WAPO--Fatigue and the Fools

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Subject: WAPO--Fatigue and the Fools

Date: Mar 4, 2008 8:26 PM

No. The fatigue of chronic Lyme and chronic fatigue syndrome is
unmistakingly like
the worst flu, where even to raise your arm to shut off a light switch
is a major
effort. We have since found that fungi in the blood contribute to a
change in oxygen
transfer potential, that is not apparent with a hemoglobin or iron
test. The iron
and O2 are there, but the membrane potential of the red cells is
diminished.

It would be better from now on to talk to *experts* about this,
instead of the psychiatrogenic
guesser perverts. Now is the time to throw out all of these
hypotheticals about
what fatigue is about.

For the first 5 years that I had Lyme, I had a fever of 99 and swollen
glands every
single day, every single time I went to the MD about it. I would like
to know how
a hypochrondriac is so good at "psychologically induced symptoms" to
go
with the scientifically valid lab results:
http://www.actionlyme.org/JAMES_PHILLIPS_HOMEPAGE.htm

These idiots have no clue how to do science.

*Now* it has been proven that what we say is true about the Lyme
crimes by both
the CT Attorney General as well as the CDC bioweapons lab at UCal
Irvine.

No MDs were involved, and especially none of the VooDoo witch doctors
of psychiatry
who read hairballs and tealeaves:
http://www.actionlyme.org/HAIRBALLS_TEALEAVES_BONETROWING.htm

Why can't the AMA just cut the crap and admit they're clueless?


After all that we have been through all these years, these idiots
still think they
can talk about something they have never experienced and therefore
think they can
claim does not exist.

The fatigue is actually *wishing* you *have* magical powers just to do
a simple
think like reach up turn out a light. It's a *toxic* sick feeling-
like. viral;
like the flu. Perhaps that's why these shed bacterial lipopeptides
were called
"endotoxins" by CDC officer Alan Barbour and everyone who contributed
to the 1975 conference on spirochetes where it was published that it
was WELL KNOWN
that Borrelia permanently infect the brain:
http://www.actionlyme.org/ROCKEFELLER_UNIVERSITY.htm

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=373079&blobtype=pdf
'Same guy who suggested treating neurosyphilis by giving them
Borreliosis, for
the fever induction.

No ***. That's what he wrote.

If a person has never been through it, they have no right to guess
we're exaggerating
that this is caused by AN ILLNESS.

Athletes don't suddenly wimp out and become hypochondriacs:
http://www.actionlyme.org/Sports.htm

Lyme is real. You wake up every day feeling like you have a wicked
hangover and
have been hit by a truck. It's toxic-sick.

There is no mistaking it.
Since the AG and now the CDC weaponeers at UCal have demonstrated that
we were right
about everything else (Lyme being a crime and a permanent brain
infection), perhaps
there remain a few MDs out there who are not utterly brainless who
could have the
courage and the self-respect to say, "Hey, maybe these Lyme victims
are not
exaggerating about their *symptoms,* either, since they were right
about everything
else."

Kathleen M. Dickson

===============================================================


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/29/AR2008022903361_pf.html
Tired Beyond Relief
While Fatigue Afflicts Many, the Cause Can Be Maddeningly Elusive and
Treatment
Often Limited

By Jennifer Huget
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, March 4, 2008; HE01

Are you beat? Tuckered out? Dragging, flagging or just plain pooped?

Or maybe you're just tired of hearing others complain about how tired
they are.

In this era of burning candles at both ends (whoever works the longest
hours wins),
with stops only for caregiving and a few stolen winks, most everyone
gets tired
now and then. Sometimes all you need to recover is a solid night's
sleep or
an actual vacation, sans BlackBerry. But in some instances, tiredness
moves to the
next realm and becomes the soul-sucking, energy-draining condition
called fatigue.

And whereas sleepiness is generally remedied by sleep, fatigue can
maintain its
grip even when you sleep for hours on end. Fatigue makes you feel
exhausted just
thinking of paying the bills or walking the dog. It makes you want to
bury your
head under your pillow, even though you're sitting in your cubicle at
work and
there's no pillow in sight.

Kevin Ferentz, director of clinical operations in the University of
Maryland School
of Medicine's Department of Family Medicine, cites a 1994 study
showing that
fatigue is the primary reason for between 1 and 7 percent of all
medical office
visits made by adults, and another study published in 2000 that calls
fatigue the
seventh most common complaint in primary care.

But for a widespread complaint, fatigue can be frustrating to pin
down. It can be
a symptom of dozens of physical ailments, including thyroid imbalance,
cancer, depression
and autoimmune disease. It can be transient or chronic. It can be
spurred by stress
or sleep loss, a crummy diet or some medicine you take. Or it can
creep into your
life for no apparent reason.

One explanation for why fatigue is so fuzzy: There is no objective
medical definition
for the condition, says John DeLuca, editor of the 2007 research
compilation "Fatigue
as a Window to the Brain" (MIT Press, 2007). Nobody knows precisely
where "tired"
ends and "fatigued" begins; nor are experts sure how long one has to
feel
fagged before we start calling it fatigue, or even whether the
underlying source
is primarily physiological or psychological, or some combination of
the two.

DeLuca notes doctors have no concrete way to assess a patient's
fatigue. "It's
totally nonscientific. A clinician asks the question 'Are you
fatigued? Is it
mild, moderate or severe?' . . . Everybody defines it the way they
think. We
need objective ways to measure it."

