IACFS/ME 09 Conference: Lifestyle Management

Oh lord! I wish Dr. Carruthers were my doctor!

IACFS/ME 09 Conference: Lifestyle Management: "Dr. Carruthers believes pacing is an essential strategy because the ‘delayed and prolonged’ fatigue in ME/CFS is fundamentally different from the kind of fatigue found in other diseases. Putting them rather low on the ladder of his estimation, he noted that “even the authors of the NICE Guidelines ‘ are (finally) beginning to realize this but unfortunately they still don’t fully understand what this means.'

If I understand him correctly, ‘fatigue’ is part of a complex control system. When we’re too active and our bodies are beginning to suffer, fatigue sets in and causes us to reduce our activity levels. Of course we can override this fatigue command for a time with stimulants or by ignoring it, etc. but once the command is obeyed and we become inactive, the fatigue disappears rather quickly. It’s a very easily learned behavior pattern; do too much, suffer from fatigue; obey the fatigue signal, rest and quickly recover.

That pattern, of course, has just been shredded in ME/CFS. For one, the onset of fatigue is delayed - and what a problem that causes. You can engage in an activity and feel fine and then collapse hours or even days later. Not only that, but because the fatigue state is so prolonged, it’s difficult to tell cause and effect. Was it that activity three days ago or was it something yesterday that made my symptoms so bad today? Or was it because I overdid it three days ago that this minor activity I did yesterday triggered more fatigue today? (Throw in the fact that ‘fatigue’ itself impairs our ability to understand complicated situations and you can see how difficult it is for patients to know – particularly when they’re symptomatic – what has caused what."