| Activities
of Daily Living/Functional Capacity
Daily
Activities Worksheet (PDF)
Karnofsky Scale
SF-36 Health Survey (PDF)
Community & Social Impact
CFS Far More Common than AIDS, HIV Infection or Lung Cancer
Fibromyalgia: Not All In Your Head
Fighting
a Mystery Disease
Looking Good But Not Feeling
Fine
Politics, Science and the Emergence of a New
Disease
2004:
New Study Finds High Prevalence Of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Diagnostics
Balance the Th1/Th2 Immune System
Blood
Draws
Dysautonomias (Autonomic Nervous System
disorders)
Hemodynamics Instability in CFS
CFS and Fibromyalgia: Caused by the same disease?
Community-Based Study of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Disease of a Thousand Names
Does
chronic Lyme disease play a role in CFIDS?
Dr.
Nancy Klimas Answers Questions on CFS
Dysregulation
Spectrum Syndrome
Enterovirus related metabolic
myopathy: a postviral fatigue syndrome
Epstein-Barr
& Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Fatigue Syndromes
and the Ætiology of Autoimmune Disease
What
is the Fibromyalgia Syndrome and Why is it Important? (ACR)
Fibromyalgia
Pain Isn't All In Patient's Heads, New Brain Study Finds
Fibromyalgia
Information (Canada)
Fibromialgia
y síndrome crónico de la fatiga en español
Fibromyalgia
(FM) and Chronic Myofascial Pain (CMP)
Further Organic
Abnormalities in CFIDS (Orthostatic Intolerance)
Gene
Expression Research in CFS
Home Environment
Testing Kits
Hypovolemia and CFIDS
Important
Tests for CFS, FM and RA
Immune System
Overviews
The Interface
of Lyme Disease with CFS and FM: Diagnostic and Treatment Issues
Intimations
of Infection in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome & Fibromyalgia
Keep
Your Eye On CFIDS (Ophthalmic Irregularities)
Late
and Chronic Lyme Disease: Symptom Overlap with CFS & FM
Massachusetts
CFIDS Association CFS Primer for Physicians
Neuroendocrine
Abnormalities in CFS Deserve More Comprehensive Study
On
Liver, Thyroid and Toxicity
Red Blood Cell Shape
Abnormality
RNAse-L Enzyme Dysfunction
Second World Conference on CFS and Related Disorders
Some Doctors Operate on People Diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue
Study Identifies
Three Subgroups of Fibromyalgia
Testing
Laboratories for CFS, FM, Metals Toxicity, Other Disorders
The
Physical Basis of CFS
Uncertainty of Hair Analysis
for Trace Metals Neuocognitive
Issues
Differentiating
Between CFIDS and Primary Depression
Late Effects
of Concussions and Head Injuries
Memory:
The Art of Drawing A Blank
The MMPI-2 Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome Profile
Neurocognitive Impairment in
CFS
Protocol for Cognitive Assessment for CFIDS
Relationships of Cognitive Difficulties to Immune Measures,
Depression and Illness Burden in CFS
Should
you get a neuropsych workup?
Cardiopulmonary
Issues
Dysautonomias
(Autonomic Nervous System disorders)
On
Cryptostrongylus pulmoni and multisystemic illness
Tricky
Heart May Cause CFS
Suspected
New Species of Chronic Roundworm Parasite, Cryptostrongylus pulmoni, Associated
with CFS in Blinded Trials
Communicating
with Physicians and Disability Reviewers
Frustrations of a Physician Treating CFS
Can
we talk? How to communicate with your doctor
Trying
to Look Good When You Feel Like Crap: Don't
More
articles... Is
your physician putting down your Internet research?
Google
Searches Out the Diagnosis, Stat Have
You Considered...Lyme Disease and Other Tickborne Infections?
If
you have been sick for years, and along the way were diagnosed with chronic fatigue
syndrome and/or fibromyalgia syndrome, and have not responded significantly,
or positively at all for very, to many different treatment protocols that seem
to be very helpful to others who were diagnosed with CFS and/or FM, then what
ever made them sick isn't what has made you sick. The
word "syndrome" just means "a consistent set of symptoms for which
no as yet identified cause exists." "Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome" is an umbrella term for a set of symptoms shared by too
many people to logically ignore (i.e., it isn't mass hysteria, hypochondria, or
Munchausen's) assigned to a group of people who share the same constellation of
symptoms, but who may not have become ill in the same way. Some
were later found to have widespread systemic Candida infections (fixed
by diet), some mercury toxicity (fixed by chelation and, in extreme cases, removal
of amalgam fillings). Some actually had severe hypothyroidism, or abnormalities
in other hormone levels, all of which were corrected and remain corrected by monitoring
medication levels. Some actually have relapsing/remitting Epstein-Barr virus or
Cytomeagaly virus, or both. Some actually were infected by a mycoplasma. Some
actually turned out to have chronic iron deficiency or iron storage disease, both
not detected by standard iron tests. For
many of us, however, while we may have had many of the things mentioned above,
and many other thingss besides, none of the treatment protocols that prove effective
in restoring others to normal or near-normal pre-onset levels of health and functioning
worked for us. Over
the past couple of years, an increasing number of doctors in California, where
I live, have become not only cognizant that we some widespread Borrelia burgdorferi
(the organism that causes Lyme disease) living in ticks throughout almost every
county in our state, but that a huge number of patients originally diagnosed with
CFS and FM, who have not been found to have any other illness/disorder that, when
treated, significantly reduced their CFS & FM symptoms, are in fact infected
with B. burgdorferi and, as is common in other Lyme-endemic areas, one
or more other organisms who happily inhabit ticks carrying B. burgdorferi. In
the small support group to which I have been associated for over a decade, an
increasing number of us are turning up positive for Lyme disease when tested using
newer tests. Some of us requested or agreed to be treated for Lyme despite negative
test results, to find that subsequent tests showed that we had chronic infections
and, in some cases, reactivated or new infections. In
my case, I had negative results in 1991 and 1999, in tests done by three different
labs. Becuase of getting a positive test result in 1999 for Babesia, another
tickborne organism, commonly found with B. burgdorferi, my doctor and I
decided to start me on a treatment protocl for Lyme disease as well as for the
Babesia. It wasn't until several months after I had completed
an initial course of high-dose doxycycline
that I finally got a positive IgG Western blot result for Lyme. (A retest of my
Babesia showed that treatment knocked the organisms titers down to "non-infective"
levels.) Am I cured
and back at work? No. But for now, I am not quite as sick, and some important--to
me-quality of life indicators started improving several months after I finished
the first course of doxy, including not being nearly as chemically sensitive to
the chemicals associated with daily living that our society exposes us to. That's
more than can be said for all the other treatment protocols I have tried through
the years for CFS and FM. That goes, too, for addressing my other health problems,
any of which may have been originally induced by the effects of B. burgdorferi
in the body, especially how if affects hormone production and cascades, autonomic
nervous system, and other brain functions. The
following article isn't new, but it does highlight why people who continue to
be sick with CFS and FM need to consider Lyme disease and other types of parasitic
and infectious organisms as being at the root of their original health decline.
If, after reading what I have written here and this article, you want to learn
more, including why tests are so often negative when the person really does have
the organism(s) living and reproducing inside of them, please head to my Lyme
page, and read the article on Seronegativity,
and more up-to-date research, testing information, and treatment protocols.
Late
and Chronic Lyme Disease:
Symptom Overlap with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome &
Fibromyalgia Children
and CFS/FM
| It's
All In Your Head (IAIYH) 
We've run all the tests, doc, and can't find anything wrong.
It must be psychological.
|
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