Live data from Hacker News

Chronic fatigue syndrome may have a post-viral infection origin

medicalxpress.com

331–340 of 348 posts

Re: Chronic fatigue syndrome may have a post-viral infection origin

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is she vaccinated with mRNA?

She is now, but was infected with the virus before she got the vaccine. The vaccine was available but unfortunately she was hesitant about getting it due to all of the noise online and in the news. She was vaccinated about 4mo after being infected and had already been experiencing Long Covid symptoms.

If she was vaccinated after infection, she probably has enough level of antibodies. (1,2) I hope she consult that with her doctor rather than online noise as you think.

(1) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.21267114v... (2) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.12.21263461v...

Re: Chronic fatigue syndrome may have a post-viral infection origin

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent countless hours reading and experimenting with this. I cant regurgitate all of it here. What do you even need all this fiber for, especially for 90 days? You're not eating heavy grains or meat that you need help pushing through. Lol to the idea of eating tons of vegetables not sounding great.

No worries. “Eating” is not even the right word since you’re removing all solids. Without seeing any evidence or scientific argument, yes, drinking juice of the same four vegetables for a full three months sounds very problematic on multiple fronts… this is very different from “eating a lot of vegetables”.

I'm not forcing anyone to do it. I've done it, and had great results. I've had a few friends and family do it, and all have been impressed.

People think nothing of going on vacation and eating poorly and drinking for 7+ days straight.

But tell people you should try atleast 7 days of vegetable juice only and they start looking at your sideways. Say 30+ days and they'll warn you it's dangerous. Say 90 and they'll think you're going to die.

I promise you more people are dying from pizza and beer than vegetable juice for 90 days.

Re: Chronic fatigue syndrome may have a post-viral infection origin

#333
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bizarre how your comment is being downvoted when it's a very accurate description of many modern capitalistic societies. Especially if we're talking about America, where companies literally try to fire you if you're sick or using up too much health care because of their bottom line. It doesn't even matter if it's illegal because unless they get caught there are no consequences and even if they do get caught, the…

it's being downvoted because it somehow implies that by taking a few days of rest one might treat CE/MFS, which is a very misguided and misinformed take

> by taking a few days of rest one might treat CE/MFS

Their comment in no way implies that

Re: Chronic fatigue syndrome may have a post-viral infection origin

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello - I'm not sure I totally understand your question however I am sorry you have suffered so much with this. In my experience there is often an overlap between central sensitization and other chronic illness. So for instance, 30% of people with Rheumatoid Arthrtiis have fibromyalgia. Which means ,they have joint pain and fatigue even when there is no active RA. So it's never wrong to try a pacing approach to see i…

>So it's never wrong to try a pacing approach to see if it helps. How many people who've had chronic fatigue or post-exertion malaise for a few years do you think haven't tried pacing? I'm sure some have not tried it, but my guess is that it occurs to most as a pretty obvious thing to try even without a health-care provider's or information source's suggesting it. Even if a person's first response to chronic fatigue…

I would say most of the 100s of patients I have seen w cfs or fibro haven’t given pacing a good try - either they do t have the common sense you mention, or they do, but are unable to make the changes required to actually pace. Ie making boundaries with family, leaving an abusive partner, taking time off a cherished job etc. And then, it is very rare for a person to, once they have removed these more external sources of stress, start to work on pacing their internally generated stress (ie “free floating anxiety” etc) through dedicated mindfulness and appropriate psychotherapy.

Re: Chronic fatigue syndrome may have a post-viral infection origin

#335
post #157
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While supplements can help, nothing been sun on your skin for vitamin D and also for other help benefits - in moderation of course. If someone's doctor has told them to get outside more and they find it is helping, I would not personally recommend someone stays in and just take supplements as an alternative.

And your statement here is part of the problem. Too many doctors are quick to look at a person and their lifestyle and just say "welp, get outside, get more active, lose some weight, get some sun" There are cases where supplements or medication are completely valid. How many (primarily women, but some men), have hypothyrodism. I know of at least 3 other women in my life who, instead of the doctor listening to their s…

Not sure if you miss read my post, but to reiterate 'if sunlight is working, and the person is feeling better, then supplements are not likely to be needed' - I never said don't use supplements, or that they have no use.

