Chronique fatigue

Hi,

I have a question:

I have the symptoms of chronique fatigue syndrome. Exhausted Everyday, a bit dizzy feeling and light is very tough on my eyes.

But i wonder, i dont Just have chronique fatigue. Like some here. I have chronique pain in upper back, trapezius, shoulder, arm. And whenever i go behind pc/mobile the pain gets worse and worse and my fatigue follows.

Whenever i stop using pc/mobile the pain gets less every day, but never completely subsides. And the fatigue also goes go a much better level, where it is 80% less.

So would this still be tms then?

And isnt it the case that the brain generates fatigue when you are damaged and with fatigue forcing you to rest? Its all so logical that i start to doubt if i am structurally damaged with RSI from pc etc. :'(

 

According to sports physiologist Timothy Noakes, the brain does not wait to generate fatigue until "when you are damaged." He says the brain generates fatigue BEFORE physical damage occurs in order to induce you to rest and thereby avoid any physical damage. There is an evolutionary explanation for this. Eons ago, those humans whose brains did not generate pain until physical damage occurred ultimately did not survive while those whose brains generated fatigue before damage occurred did survive and became our ancestors.

As a sports physiologist, Noakes helps athletes to improve their performance by realizing that the onset of fatigue does not mean they are damaging their bodies. But Noakes is also interested in chronic fatigue syndrome. Here, he says, the brain misperceives how fatigued the body is. Stated differently, the safety buffer between fatigue and physical damage gets too wide. The brain creates fatigue WAY BEFORE physical damage occurs. The problem, then, is to find a way to shrink the size of the overly protective buffer between fatigue and tissue damage.

Dr. Peter Denton White in London has conducted clinical trials that test ways to shrink the buffer, culminating in a large 5-year randomized controlled trial that was published in the prestigious medical journal Lancet. In that study, patients were divided into four groups. The control group got conventional medical treatment, consisting of advice to avoid extreme activity plus drugs as needed for pain, depression, or insomnia. The second group got treatmemt he called "pacing," consisting of advice to pay attention to their body and be careful not to push themselves to the point of making themselves worse. The third group got cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The forth group got graded exercise therapy (GET), which consisted of ultra gradually increasing their activity bit by bit. The CBT and GET groups did significantly better than the other two groups. You can read about the results of the study in more detail from White himself at this link:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/30/me-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-patients-suffer-put-off-treatments-our-research (If my team’s research on ME is rejected, the patients will suffer | Peter White)

There is good news in the work of Noakes and White in that it reinforces two of Dr. Sarno's twelve daily remainders with regard to chronic fatigue syndrome. The seventh reminder is that "physical activity is not dangerous." The eighth one is that "I must resume all normal physical activity." The GET group in White's study would seem to indicate, in the interest of an abundance of caution, that a good way to resume normal activity would be to do it gradually.

Beyond chronic fatigue syndrome, my guess is that your brain is generating chronic pain because your protect-by-pain buffer, like your protect-by-fatigue buffer, is way too large and you are getting pain without any physical damage or real threat of it--in other words it is TMS.

 

Alright thanks for your post. That is good news. But if it generates fatigue (and pain?) before damage, doesn't it mean i should stop because if i continue i Will get damaged. I have had it Both for 5 years but whenever IT got too much i quit activity for 1-2 weeks. And it got a bit better. Once stopped 10 weeks and fatigue was gone but pain persisted from An 8 to a 3-4.

Anyway, the article suggests Activity over pausing Activity. That is interesting, though my pain only gets worse.

I even remember 7 years ago when IT all started behind pc i quit after 2 weeks when pain and fatigue got too much. I went on vacation 2 weeks and when i got back i was fatigue and pain free. The. After 3-4 days of pc use IT was back and got worse and worse again.

 

No. Here is what Drs. Schubiner and Abbass wrote in Hidden from View: A Clinician's Guide to Psychophysiologic Disorders p. 10: "Dr. Noakes explained why well-trained athletes 'hit the wall' in endurance events: when they get pain and fatigue during a race, their brain is sounding an alarm warning them that they will run out of energy soon . . . . Noakes calls this the central governor function of the brain and explains that athletes must ignore these warning signals in order to finish the race, recognizing that there is no actual danger of physical harm." (I bolded the last part of the quotation because that is the crucial point.)

For these trained athletes, who obviously do not have chronic fatigue syndrome, there is a buffer between the onset of pain and reaching the threshold at which tissue damage will occur. They can keep running without suffering any physical harm. For people with chronic fatigue syndrome, Noakes says the brain misperceives how fatigued the body is. It therefore creates fatigue way too soon, making the protective buffer between the onset of fatigue and reaching the threshold of tissue damage way too large. Physical harm is not close to being imminent.

Now I am going to be blunt in an effort to nudge you in the right direction if my guess about your pain is right. Dr. Sarno repeatedly said that to succeed with the TMS approach, a person must understand and accept that his or her pain is psychological, not structural. Sarno did a telephone interview with prospective patients to screen out those he did not think could accept that. Dr. Schubiner does not do telephone screening, but he stresses in Hidden from View that it is essential for a clinician to develop a relationship of trust with the patient. Why would that be the case? I think it is because if the patient trusts the clinician, then as the clinician points out various reasons to conclude the pain is psychological, not structural, the patient will fully accept that diagnosis. I don't think Steve Ozanich (a Sarno disciple and author of The Great Pain Deception book) does a screening interview either, but he has said that when a client claims he accepts that his back pain is psychological, not structural, he can test whether the client is fooling himself by asking him to bend down and touch his toes. If the client says something like "that might hurt my back," this tells him the client does not really accept that his pain isn't structural and therefore he is not ready to heal. I firmly believe, based on my own experience in successfully overcoming various forms of TMS, that as long as a person thinks his or her pain might be an indicator of present or imminent tissue damage, that person will not succeed with the TMS approach, at least not over the long term and not to the extent of being pain free (as distinguished from "I'm X% better but I can't get rid of the rest of my pain").