READER RESPONSE:There was a considerable Reader Response to an article in Healthpluson January 20th on fatigue. Here we publish a selection of responses
Dear Sir,
I was disappointed that there were no warnings about the potential risks of exercising with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) in "Tired of being tired" ( Healthplus, January 20th).
My brother developed fatigue, muscle problems, swollen glands and various other symptoms after a high temperature when he was in college 15 years ago. His GP advised him to take a year out. He was advised by doctors and physiotherapists to exercise more, which he did. By the end of the year, he collapsed before finally being diagnosed with CFS.
He was bed-bound for a period and has improved only a little since then and needs a wheelchair to go distances over 25m. If he had been warned of the risks we feel he would never have become as ill as he is. We know other people with CFS who also regret following advice to exercise.
Ali Deegan
Clonee
Dublin
Dear Sir,
It is very dangerous to assume that fatigue is not due to physical abnormalities even when common tests come back as negative. I suffer from ME/CFS and have recently paid to have some tests done which show that there is a problem in my body regarding the delivery of oxygen into my muscles so for someone to assume my fatigue is due to mental issues of depression and therefore recommend exercise would leave my tissues more damaged and me more ill than I am now.
My cell damage is showing as almost on a par with someone undergoing cancer chemotherapy. More testing and biomedical research into ME/CFS is needed, not more lifestyle books and lifestyle miracle cures.
Jenny Wilson
Swansea
Dear Sir,
I’ve had ME for 11 years and have severe pain with it. I’m on three types of painkiller for it but am still frequently nauseous with pain. ME stands for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and the Myalgic means muscle pain so it’s wrong to suggest people with ME don’t have pain.
I was taken to hospital in 2001. I was able to walk out to the car on my way there but came out bed-bound and unable to walk due to being pushed too hard to do things I was unable to do. Consequently, I spent the next six years bed-bound. For four of them I had to be washed, dressed, fed and was unable to move from the neck down or even open my eyes.
Graded exercise can be very dangerous for people with ME and I don’t feel it’s right that it should be promoted as a treatment for this illness.
Tori Dinnen
Dundonald
Belfast
Dear Sir,
I am writing to you to draw attention to one common cause of fatigue in women which I feel was overlooked in the article “Tired of being tired”, namely endometriosis.
Women with endometriosis – a leading cause of infertility in which tissue from the womb lining grows elsewhere in the body – are much more likely to suffer from rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and allergies, research has found.
The discovery suggests these conditions may be connected by an underlying immune system abnormality, experts say. The study, conducted by the Endometriosis Association and the NIH and published in the journal Human Reproduction, documents something that has been noticed by many women with the painful disorder, which afflicts about 10 per cent of women of childbearing age.
Malfunctioning of certain immune system chemicals called cytokines may be a common link. The scientists found that 20 per cent of the women had more than one other disease. A third of the women who had other diseases had fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome, and some of those women also had other autoimmune or hormone diseases.
Fibromyalgia, which is characterised by widespread body pain and tiredness, was twice as common among the women with endometriosis. Autoimmune inflammatory diseases – systemic lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis – also occurred more frequently than normal.
As you can see, endometriosis is a complicated disease and early detection and treatment might prevent the progression of this disease and the development of other associated conditions, assuming that endometriosis occurs before the other diseases.
Geraldine Hogan
Farranfore,
Co Kerry