31–40 of 228 posts
Millions of people (in the US alone!) suffer from this illness and I think everyone has wondered, or heard it wondered, if it's imaginary.
For all these people to know there's something actually physically wrong with them is massive. It'll shift the thinking of everyone in the profession, of their families and friends and colleagues, and of themselves.
It's a huge, huge breakthrough.
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I have to agree with you here - the separation is too good. You just never get anything in the real world that works this well with complex diseases.
AIDS was once considered a very complex disease, but it has a very accurate (HIV) test today. My big concern would be if, like cancer, there are really many diseases and Chronic Fatigue symptoms are common, not differentiating.
There are a lot of other interesting overlaps showing up. One of the more interesting to me (because I have it) is that about 40% of CFS patients are testing positive for small fiber polyneuropathy on punch biopsies that appear to be autoimmune in origin. Is that itself an underlying cause of some 40% of CFS cases or is it just a common comorbid condition that whatever triggers CFS also triggers?
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I think that this suggestion that CFS might be caused by bad diet is even more irresponsible than telling it is psychological. CFS patients would wish that it were that simple. CFS onset is often abrupt, and can often happen to otherwise very healthy and active people. For example, a common story is that the patient becomes sick from a viral infection and then gets stuck with chronic fatigue syndrome even after the i…
> No one knows the cause yet If we can determine for sure that it's happening a at a much higher rate than in the past, we have a pretty good idea that the cause is the conditions that we live in. Diet that is one thing in which the changes over the years have been similar across different regions. If it was air pollution, the increased rates would show up in some regions but not others. Ditto radiation. I don't thin…
One thing that certainly does not help is that the primary symptom of ME/CFS, post-exertional malaise, is counter intuitive. The pain and fatigue comes after a delay, which hides the cause and effect. Everyday physical activity can also be enough to bring back symptoms. This means that if you don't know what you are looking for then ME/CFS will appear to come "out of nowhere", like a mystery chronic illness.
Does it say anywhere in the paper what the “promising drug” that decreases the effect might be?
I'm just astonished by this. Millions of people (in the US alone!) suffer from this illness and I think everyone has wondered, or heard it wondered, if it's imaginary. For all these people to know there's something actually physically wrong with them is massive. It'll shift the thinking of everyone in the profession, of their families and friends and colleagues, and of themselves. It's a huge, huge breakthrough.
So what they measure and where is the paper? I read the linked pr but find nothing about them
I'm just astonished by this. Millions of people (in the US alone!) suffer from this illness and I think everyone has wondered, or heard it wondered, if it's imaginary. For all these people to know there's something actually physically wrong with them is massive. It'll shift the thinking of everyone in the profession, of their families and friends and colleagues, and of themselves. It's a huge, huge breakthrough.
It’s is going to take a lot more validation before we get to the stage where this is clinically useful. For instance, the control group were healthy, what if instead you compared test results in CFS to another disease condition that can mimic CFS, would it still work as well? In the extreme case, the test could just be a generic flag that someone is non-specifically unwell, we just can’t tell from this data alone.
But which is the cause? Perhaps someone convinced they're ill, weakens their own immune system - either through some psychosomatic mechanism, or through associated behaviors.
It's somewhat irresponsible to suggest that this is psychosomatic, even in the face of a highly reliable biomarker. CFS sufferers have had insult added to injury for decades due to physicians dismissing them as hypochondriacs. This is a complex, debilitating syndrome that requires a lot of study. The type of fatigue these individuals experience is a lot more severe than "I'm tired and I don't know why"
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This reminds me of this quote from an article about Phil Libin, former CEO of Evernote: > Eventually he (Phil Libin) pinpointed the source. "It was the carbs," he said. https://www.businessinsider.com/phil-libin-fasting-routine-2... I think bad eating habits, eating unhealthy food, too much, too often, and too erratically has something to do with the uptick in these conditions.
I think that this suggestion that CFS might be caused by bad diet is even more irresponsible than telling it is psychological. CFS patients would wish that it were that simple. CFS onset is often abrupt, and can often happen to otherwise very healthy and active people. For example, a common story is that the patient becomes sick from a viral infection and then gets stuck with chronic fatigue syndrome even after the i…
You can even brute force some congenital diseases with diet/supplements, see Bruce Ames work on it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This reminds me of this quote from an article about Phil Libin, former CEO of Evernote: > Eventually he (Phil Libin) pinpointed the source. "It was the carbs," he said. https://www.businessinsider.com/phil-libin-fasting-routine-2... I think bad eating habits, eating unhealthy food, too much, too often, and too erratically has something to do with the uptick in these conditions.
I think that this suggestion that CFS might be caused by bad diet is even more irresponsible than telling it is psychological. CFS patients would wish that it were that simple. CFS onset is often abrupt, and can often happen to otherwise very healthy and active people. For example, a common story is that the patient becomes sick from a viral infection and then gets stuck with chronic fatigue syndrome even after the i…
Psychological illness have high rates of death, they cause years of life lost to disability, and they're serious and debilitating.
Stop pushing ignorant stigma around mental illness.