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ME

ME / CFS

“We are so tired, my heart and I,

Of all things here beneath the sky,

Only one thing would please us best,

Endless, unfathomable rest…”

Mathilde Blind

 

ME (Myalgic Encephalomyopathy) or CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) is an illness that is presently based upon a consensus definition. Although there are some measurable and consistent biological abnormalities which accompany the symptoms, we still have no diagnostic markers to confirm a definitive disease process.

From the start, ME/CFS plays havoc with the confidence of both clinician and patient. The sudden appearance of such a vast array of frightening symptoms immediately brings to mind serious conditions such as systemic infections, auto-immune diseases and cancer. Afterwards, when the whole process has evolved into an overwhelming fatigue with no clear-cut physical or emotional source, the stage is set for medical mayhem and usually a tragic disregard for the patient’s suffering.

The fact is, while researchers argue about the name and status of this modern day illness, hundreds of people succumb to this elusive illness daily. It causes an ongoing disability comparable to major depression, advanced diabetes, multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease. In the USA, four out of every one thousand people are diagnosed with full blown ME/CFS, and there is the possibility that only 20% of sufferers are actually diagnosed as such. To make things worse, ME/CFS would seem to select the younger, more creative and active members of society.

The illness has an unmistakable relationship with stress and modern lifestyle. It relates to the overstimulation, pollution and disregard for biological rhythms so typical of our present indoor and night time life style. It also tries to protect its sufferer from the foreign identities and excessive adaptation to which the more complying members of modern society so easily surrender. It also does not kill, nor does it respect the chemotherapeutic and surgical accomplishments of modern medicine. Is it a slow evolutional adaptation to the modern world?

 

Read more and decide if you are a candidate for this ambiguous guardian of future humanity:

What is ME/CFS.

What happens when we have ME/CFS.

What can be done about ME/CFS.

Living with ME/CFS.

Recent research on the cause of ME/CFS.

The medical criteria for ME/CFS.

The treatment of ME/CFS.

References used in ME articles.
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Modern diseases

MODERN DISEASES

“We are all struggling; none of us has gone far. Let your arrogance go and look around inside.”

(Robert Bly’s reinterpretation of the Sufi poet Kabir)

 

We live in a world where disease has become something we have to prevent at all cost. To be ill is a curse brought upon ourselves for not heeding the rules of a healthy lifestyle; a sign of biological or psychological weakness. Health has become a tedious obedience. Little wonder that we all try so hard to avoid being ill. Worse, once we have a proven illness, now called a disease, we entirely surrender our well-being to modern technology and outer resources.

Look around inside…

It is obvious that we usually devote as little time as possible to understanding the essence of an illness, and in doing this we actually deny our body its most immediate communication to our conscious world. By renouncing illness, we also forgo a great social and moral mirror to our modern lifestyle. We see our heart attacks as little more than the result of fat molecules in a Big Mac, or the doctor’s inability to produce the right medication. We wait impatiently with our depression and autism for a wonder cure, and devour every morsel of fresh research into yet another toxic substance that we could remove from our pristinely ordered lives.

Modern-day diseases are directly connected to this inability to respect the inner adaptation processes of our biological system. The fragmented pieces of outer information that we use to define and manage modern illness overlook all the integrating symbolic structures, which maintain coherent biological adaptation. In other words, we steer clear of the real reasons for our heart attacks, diabetes, depression, suicidal impulses, and fatigue and prefer to handle our system with obsessive ‘wants’ and taboos. While modern affluent society presents us with the safest world since the beginning of humanity, we are relentlessly driven towards destroying ourselves from the inside.

Defend or deny…

Medication and lifestyle adjustment will often fail if not supported by a conscious coherent image of our inner adaptation strategies. We need to find a way to identify the inner and outer abuses that our system warns about when it makes us ill. At MOMO-health, we simplify the complex network of adaptation to a modern lifestyle by using an integrated model based upon one spectrum of neuro-immune adaptation. The two opposing endpoint conditions are chronic fatigue syndrome and metabolic syndrome (with atherosclerosis, diabetes and high blood pressure). Although few people have either of these syndromes in a pure form, it is common for patients to present a pattern that resembles one more closely than the other.

