chronic fatigue syndrome

Devanshi Gupta, MD, and John Harney, MD, neurologists at Dallas Neurological Associates, Richardson, Texas, paper, reviewed 48 patients who underwent skin biopsy for small fiber neuropathy. 30 patients had a painful condition, such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain syndrome or some combination of the above. Of these, 13 (43%) had evidence of small fiber neuropathy

First get a good evaluation to rule out underlying causes for your fatigue. A complete history and physical along with appropriate tests, including CBC,Chem, thyroid tests including thyroid antibodies,CPK,RF,ANA, Parvo, EBV, and Lyme. Depending on your history and risk factors additional studies may be ordered. Treatment starts with an accurate diagnosis.

Poor sleep, depression, chronic viral illness, autoimmune diseases, anemia, all can cause this. The medication I favour for symptomatic relief is Provigil or Nuvigil.

This is multifactorial and requires a CSI like approach for diagnosis and treatment. Treatment should focus on adequate sleep patterns, hormone balance, treatment of chronic infections, rethinking nutrition and excercise.

Medically unexplaned fatigue for over 6 months not relieved by rest and interfering with normal activities plus 4 or more of the following: Impared memory/concentration sore throat tender neck or axillary lymph nodes muscle pain multijoint pain new headaches unrefreshing sleep postexertion malaise.

You have several options and these options are dependent on whether one can find an underlying cause for the fatigue. If your fatigue is associated with major sleep problems, then a sleep study may be very helpful as one of the first steps.

In my experience a major cause of chronic fatigue is chronic unrefreshing sleep due to chronic pain. Sufferers fail to enter the deeper stages of sleep and in the morning feel as if they haven't slept. The cause of pain generation needs to be discovered and corrected.

These are separate conditions and one does not protect you from having the other. In fact, if you think about it - If an individual is being driven by the distractability and restlessness of ADHD it is painful to imagine how much worse the chronic fatigue would be. Both can be difficult to treat effectively and treatment for one may make the other worse. It's not an easy presentation for a doctor.

This is multifactorial and requires a CSI like approach for diagnosis and treatment. Treatment should focus on adequate sleep patterns, hormone balance, treatment of chronic infections, rethinking nutrition and excercise.

Tests are only run to see if another condition which is treatable is causing your fatigue. There is no test for CFS.