Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: What Is It?

Doctors haven't been able to unravel the mystery of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Most people never recover, and those who do recover, rarely enjoy a full recovery, meaning they are never able to go back to the level of energy and activity that they fully enjoyed.

When I was sick I spent hours pouring over books and in chat rooms. I chased down any and all treatments I could find that other sufferers reported success or improvement. I was very thorough. The list of treatments I tried included ( but was not limited to!), the Amygdala Retraining Program, Dr. Lam's Adrenal Fatigue program, Dr. Wilson's Adrenal Fatigue Program. antidepressants, and supplements, including high dose vitamin C and various diets...among them were vegetarian, low carb, no carb, and  the specific carbohydrate diet. The Amygdala Retraining Program was tedious, and time consuming, but it did offer some limited relief. Dr. Lam's and Dr. Wilson's supplements were too stimulating, like most of the herbal supplements my doctor prescribed. My diet was very "clean" when I became sick, although I did tried various healing diets, with the only effective diet being a very low carb, low sugar regimen, which I really had been doing all along.

So what gives? CFS isn't caused by a nutritional deficiency, although many a nutritionist would like to believe it is . CFS isn't caused by a "lack of supplements, vitamins, and minerals" as Dr. Lam and Dr. Wilson would like you to believe. And I highly doubt that CFS is caused by an "overactive amygdala" like Ashok Gupta would like you to believe, although he seems to be the closest to the cause of CFS in focusing his attention on the brain. Because CFS IS in your head, but not really.

So before anyone's head explodes when I say CFS is "in your head", what I mean is that it is in your nervous system. It's the ultimate stress related disease, and we have so much to learn from it...it can help us to figure out how mind/body/spirit work together to create health, or work apart from each other to create disease. CFS signals a body/mind/spirit that is out of sync, and could help us to figure out how other diseases develop out of a trinitarian system ( body/mind/spirit) that is our of sync.

If you are still with me, this is how CFS develops. It is, like many illnesses, a stress related disease, and a result of dysfunction within the Hypothalamus-Adrenal-Pituitary Axis.  The HPA-Axis is responsible for bringing our body into balance. A body out of balance, due to stress, will be a body that is constantly secreting stress hormones, and is unable to achieve homeostasis, or the proper parasympathetic "rest and relax" mode. Constant secretion of stress hormones results in severe fatigue,  muscle pain, vertigo, impairment of concentration and memory,insomnia, frequent infections, digestive issues, and many more puzzling and disturbing symptoms.

Medical doctors have not been able to find a cause or cure, because their care is based on symptoms, and the symptoms of CFS are varied and disabling. I spent much of my time chasing down symptoms when I was ill, and trying to deal with my illness symptom by symptom. It didn't work. But this also explains why there are very few tests that can indicate a positive diagnosis of CFS. What doctors are able to find is chronic inflammation ( caused by the continuous secretion of stress hormones), and in my case, cortisol levels which were almost nonexistent. The latest diagnostic indicator seems to be altered gut bacteria, which simply indicates a digestive system that is not properly functioning, rather than a "cause " of CFS. It' simply a result.

The treatment, then, is simple. Address the stress. Yes, restorative yoga , breathing, and meditation can help. But ultimately what has to be addressed is the unconscious stress. And that can be done by looking for symptom triggers, ( keeping a journal to start), and learning the unique language of your body, which communicates with you by sending up physical symptoms of disease. If you learn to understand the language of your illness, then you can interpret, engage with the wisdom of your body, and return to health, or homeostasis. If we can do this with CFS, then we can do this with many other chronic diseases as well.

i worked one on one with a practitioner who developed a unique body/mind treatment specifically for those who suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. I am so very grateful to have fully recovered my health and energy. There is hope! You can recover too.