"I'm sure that many of us are whacked out in our thyroid function. Paul Cheney has talked about this in his videotaped presentations. He believes that our bodies downregulate thyroid hormone production in order to force us to limit our physical activity. As we all know, physical activity makes us sicker, so our bodies are trying to protect us from it by downregulating thyroid hormone production or otherwise messing with our thyroid function. Therefore, abnormal thyroid function should be considered a symptom of CFS, not an exclusionary condition".
I think that the official diagnostic criteria for ME/CFS state that other diseases and illnesses, which may cause fatigue, should be ruled out, or treated, before giving an ME/CFS diagnosis. This makes sense because a good doctor should check for all possible causes of the patient's symptoms before giving a diagnosis of ME/CFS.
Other possible causes of fatigue, for example, might be cancer, depression, gut disorders etc.
I'm not sure if the Canadian consensus criteria insist on this exclusionary principle. Maybe they don't need to, because the criteria which they use are more specific, and more exclusionary anyway.
I'm not familiar with Cheney's work, but normally, you would expect a thyroid disorder to be treated before diagnosing ME/CFS.
After treatment for the thyroid disorder, a patient might find that they don't have any symptoms, and that they purely had a thyroid problem.
But if symptoms remain, then a diagnosis for ME/CFS can be given.
I suspect that Cheney is talking about a subclinical thyroid disorder, that doesn't show up on standard thyroid tests, in which case it's a different matter.
I know that when I was ill with a low thyroid, the symptoms were severe, disruptive, and in
addition to the ME symptoms. But it was easily treated, which then left me purely with ME symptoms.
I really doubt the CDC will ever get this issue in my lifetime. But I believe it to be true because as I stated below, most if not all of my endocrine values have always been sub-clinical (slightly low) as a result rather than cause of this illness. One of the reasons I believe it to be result rather than cause is that taking hormone supplements such as Cortisol (for adrenal insufficiency....another exclusionary Dx) will make me feel better temporarily, but does nothing to expand my stress tolerance abilities....I will still crash the same. In fact, the hormone supplementation will push me into a crash, even if I force myself to lay on the bed and have no stress at all. This says to me that the sub-clinical endocrine values must be result rather than cause....otherwise I would improve rather than worsen on the supplementation. I have tried this experiment many times over the years, and it's always the same result. So, I agree with Dr Cheney on this issue. But, I'm all for having these endocrine tests done to rule out the possibility of an undiagnosed problem. I'm currently giving T3 a try for the first time. My GP has prescribed it to reduce the RT3. It gives me more energy for sure, but I need more time to see how well it will help long term.
If you are referring to subclinical symptoms only, then this category would not have been excluded from the CDC study anyway.
I agree with what you are saying about subclinical hormone disorders being as a result of the ME... I suspect that my
clinical thyroid dysfunction was also a direct result of the ME, or an associated pathogen (such as HHV-6, XMRV etc).
My underactive thyroid disorder had fatigue as a symptom (in addition to the fatigue of the ME) (the thyroid fatigue felt strangely very similar to the ME fatigue but the pattern of the fatigue was subtly different), but the thyroid symptoms disappeared as soon as the thyroid disorder was successfully treated, and this sorted out my thyroid symptoms, but it did nothing for the ME symptoms, which carried on as usual.