481 Chronic Fatigue – another perspective [23 July 2018]

Back in April of this year I wrote about a possible viral cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) as described in a book by Judy Mikovits called “Plague – One Scientist’s Intrepid Search for the Truth about Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome”. Another book, “Cure – a Journey into the Science of Mind over Body” by Jo Marchant (2016) explores the placebo effect and other examples of the mind controlling the body. One chapter approaches CFS from this perspective.

Regular fatigue, as experienced by athletes and mountain climbers, has a strong psychological factor. The old theories that fatigue occurs when the muscles are depleted of oxygen or flooded with lactic acid have been disproven. A new theory proposes that a “central governor” in the brain protects us by convincing us to quit while we still have some energy in reserve for a possible emergency.

Applied to CFS, the theory suggests that some trigger (often a viral infection) messes up the central governor’s settings, leaving the victims feeling too fatigued to do much of anything. A series of clinical studies, followed by a larger controlled study in 2011, found that graded exercise therapy (GET) to slowly increase activity, and cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) to change the patients thinking about their condition, were both moderately helpful in reducing fatigue and improving disability scores. A total of 641 CFS patients, divided into four groups, were followed for a year. The pacing therapy group had no better results than the control which got routine medical care. After one year 22% of the patients in the CBT and GET groups had recovered, compared with 8% of the pacing therapy and control groups.

The reaction to this study was immediate and furious by CFS patient groups who rejected the implication that their condition was “all in their head”. A later re-analysis of the data by other scientists found the recovery rates to be less than 5% for all groups and not statistically different.

The original study’s senior author, Peter White of London, England, sees the problem as the current mindset that illnesses are either biological or psychological, when in fact there should be no such divide. The mind strongly affects the body and, as we have seen in the past few articles, biochemistry definitely affects the mind. White argues: CFS isn’t either biological or psychological; it’s both.

For more information on this or other natural health topics, stop in and talk to Stan; for medical advice consult your licensed health practitioner.