Re: Chronic fatigue syndrome may have a post-viral infection origin

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dated a med school student for all of medschool and some rotations. Thus I have countless doctor friends now from those years. Everytime I bring up the reality of what most doctors are like, I get downvoted on HN for some reason. The doctor I dated for years never drank water. She loved diet coke. She ate mcdonalds constantly but avoided the bun. She was skinny though. I had to teach her how to pump gas because her…

> Everytime I bring up the reality of what most doctors are like Is your insight that doctors are regular educated humans suffering from the same flaws and vices as other regular educated humans? > She loved cocaine and moly. Currently cycles Adderall and Ritalin (or something very similar) so she doesn’t get too used to one or the other. Not sure what this is supposed to imply. I expect the same can also be said for…

Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, no knowledge of anything real world other than your job, are not qualities of "regular educated people".

They are modern qualities of the loud morality failed majority these days. Just because it's common for celebrities and kids of rich people to do drugs and screw around, doesn't mean that's what my parents expect from their doctors.

Re: Chronic fatigue syndrome may have a post-viral infection origin

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well - I myself had cfs and found that pacing and mindfulness really helped! I think these approaches have been empowering for both myself and hundreds of my patients. And there is some clinical research there to back my opinions up. however I am always open to and hopeful that other approaches like those that go via the microbiome, will be helpful.

I believe you, but at the same time you have to take the correction for the fact that humans are storytelling creatures- we correlate our life experiences with our internal experience and spin them into stories by instinct- I've never met anyone who wasn't convinced their illness was related to life events and mindset for a long while before stumbling onto a diagnosis. So I always wonder, are we seeing successful tre…

Reasonable question! I ask myself the same. Always good to open to other points of view!

Re: Chronic fatigue syndrome may have a post-viral infection origin

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everytime I bring up the reality of what most doctors are like Is your insight that doctors are regular educated humans suffering from the same flaws and vices as other regular educated humans? > She loved cocaine and moly. Currently cycles Adderall and Ritalin (or something very similar) so she doesn’t get too used to one or the other. Not sure what this is supposed to imply. I expect the same can also be said for…

Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, no knowledge of anything real world other than your job, are not qualities of "regular educated people". They are modern qualities of the loud morality failed majority these days. Just because it's common for celebrities and kids of rich people to do drugs and screw around, doesn't mean that's what my parents expect from their doctors.

> Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, no knowledge of anything real world other than your job, are not qualities of "regular educated people".

Actually they are, your statement applies to any one of the examples I gave you of what society considers successful/prestigious careers. Silicon Valley is the poster child for stimulant and hallucinogen use/abuse, are they not similarly regular educated people?

> Just because it's common for celebrities and kids of rich people to do drugs and screw around

Where are you getting the idea that it's only common amongst celebrities and kids of rich people?

> They are modern qualities of the loud morality failed majority these days.

I don't even know what "loud morality failed majority" means but morality (particularly your personal definition of it) =/= professional competency.

The disconnect here seems to be your expectations (and definition of morality but that's a separate point). Your parents, and you, seem to be unaware of how common stimulant, alcohol and drug use is amongst white-collar professionals.

Sorry to disappoint but as a group physicians are no different. This has no relevance on professional competency. Fun fact for you the "fathers of modern medicine" who have all the diseases named after them and designed the residency education system were all overt cocaine addicts, thats part of why the hours are so long.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7828946/

Re: Chronic fatigue syndrome may have a post-viral infection origin

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I misread kettle for kettle bell. But the load is irrelevant. If you are that weak then start with fragmented swimmers stretches 1 limb at a time. I was in the same situation in 2018 but you do forget once you escape. Just do 1 rep on each limb every second day until you can do two. Or figure out the training periodicity for your body so that you can build up to 30 swimmers stretches. Then add in another exerci…

I'm not "strong" by any means, but I wouldn't say I was weak either; the problem is that I'm not lacking the strength to lift the kettle (or my own arms, for that matter), rather that lactic acid doesn't allow me to use the strength I have for any length of time.

Here's a simplification (that I experienced before I dealt with cfs) -

there is long series of stairways up a large hill that people run up.