While garden-variety fatigue remains ill-defined, chronic fatigue
syndrome, or CFS,
is characterized by severe, disabling fatigue lasting six months or
more that can't
be traced to a physical cause and that is accompanied by at least four
other symptoms,
including headache, joint or muscle pain, lymph-node tenderness, and
memory or concentration
difficulties. More than a million people in the United States have
CFS, according
to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

No matter how it's defined, "fatigue in the medical setting is
incredibly
important," DeLuca says. Beyond its association with myriad conditions
and
its being a side effect of many medications -- including beta blockers
and antidepressants,
which are sometimes used to treat persistent tiredness -- fatigue can
be a marker
of other serious disorders.

For example, DeLuca notes, a study published in the journal Stroke in
2002 shows
that post-stroke fatigue is a strong predictor of death. Similarly, he
says, people
who have had a heart attack and who experience fatigue as their sole
symptom of
depression are at increased risk of another heart attack.

"People think as you grow older, you fatigue more easily," he says.
"The
literature shows just the opposite, except in those who have
hypertension or diabetes.
If you don't have fatigue and you're elderly, you're in pretty good
shape. Fatigue may be a sign that something is not right."
Exhausting the Alternatives

When evaluating a patient complaining of fatigue, Ferentz, who
practices family
medicine in Baltimore, starts by taking a patient's history,
administering a
physical exam and, if appropriate, following up with blood tests or
screenings to
rule out physical causes. "[Fatigue is] almost always due to something
else,
not medical," he says. More often than not, he says, it is tied to
depression,
stress or lifestyle. Depression can be treated with antidepressant
medications,
he says; lifestyle-related causes of fatigue can be addressed through
maintaining
a balanced diet, a healthy sleep schedule and an exercise routine,
Ferentz advises.

Andrew Heyman, a clinical lecturer in integrative family medicine at
the University
of Michigan Health System, follows a similar course, first ruling out
medical causes
of fatigue and then addressing other issues. "We go back to basics,"
he
explains, "how you sleep, eat, breathe, think. What's my diet like?
Am
I exercising? Getting enough sleep? What's my general mental state? Do
I have
sense of purpose and meaning in life?"

Heyman's training in alternative and complementary medicine often
draws him
toward theories and treatments that fall outside conventional medical
wisdom, but
only after he has exhausted traditional answers. Heyman says he has
seen remarkable
improvements in patients' fatigue resulting from use of acupuncture,
meditation,
and certain herbs and supplements.

"In my experience, the cumulative effects of stress begin to present
themselves
in the 40-to-50-year age range. The body cannot sustain its capacity
to deal with
that level of stress," Heyman says. He often suggests his fatigued
patients
take such herbs as ginseng and ashwagandha, which he describes as
"adaptogenic,"
meaning they "help one to adapt to stress and change." Heyman cautions
that "herbs work like drugs and can have side effects," so folks
should
take them only under professional guidance.

Beyond treating underlying depression and correcting suspected
lifestyle imbalances,
the medical community has little to offer those complaining of
fatigue. There's
evidence that exercise can have a positive effect. Studies also
support the effectiveness
of cognitive behavior therapy, in which patients work to view their
fatigue differently
and learn to cope with it better while they change contributing
behaviors, such
as poor sleep habits. DeLuca notes that medications used to combat
fatigue, such
as phenylephrine and amphetamine, often have side effects -- including
addiction
-- and are generally prescribed only in severe cases or when
behavioral treatments
haven't helped.
Your Brain Working Overtime?

When the words "fatigue" first appeared in the medical literature in
the
late 1800s, it was described as a fact of life, not a problem. "You
just accepted
it," says DeLuca. "Then, with the Industrial Revolution, came the
notion
of 'man the machine,' which can only go so far without fatigue."

People apparently were okay with being diagnosed with fatigue when it
was considered
a purely physical phenomenon. But with rising interest in psychology
in the early
1900s, fatigue came to be seen as a symptom of psychological
disorders, which carried
a stigma.

That stigma lingers today, as some fatigue sufferers -- particularly
those diagnosed
with CFS -- bristle at the implied notion that their illness is "all
in their
heads." But British psychiatrist Simon Wessely, a leading fatigue
researcher,
maintains that looking at fatigue through the lens of psychiatry
increases our understanding
of the condition and could help us learn to treat it better.

DeLuca notes that relatively new imaging technologies are making
important contributions
to our understanding of fatigue's potential physiological roots.
Functional
MRI, for instance, allows us to monitor brain activity while a patient
is completing
a task that requires mental exertion, he says. A healthy person's fMRI
might
show activity in a "circumscribed area isolated to the left hemisphere
while
working on the task. But the diseased person is using huge areas of
both hemispheres,"
DeLuca says. "Perhaps the objective measure is not the behavior but
the brain
activity. This is new.

"My hypothesis is that medical fatigue may be the extra cerebral
effort that
it takes to perform at the same level [as a healthy person]. Maybe the
brain [of
the fatigued person] is working harder, needs more resources."

For now, though, DeLuca says, "there are no [objective] criteria, so
there
can be no medical treatment. There is no way to distinguish between
fatigue resulting
from a cardiac condition and that associated with a psychological
condition. We
call it fatigue, but maybe there need to be separate categories. Some
suggest we
need to eliminate the term and start over." ¿

Jennifer Huget is a frequent contributor to Health.
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