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I think conditioning medical students to race other medical students to label health problems quickly- efectively turning medical school into a sleep deprived g

I think conditioning medical students to race other medical students to label health problems quickly- efectively turning medical school into a sleep deprived game of trivial pursuit for competitive, high IQ, mentally resilient, energetic people - only prepares those people to heal simple medical conditions involving 1 or 2 body systems. This functionality is becoming largely replaceble by llm’s who are also competent at that level of system complexity. The leading medical solution for CFS is pacing and a web link. Chatgpt could do that. Once you are past a certain level of system complexity - root cause analysis becomes useless as changing one part of the system affects the other parts unpredictably. I am diagnosed with CFS. Didn’t seek the diagnosis, denied it initially which is not the norm.I now pretend I don’t have it as that is the best way to cure it. But beating it was hell as you literally get given an A4 sheet of paper explaining the condition when diagnosed. And your brain is exhausted after reading the sheet. But that is all you have. So you are supposed to take that A4 sheet of paper and troubleshoot your way out of the condition when the instructions on the A4 sheet don’t even work. The best way I can describe it is you find yourself in a shame riddled labyrinth, your brain doesn’t work, you are tired and in pain and you are told to accept your new normal. There are ways out of the labyrinth. A doctor doesn’t have the map though. The best way to describe chronic fatigue is extreme sensitivity to over exertion. You walk to the mailbox and 24 to 72 hours later your body reacts like you’ve run the boston marathon and the mind reacts like you’ve just pulled an all nighter to manually sort 7 tabs of 3 columns and 10,000 rows of a spreadsheet on a 17 inch monitor under time pressure while hung over, 3 days into the flu in order to resurrect hitler. CFS exhaustion and brain fog can get triggered by any stress response. And it kicks in 24 to 72 hours after stress exposure. The Doc says pacing and mindfullness will save you. Except it won’t. The body can get stuck in unhealthy stable states. I always encourage people to look at the roche biochemistry chart (with about the same success rate as treatment plans for CFS) to understand that the body can be hypersensitive to overexertion (mental or physical) for an infinite number of combinations. Fortunately there are a quite a number of things that you can do to escape the labyrinth. - Explain to anyone that cares that there is a medical field dedicated to assessing levels of debilitation and that cfs is as debilitating as cancer. (Very few people care) - get stable accommodation. - Get a comfortable supportive bed to convalesce in. - Eat a diet that minimises inflammation - deeply boiled veges, rice, potatoe or sweet potatoe, grass/algal fed free range protein, olive oil. Maintain steady blood sugar. - Body strength train. - Sort out a vitamin and supplement regime with a genetic analysis. - Take an anger management course to understand the anger of others. -Understand pain - the curable app on chronic pain management is highly beneficial. - Learn to forgive. Resentment ruins health. - Get a career you are capable of. Aim low. - Get regular physical activity. - Perform improvisational comedy to condition the mind to cope with an onslaught of public social pressure. - Pretend you don’t have chronic fatigue syndrome. What doctors get wrong ( it is hard for them to comprehend the condition as most aren’t susceptible as they were tough enough to get through medical school) is that chronic avoidance is the right strategy until your body can cope with stress without fatiguing. It isn’t all in your head. I’d say ability to sideplank and neck strength are probably two of the most important recovery metrics. Drs don’t understand the psycho-somatic balance of the illness. There is a psychological component but it is a minor component and is driven by physical constraints. The sad thing is that cfs is quite treatable but the medical profession says pacing and mindfulness is all one needs to cure something that is as debilitating as cancer. You don’t need to be mindful to beat chronic fatigue syndrome. I think sarcasm is more beneficial when coping with a bleak future. And I really like and admire Doctors - it’s not their fault that their system is terrible at creating healing treatment plans for complex chronic health conditions.

GordonS 3y ago
I have CFS too, going on 8 years now. Small fibre neuropathy in my limbs too. Aside from pain management (opioids, ketamine, cannabis), I haven't found anything else to be helpful, and pacing was the opposite of helpful. You mentioned strength training... how is that possible? I don't know about you, but I have a constant, lactic acid-like burning sensation in my arms, which becomes much worse upon exertion - for example, if I life a kettle full of water, my arm is burning with a strong need to put it down within a few seconds.
- smearth 3y ago
  Because the best way to think about the syndrome is that you are a really terrible athlete. I find it a healthy way to reframe what I’m dealing with. I laughed at Eric the Eel, he’s laghing at me taking out the rubbish now. They say athleticism is a reduction in recovery period. Combine this with the fact the brain burns loads of energy and certain aspects of the brain uses things like the inner ear and vagal nerves and lateral light receptors as specialised instrumentation to save processing power when coordinating one’s balance. (I swear one day they will figure out lying down in the dark convalescing can affect the potassium concentration of your inner ear to the point you get stuck in fatigue cycle but any how). Keeping your head steady while walking saves mental energy. A stronger thoracic spine and neck keeps your head steady for longer with out fatiguing the muscles or the mind. Everytime you overtrain there is a inflammatory cascade that goes with the overtraining. Building up physical body strength is the easiest way to generate athleticism. Once you can recover without fatigue you don’t have chronic fatigue. I also think stabilising the thoracic area helps get a neurogenesis/cellular regenerationtype response going in the spinal cord that was ravaged by a viral load. Basically if someone is strong enough to recover from an illness they recover. If they aren’t they don’t. Hunching over screens for long periods with only stress holding you up before convalescing is probably the worst preparation for cfs. Accounting is the worst profession for it. Their low autonomy detailed complex work that is surveyed in 6 minute intervals so they have a large forced cognitive loads for a long time periods combined with minimal physical exertion. It is an anti-athletic career for a lots of people who struggle with the cognitive load. But the docs are also right anout a psychological component - whinging doesn’t help, there is a grit component to getting better. There is also lots of overtraining while you get better which is helpful to understand. Recovery is 3 steps forward 1 step back. (My whole point is help the poor person in the brainfog choose the next best recovery step and I also understand it isn’t Drs fault they haven’t the tools to do it because there is no profit motive to create the recovery system). Exercise physiologists are really helpful for avoiding overtraining but I also think you are better taking some overtraining hits initially on the strength training side if you aren’t wealthy to get the body to the point that it escapes can escape some of the fatigue. Strength train to at least the point of sideplanks and throw in lots of propioception band balance exercises. And remember there is 24 to 72 hour delay to overtraining. Docs do have extreme amounts of grit as do successful accountants. They are admirable but also lucky, their dopamine systems are genetically robust. I started strength training with a fragmented swimmers stretch. 1 limb at a time. The good thing about body strength training is you see progress which is important for hope. Which is another important aspect of recovery and dopamine generation. I couldn’t sit and work for more than 20 minutes for about 3 years. I tried to design my own cheap reclining chair so I could lie back and stare at a screen for long enough to earn some money. The other name for cfs is myalgicencephalomyelitis which means inflammation of the thoracic spine up to the brain. Really you are trying to get the body into a band that it can operate comfortably without causing inflammation to the point that you can earn a living. And being physically strong helps with that. Exercising your arms will aggravate your thoracic spine. I guess I’m saying train for thoracic and cervical stability (strength) accepting some overtraining initially because it is really hard to judge what is overtraining when you are weak. You have to be really patient. 3 steps forward one step back. If you can only hold a kettle bell for a few seconds then don’t. Just work on swimmers stretches and banded propioception and neck and spine strengthening exercises, you will easily overdo it trust me. Try not to. Physios and exercise physiologists deal with alot of overtrained virally unlucky athletes and are probably your best source of guidance on this facet of recovery.