You can run up the hill slowly every 5th day without it killing you, then every 4th,3rd 2nd then everyday. That process might take 4-6 months and takes grit.

Or you can strength train your legs with barbell squats once a a week for 8 weeks noticing yourself getting stronger each week and then just run up the hill.

I accept I'm a terrible athlete now so I strength train my legs with very amateurish pistol squats so I can walk up the hill without crossing over the lactate threshold.

If you are crossing the lactate threshold lifting a kettle then strength training should help. I know the exact feeling you are describing and used to deal with it. Gradual strengthening helped - with a strong emphasis on the gradual. Aim for fragmented single limb swimmers stretches. I still remember the pure exhaustion after doing 1 rep. Make sure your body has glucose before after and during any form of exertion. The steadier the glucose flow the better. Getting up and down off the floor is a form of strength training.

There's a balance between strength and endurance and I don't have the explanation off the top of my head but exercise physioloogists do.

Zone 2 exercise heals mitochondria. Zone 3 exercise stresses it and requires a recovery period. Exercise physiologists are having good success treating cfs as athletes are really just optimising their mitochondria so they can thrash it harder and longer than their competitors on race day. Exercise physiologists often work in with physio teams at sports academies at univerisities.

Dr Peter Attias stuff he is figuring out and sharing from helping wealthy intelligent people live long debilitation free lives is very useful for understanding lactate thresholds.

Just like athletes take performance enhancing drugs to reduce recovery times - so can we. There are plenty of supplements to play around with. So many people mess up their B vitamins by taking multi-vitamins but getting b vitamins in quanties your body is utilising is a low hanging fruit. Unfortunately it has no profit motive attached to it so you have to guess or work with a Complementary Medicine MD if you can afford one. A low inflammation, glucose goddess style diet with moderate cheating in the mix so you don't get food obsessed as the base helps also.

The supplement reccommendation page on www.perfecthealthdiet.com is a safe base to play around from for supplementation. If you adapt a soft version of the perfect health base diet to the glucose goddess method and gradually strength train I think you must increase the probability of escaping the fatigue trap. Some of it is mental but if you can get small wins you eventually beat the mental side back as well. Dopamine managment is a factor.

My frustration with some medical professions take is that they sometimes expect you to deal with it purely via mental resilience (which helps) without providing any tools to get any small wins which is impossible. If you think about it - an olympic athlete has a coaching team to ascend mount everest, what do we have?

The medical system treats the condition like someone's on a cave dive and provides the support encouragement, training and advice afforded Eric the eel. They are right that you can do it, panick won't help and that you do need to keep moving in some direction but until you run out of air you will be alright. The fact you can't work is irrelevant, lot's of people deal with debilitation. From the health systems perspective maybe they are right - who deserves saving vs who deserves training are different questions. There is alot of suffering out there - maybe placing the onus on the individual to figure their own path is the correct approach.

Re: Chronic fatigue syndrome may have a post-viral infection origin

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, no knowledge of anything real world other than your job, are not qualities of "regular educated people". They are modern qualities of the loud morality failed majority these days. Just because it's common for celebrities and kids of rich people to do drugs and screw around, doesn't mean that's what my parents expect from their doctors.

> Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, no knowledge of anything real world other than your job, are not qualities of "regular educated people". Actually they are, your statement applies to any one of the examples I gave you of what society considers successful/prestigious careers. Silicon Valley is the poster child for stimulant and hallucinogen use/abuse, are they not similarly regular educated people? > Just because it's com…

Jesus man. I understand that degenerate behavior is common in today's doctors. That was my entire point of the original post. Otherwise what would I really be saying? That I knew ONE almost drug addict doctor that looks forward to her next festival? Obviously one of everything exists.

My point about celebrities and rich famous people was that they normalized it, to the point that you aren't even surprised doctors are druggies in their free time.

No one cars that some Uber programmer is on speed. More people would care to know that their doctor that recommends heart pressure medication is a druggy, because they'd know this personal doesn't really care about potential kidney damage in themselves, so of course they'll recommend you take kidney damaging heart medication without really explaining that that's what is happening.

If you left the SV and internet bubble, you'd learn that drug use and alcohol use is not liked by most in their higher level professionals.

Post reply on HN