Chronic Fatigue Syndrome- Fibromyalgia
Many patients come to me because they are tired all the time. These same patents often also have achiness, can't sleep or experience interrupted sleep, and suffer from "brain fog."
 |
| So you got your beauty sleep, and still you're tired? |
Chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and myofascial pain syndrome are conditions that overlap each other.
A key factor in helping patients with chronic fatigue is assessing the underlying causes and treating all of these at the same time.
These underlying factors include:
- Poor diet and food intolerances.
- Absent, or low, critical nutrient factors
- Digestion problems
- Hormonal deficiencies
- Sleep disturbances
- Infections
- Toxic substances, including heavy metals, can interfere with normal functioning
- An underlying coagulation disorder may also be present.
If only one problem is treated, symptoms don't improve as dramatically as when all of the factors are addressed simultaneously. Relieving pain is also important for recovery.
In my experience, the events surrounding the onset of fatigue are important. Sometimes symptoms begin with what seems to be a viral illness-a cold, or the flu-from which the person never really recovers. With some patients, the onset of fatigue coincides with a car accident, the birth of a child, or some other stressful life event.
In some patients there are associated intestinal symptoms such as poor digestion, feeling like food just sits in the stomach, bloating after eating, diarrhea or alternating diarrhea and constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, or leaky gut syndrome. Sometimes the onset of fatigue or intestinal symptoms follows an intestinal illness, often after a trip to a foreign country or several rounds of antibiotics.
Family history can be insightful. For example, some women note that "everyone in my family has low thyroid function, but my laboratory tests are always normal." In person after person, I find that the individual has low thyroid function but the laboratory evaluation isn't catching it.
 |
| When life is going all wrong, it's time to meet Dr. Wright. |
Treatment requires diagnosis, followed by correcting the cause is the most effective and most natural way possible. This involves the use of specific foods, nutritional and herbal medicines, prescription bio-identical hormones, and other medications as necessary. The approach is to use safe and effective natural substances to support the body, before turning to prescription medications, which often are directed at only blocking a symptom.
The goal isn't to mask a problem, but to return the individual to vibrant health and a normal life.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome-Classic CDC Definition
About 90% of patients who experience fatigue do not meet the classic definition of chronic fatigue syndrome. According to the CDC criteria, to diagnose chronic fatigue syndrome a patient must satisfy two criteria:
1. Clinically evaluated, unexplained, persistent or relapsing chronic fatigue that is:
- Of new or definite onset-it has not been lifelong
- Is not the result of ongoing exertion; is not substantially alleviated by rest; and results in substantial reduction in previous levels of occupational, educational, social, or personal activities.
2. Concurrent occurrence of four or more of the following symptoms, all of which must have persisted or recurred during six or more consecutive months of illness and must not have predated the fatigue:
- Self-reported impairment in short-term memory or concentration, severe enough to cause substantial reduction in previous levels of occupational, educational, social, or personal activities
- Sore throat
- Tender cervical (neck) or axillary (armpit) lymph nodes
- Muscle pain
- Multi-joint pain without swelling or redness
- Headaches of a new type, pattern, or severity
- Unrefreshing sleep
- Post-exertional malaise lasting more than 24 hours.
The symptoms must have persisted or recurred during six or more consecutive months of illness and must not have predated the fatigue.
References:
- Annals of Internal Medicine 121 (14 December 1994)
- From Fatigued to Fantastic by Jacob Teitelbaum, MD
- www.endfatigue.com
- www.about.com