What is CFS?

Many of you may be wondering... what exactly is CFS?

That’s why I wanted to share this article to talk all about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (also known as CFS/ME), as I wanted to give you some background about what I discuss in greater depth in my new book “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Your Route to Recovery” and how I work with clients in my clinical practise. If you’d rather watch a video over on Instagram where I talk all about it, click here.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or ME (aka myalgic encephalomyelitis) is a chronic condition which affects 250,000 people in the UK alone, with an estimated 17-24 million people worldwide affected.

It affects twice as many women as men and can affect any age group, including children and adolescents.

The illness is known to affect multiple bodily systems including the nervous, neuroendocrine, immune and digestive systems, with evidence that there is a dysregulation between them, helping to explain the complex picture of symptoms seen in the illness.

Symptoms tend to adopt a fluctuating relapsing and remitting pattern, which can look different from one sufferer to the next.

… and while there is some diversity in the symptoms experienced, the symptom that is broadly shared by the majority of CFS patients is called ‘post-exertional malaise’ (or PEM), which I refer to as ‘payback’.

The symptoms of CFS include:

• Fatigue

• Post-exertional malaise (PEM) – which is feeling fatigue or symptoms worsening following any form of exercise, activity or exertion.

• Cognitive impairment, including brain fog, memory problems and lapses in concentration

• Painful muscles and joints (myalgia)

• Gastrointestinal symptoms, such as those common in IBS

• Stress-related symptoms (anxiety, panic, and difficulties tolerating stress)

• Food and alcohol intolerance

• Increased sensitivity to chemicals, smells, temperatures, sounds or light

• Heart palpitations

• Vertigo and dizziness

• Nausea

• Orthostatic intolerance (where symptoms become worse upon standing)

• Repeated flu-like symptoms (such as malaise, fever, and recurrent sore throats)

As you can see – it’s a long list and is really more debilitating than just ‘feeling tired all the time!’

Note: you do not need to have all of these symptoms to have CFS – (although, one of the key defining features is post-exertional malaise).

CFS is a diagnosis of exclusion, which means we do not have a medical test just yet to help identify if you have it (in the UK, NICE clinical guidelines have set out criteria to help make the diagnosis, which I talk more about in my book).

To give a little background around the naming of this condition, let’s first take a closer look at ME, or “myalgic encephalomyelitis” with a breakdown of its name:

- My – which is a shortnered form of myo, which means muscle

- Algic – the adjective form of algia, which means pain

- Encephalo – meaning brain

- Myel – meaning spinal cord

- And ‘itis’ – meaning inflammation

Therefore, ME essentially refers to muscle pain and inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, with the term being introduced by the Lancet after one of the first outbreaks of the illness at the Royal Free Hospital in London, back in 1955.

However, this term is not a pathologically-proven explanation for what happens in the body in this illness, yet somehow we are still left with this long and confusing name.

Around 30 years later, ME was given another label, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) – a term that caused a lot of outrage in the patient community because it was thought to trivialise the level of suffering seen in the illness. I would be inclined to agree!

I often say that CFS is a little like saying that somebody with Alzheimer’s disease has chronic forgetfulness syndrome – it completely devalues the debilitating nature of the patient’s experience.

Back in the 1980’s the illness was also defined as ‘yuppie flu’, which made it sound like some fashionable form of hypochondria due to its prevalence among 20- to 40-year-old professionals. Then the terms post-viral syndrome, adrenal fatigue and burnout also became rife in this arena.

Now, it’s also important to highlight that some healthcare professionals do categorise ME as a separate illness to CFS, although the vast majority of medical literature consider the two to be synonymous.

And therefore, despite my qualms about the names we have for this condition, CFS is the term I use for the time being, since it is one of the most widely used in the medical literature for now.

In my clinic, I’m here to support you on your recovery journey with CFS to uplevel your health and wellbeing using functional medicine approaches.