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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?
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
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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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