in a 2-3 day crash or longer.
Just what I would have said . . . if I could talk for that long!
This energy drain due to information processing seems to increase if I must quickly switch trains of thought, as when someone asks a question about a different topic.
Just what I would have said . . . if I could talk for that long!
This energy drain due to information processing seems to increase if I must quickly switch trains of thought, as when someone asks a question about a different topic.
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I think it's too early to jump to such conclusions. It may not involve ATP production, but rather it might be sensitizing--or desensitizing--neurons (or supporting glial cells) or some other such mechanism. Something caused by specific kinds of cognitive tasks, causes changes that result in dysfunction and possibly other symptoms elsewhere in the body. The fact that other cognitive tasks, which should be demanding of ATP, don't have this effect, means that it's probably not simple energy drain. The fact that it takes place in specific areas of the brain might be an important clue to what's going on. What's different in those areas?
I have a problem with insomnia caused by specific types of cognitive exertion during a specific period of day. I can play a first-person shooter (involves rapid processing and evaluation and reaction) past 1:15 PM without triggering insomnia. Playing a turn-based strategy game (also involves processing and evaluation) to 1:25 does trigger insomnia. That doesn't seem to be as simple as "energy drain". My guess is that it involves changes in the environment in parts of the brain: building up or depleting something, or triggering a timer for scheduled maintenance, or some such thing. It could be more complex, such as triggering subconscious processing of events, maybe leading to replaying conversations or game moves with different outcomes, and no easy "stop now" signal.
There's an idea for a research project: EEGs of people who suffer from this abnormal reaction to socializing or other cognitive tasks, to see whether there's an abnormal level of activity, possibly persisting after the task is done.
There's an idea for a research project: EEGs of people who suffer from this abnormal reaction to socializing or other cognitive tasks, to see whether there's an abnormal level of activity, possibly persisting after the task is done.
Issues, to use the broadest term, seem to affect each of us first / the most at our weakest point. EXAMPLE: Run hard and you get a pain in your side, or sometimes a thigh. But one side more than the other. So, your weakest side / point shows the stress' impact first / most. Mental functions are as 'organic and electro-chemical' based as anywhere else in the body. So, different individuals would certainly have varying degrees or locales of impact. Just one more example of why ME sufferers are not uniform in symptom prestation, even if we knew the root cause was singular.
Instead of "weakest", I'd say "most susceptible". Certain brain cells could be strongly superior in most ways, but that also might make them more sensitive to signals, resulting in them showing symptoms first. I wouldn't be surprised if brain cells retain some sort of memory of conditions (hormones, nutrient levels, cytokines, etc) when they developed, resulting in different responses to later signals. One person might have smell-processing neurons that are overly sensitive to certain signals, while someone else, who ate different baby food on day 112 and had broken sleep the previous night, might have overly sensitive brain cells in the region that processes pain signal from their feet. When those people get PEM, they display different symptoms. Just a thought experiment.