Why Can’t We Think Well When We’re Sick?

This isn’t specif­i­cally about CFS/ME or FMS, but I found it inter­est­ing, and I think it makes sense.

Why Men­tal Lethargy When Sick

Dur­ing an infec­tion, humans typ­i­cally expe­ri­ence a set of phys­i­o­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal symp­toms, includ­ing fever, con­fu­sion, decreased moti­va­tion, depres­sion and anx­i­ety that are accom­pa­nied by a slow­ing of movements.

These changes, col­lec­tively known as “sick­ness behav­ior,” are the body’s way of con­serv­ing energy dur­ing ill­ness so that an effec­tive immune response can be launched. This new study helps researchers fur­ther under­stand how cytokines com­mu­ni­cate between the immune sys­tem and the brain to pro­mote sick­ness behavior.

Since many peo­ple with CFS/ME have chronic fevers and other symp­toms sim­i­lar to those of infec­tious ill­nesses, I have to won­der if the results of this study will be exam­ined with regards to CFS/ME.

June 12, 2008  Tags: CFS/ME, cognitive deficits, cytokines, fevers, infection  Posted in: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, From the news  One Comment

NOT related to FMS!">Abortion is NOT related to FMS!

I detest igno­rant big­ots. And I absolutely con­sider the fol­low­ing hate speech:

So like an HPV diag­no­sis in some­one would almost guar­an­tee that oth­ers would know the person’s poten­tial morals or lack there of, and HIV almost always denotes a gay man, a diag­no­sis of fibromyal­gia could poten­tially indi­cate a woman who has aborted a child. Just a thought.

Gosh — so all those males who have fibromyal­gia were actu­ally born as women, and had abor­tions before they had sex changes and devel­oped FMS? Every­body who is HIV+ because of blood trans­fu­sions or other issues is a gay man?

I’ve never even con­sid­ered hav­ing an abor­tion. My child cer­tainly hasn’t had one, and she devel­oped FMS when she was nine years old!

I did com­ment at the blogger’s site, giv­ing her infor­ma­tion on all the proof that FMS does exist and that our pain is real. I don’t believe she’ll ever approve the com­ment, because she doesn’t care about the truth–she just wants to spread her nasty propaganda.

June 3, 2008  Tags: abortion, bigots, Fibromyalgia, hate speech  Posted in: Fibromyalgia  One Comment

Review: Women, Work and Autoimmune Disease

Women, Work, and Autoimmune DiseaseI read Women, Work and Autoim­mune Dis­ease by Ros­alind Joffe and Joan Fried­lan­der a few months back, but for some rea­son my review on Ama­zon never showed up, and I didn’t think to keep a copy for myself. It seems to finally be there now, so I’ll put it here, too (slightly expanded).

This book is one the best I’ve ever found for those of us who have chronic ill­nesses, but want to con­tinue work­ing. It goes beyond the stan­dard “cop­ing tips” to talk bluntly about pac­ing your­self, search­ing for a job, keep­ing a job, nego­ti­at­ing with your employer for accom­mo­da­tions, and being self-employed. Top­ics like “when do I dis­close a disability/illness?” are cov­ered by authors who have exten­sive per­sonal expe­ri­ence build­ing their careers despite chronic illnesses.

The title does refer specif­i­cally to women, but I think the book can also be very use­ful for men. Like­wise, there’s no rea­son to limit read­er­ship to peo­ple with autoim­mune diseases.

I’ll be buy­ing copies to send to some of my friends. I don’t plan to let mine out of my sight! I hope to get a copy of the accom­pa­ny­ing work­book soon, as well.

Joffe’s blog, Work­ing With Chronic Ill­ness, is also good reading.

May 29, 2008  Tags: autoimmune disease, chronic illness, Joan Friedlander, Rosalind Joffee, working  Posted in: disability, employment, Resources  One Comment

CFS?">Oxygen for CFS?

A research abstract from Dr. Paul Cheney offers an inter­est­ing con­clu­sion.
Oxy­gen Tox­i­c­ity as a Locus of Con­trol for Chronic Fatigue Syn­drome
“We con­clude that CFS is an oxy­gen toxic state and that oxy­gen tox­i­c­ity sta­tus appears to deter­mine out­come in ther­a­peu­tic tri­als and is there­fore, a locus of con­trol in chronic fatigue syndrome.”

The pos­si­bil­ity of an effi­ca­cious treat­ment for CFS is excit­ing. I’ll be watch­ing the news for more infor­ma­tion on this angle.

May 27, 2008  Tags: CFS, chronic+fatigue+syndrome, ME, oxygen, Paul+Cheney  Posted in: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome  One Comment

Fibromyalgia or Depression?

There are many peo­ple, espe­cially doc­tors, who claim that fibromyal­gia is just a symp­tom of depres­sion. I’ve had both, and I know the dif­fer­ence quite well. They are very, very different.

Being in pain all the time can cer­tainly lead to depres­sion. That’s just log­i­cal. There are, how­ever, peo­ple who have fibromyal­gia who are not clin­i­cally depressed. Depres­sion can also man­i­fest as phys­i­cal pain, but it is does not meet the cri­te­ria for fibromyalgia.

I was treated for depres­sion for years before I devel­oped FMS, though, and I truly believe that if I’d got­ten proper treat­ment for men­tal health issues in my child­hood (post-traumatic stress dis­or­der and all the com­pli­ca­tions it brought, includ­ing major depres­sive dis­or­der) I prob­a­bly wouldn’t have devel­oped FMS.

I never have trou­ble dis­tin­guish­ing between the two, or between either of them and CFS/ME, which I also have. They’re all quite different.

With FMS, the pain causes fatigue, and together they can (but don’t always) have an affect on your emo­tions. You may feel like doing some­thing, but your body absolutely will not coop­er­ate. There have been times when I’ve been feel­ing great, gone out to do some­thing I was SO look­ing for­ward to–and nearly col­lapsed in the mid­dle of every­thing when my body said, “All right, that’s it, no more. Done. Where’s the bed?” (We’ve joked that if I ever man­age to get a scooter or elec­tric wheel­chair, it will have to have a remote con­trol fea­ture so that Sam can steer me on home when I’ve passed out.)

But seri­ous clin­i­cal depression…it doesn’t mat­ter whether you’ve got the phys­i­cal energy or not. Logic doesn’t mat­ter. Know­ing that you’d feel bet­ter for hav­ing a nice, hot shower is utterly irrel­e­vant. The fact that the tele­phone ring­ing is con­tribut­ing to your headache, and you could make it stop by merely lift­ing up your arm up push­ing a but­ton, is irrel­e­vant, because lift­ing your arm would take too much damned effort. Yes, some­where, on some level, you may know that you’ll lose yet more func­tion for not get­ting up and doing your exer­cises, but it’s less impor­tant than star­ing at the ceil­ing, or the pil­low, or what­ever is in front of your face right now. Not that you really make any kind of con­scious value judg­ment or any­thing, but the star­ing has iner­tia going for it. Even if noth­ing IS hurt­ing, even if you have all the energy in the world and you could do any­thing you just don’t care.

Remem­ber that, the next time you hear some­one claim­ing that FMS and depres­sion are the same.

May 24, 2008  Tags: depression, Fibromyalgia, FMS, psychology  Posted in: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Pain  4 Comments