Here's Why

CFS News condensate 8/3/04

There has been a few news reports about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome recently, most of them full of distracting noise and difficult to find content. So here is my condensation of the stories on the web this week: "Fatigued teens need early treatment":http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1058165.htm "Gill says her research reinforced that fatigue was really the chronic symptom of CFS. " So the chonic symptom of "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" is actually fatigue? How insightful! "Dr Anna Gill from "Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick":http://www.sch.edu.au/, and colleagues published their results in the latest issue of the journal "Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine":http://www.archpediatrics.com/. " Naturally the Journal only allows subscribers to read the article online. "Treatment is really exercise, keeping going with school, trying not to let it overtake your life, and trying to keep going and work through it." So the "treatment" is to ignore what your body is telling you and just grin and bear it. I'm so glad that Dr Anna Gill is on the case. How do I get paid to tell sick people to just shut up? "Diagnosing Chronic Fatigue? Check For Sinusitis":http://chronicfatigue.about.com/b/a/062497.htm Alexander C. Chester, M.D., clinical professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center has finally noticed that most of us with CFS also have sinus problems, and 10% of all sinusitis sufferers also suffer pain and fatigue. He figures there may be a sinus cause to chronic exhaustion and pain symptoms. His new plan is to run some trials to find out if sinus treatments can help alleviate pain and fatigue. "Every FMS/CFS patient should know both their NKC number and activity":http://chronicfatigue.about.com/b/a/061451.htm Studies show that about half of CFS/Fibromyalgia suffers have low natural killer cell numbers. Low killer cell activity is associated with more infections and developing cancer. Dr Holtorf says the levels should be monitored in CFS/FMS patients and boosted with drugs if its found to be low. This would help fight infection and reduce the chance of developing cancers. "Study on Pyridostigmine":http://chronicfatigue.about.com/b/a/071129.htm The drug pyridostigmine helps symptoms of weakness and fatigue in patients who are positive for Epstein-Barr Virus. This suggests that the symptoms are caused in part by problems with the nervous system chemical acetylcholine .

About the author: Ian Woolf lives in Sydney, has a degree in Applied Science, worked as a solar astronomer, software engineer, systems programmer, webmaster, research assistant, Cisco CCNA tutor, Physics laboratory demonstrator, Computational Theory lecturer, and subject coordinator; while changing his career to freelance writing and broadcasting. Listen to Ian on the Diffusion radio science show on radio 2SER 107.3FM Monday at 6:30pm in Sydney or streaming audio on www.2ser.com, or listen to the Diffusion podcasts. You should follow me on twitter, here

Posted by iwoolf at March 8, 2004 5:05 PM | TrackBack