On the symbolic ‘left side‘ of the spectrum, we place those patients whom we call the ‘perfectors’. People who are primarily motivated by an inner need for perfectionism often force their body to adapt to the multifaceted outer world with such flexibility that they sacrifice their own stability. This threatens the body’s inner identity to such an extent that the immune system passionately defends against the slightest interchange between inside and outside. The result is a body wrought with unstable, excessive immune and hormonal responses, wasting so much energy in the inner world that sufferers become incapable of interacting with the outer world. Allergies, autism, autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, Parkinson’s disease and certain forms of depression fall in this half of the spectrum.

On the symbolic ‘right side‘ of the spectrum, we see the ‘effectors’. These are people whose system adapts by forbidding or denying all destabilising influences to ensure inner control and emotionally cost-effective outcomes in the outer world. Their system interacts according to selected aspects of their identity, often based upon benchmark outer expectations. Although this guarantees better adjustment to the outer world, it results in a highly discriminating immune system, which adapts via insensitivity to the needs of the inner world and its high energy expenditure. The conditions that relate to this side of the spectrum are, for example, metabolic syndrome (associated with diabetes, heart attacks and high blood pressure), Alzheimer’s disease, hostile depression and alcoholism.

Most modern research and general health advice is geared towards the metabolic syndrome side of the spectrum because of its strong relationship with fatal conditions such as heart attacks and strokes. However, chronic fatigue syndrome and its associated conditions affect productivity in a younger population and are especially important now that we need to create a less toxic outer world for the younger generations.

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Metabolic syndrome (Syndrome X)

METABOLIC SYNDROME

“Control your destiny or somebody else will.”

Jack Welsh

 

Metabolic syndrome (Syndrome X) is a cluster of conditions, which relates to the modern tendency for vascular abnormalities and thus the likelihood of eventually suffering a heart attack or stroke. No other medical concept gets more research time and funding and its prevention is presented in both professional and lay media as the ultimate goal of modern medicine.

This syndrome and its associated symptoms are therefore constantly in the back of everybody’s mind: “Do I eat the right food?”, “I should do more exercise…”, “It’s time for a medical check-up” … Of course, any ‘medical check up’ is in any case about metabolic syndrome in the mind of the doctor as well as the insurance broker. A Google search of metabolic syndrome comes up with 11 million results in 0.17 seconds. This preoccupation with metabolic syndrome has considerable consequences in medicine, economy and social society. Most pharmaceutical companies, private hospitals and lately also many food suppliers rely for their survival on metabolic syndrome. We eat, exercise and shape our bodies according to the prescriptions for metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome defines modern society.

However, controversy is never far behind where it comes to this trendsetting blundering in our body’s organisation. More and more facets of inner metabolic organisation, organ systems such as the immune system and, most of all, of our mental processes are now working their way into the loosely woven network. In its traditional form, which connects diabetes, high blood pressure and central obesity to damage in blood vessels, stroke and heart disease, the diagnosis of metabolic syndrome rests upon measurement of separate factors that seemingly have no logical connection. Blood sugar, midline measurement, weight, blood pressure and proteins that relate to inflammation blend together in an abstract mosaic of medical diagnosis. Even when seen as insulin resistance – where the body becomes insensitive to insulin, a hormone that is linked to our inner energy supply and the process of aging – it is not easy to find an integrated model for the explanation of metabolic syndrome.

Up to 30% of people in Western society suffer from this malfunctioning in their metabolic adaptation system. Therefore, while researchers squabble about the true nature and explanation of metabolic syndrome, it is crucial to find a bio-dynamic interpretation of the association between the syndrome and a modern life style. Is it a mistaken defence originating in the immune system or a stubborn habituation in order to stay in control of a constantly shifting outer world?

 

Read more and decide how this highly fashionable disease pattern and its symbolic representation relate to you:

What is MX/Metabolic Syndrome.

What happens when we have MX/Metabolic Syndrome. 

What can be done about MX/Metabolic Syndrome. 

Living with MX/Metabolic Syndrome.