GordonS 3y ago

I have CFS too, going on 8 years now. Small fibre neuropathy in my limbs too. Aside from pain management (opioids, ketamine, cannabis), I haven't found anything else to be helpful, and pacing was the opposite of helpful. You mentioned strength training... how is that possible? I don't know about you, but I have a constant, lactic acid-like burning sensation in my arms, which becomes much worse upon exertion - for example, if I life a kettle full of water, my arm is burning with a strong need to put it down within a few seconds.

smearth 3y ago
Because the best way to think about the syndrome is that you are a really terrible athlete. I find it a healthy way to reframe what I’m dealing with. I laughed at Eric the Eel, he’s laghing at me taking out the rubbish now. They say athleticism is a reduction in recovery period. Combine this with the fact the brain burns loads of energy and certain aspects of the brain uses things like the inner ear and vagal nerves and lateral light receptors as specialised instrumentation to save processing power when coordinating one’s balance. (I swear one day they will figure out lying down in the dark convalescing can affect the potassium concentration of your inner ear to the point you get stuck in fatigue cycle but any how). Keeping your head steady while walking saves mental energy. A stronger thoracic spine and neck keeps your head steady for longer with out fatiguing the muscles or the mind. Everytime you overtrain there is a inflammatory cascade that goes with the overtraining. Building up physical body strength is the easiest way to generate athleticism. Once you can recover without fatigue you don’t have chronic fatigue. I also think stabilising the thoracic area helps get a neurogenesis/cellular regenerationtype response going in the spinal cord that was ravaged by a viral load. Basically if someone is strong enough to recover from an illness they recover. If they aren’t they don’t. Hunching over screens for long periods with only stress holding you up before convalescing is probably the worst preparation for cfs. Accounting is the worst profession for it. Their low autonomy detailed complex work that is surveyed in 6 minute intervals so they have a large forced cognitive loads for a long time periods combined with minimal physical exertion. It is an anti-athletic career for a lots of people who struggle with the cognitive load. But the docs are also right anout a psychological component - whinging doesn’t help, there is a grit component to getting better. There is also lots of overtraining while you get better which is helpful to understand. Recovery is 3 steps forward 1 step back. (My whole point is help the poor person in the brainfog choose the next best recovery step and I also understand it isn’t Drs fault they haven’t the tools to do it because there is no profit motive to create the recovery system). Exercise physiologists are really helpful for avoiding overtraining but I also think you are better taking some overtraining hits initially on the strength training side if you aren’t wealthy to get the body to the point that it escapes can escape some of the fatigue. Strength train to at least the point of sideplanks and throw in lots of propioception band balance exercises. And remember there is 24 to 72 hour delay to overtraining. Docs do have extreme amounts of grit as do successful accountants. They are admirable but also lucky, their dopamine systems are genetically robust. I started strength training with a fragmented swimmers stretch. 1 limb at a time. The good thing about body strength training is you see progress which is important for hope. Which is another important aspect of recovery and dopamine generation. I couldn’t sit and work for more than 20 minutes for about 3 years. I tried to design my own cheap reclining chair so I could lie back and stare at a screen for long enough to earn some money. The other name for cfs is myalgicencephalomyelitis which means inflammation of the thoracic spine up to the brain. Really you are trying to get the body into a band that it can operate comfortably without causing inflammation to the point that you can earn a living. And being physically strong helps with that. Exercising your arms will aggravate your thoracic spine. I guess I’m saying train for thoracic and cervical stability (strength) accepting some overtraining initially because it is really hard to judge what is overtraining when you are weak. You have to be really patient. 3 steps forward one step back. If you can only hold a kettle bell for a few seconds then don’t. Just work on swimmers stretches and banded propioception and neck and spine strengthening exercises, you will easily overdo it trust me. Try not to. Physios and exercise physiologists deal with alot of overtrained virally unlucky athletes and are probably your best source of guidance on this facet of recovery.