First, what is it?

Many more people have chronic fatigue, which is the symptom of being exhausted all the time, than have chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) which is the illness of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).

This is because fatigue can be a symptom of many, many other conditions, and can be heavily influenced by lifestyle factors too.

A lot of the advice for dealing with chronic fatigue is often the same in both cases, but some will be different, because for example:

• If your fatigue is from some other condition, that condition probably impacts what lifestyle factors you are (and are not) able to change, too
• If your fatigue is from lifestyle factors, that hopefully means you can change those and enjoy less fatigue…
  • But if it’s not from lifestyle factors, as in ME/CFS, then advice to “exercise more” etc is not going to help so much.

There are ways to know the difference though:

Check out: Do You Have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

The chronic disease pipeline

While it had been strongly suspected that COVID infection could lead to CFS, with long COVID having chronic fatigue as one of its characteristic symptoms, a research team led by Dr. Suzanne Vernon has now established the nature of the relationship.

It was a large (n=13,224) longitudinal observational cohort study of people with no pre-existing ME/CFS, grouped according to their COVID infection status:

1. acute infected, enrolled within 30 days of infection or enrolled as uninfected who became infected (n=4,515)
2. post-acute infected, enrolled greater than 30 days after infection (n=7,270)
3. uninfected (n=1,439).

(to be clear, that last means “never infected”, or else they would be in group 2)

Note: people who had COVID and were hospitalized for it were excluded from the study, so this risk is the risk represented by even just more “moderate” infections.

What they found:

❝The proportion of all RECOVER-Adult participants that met criteria for ME/CFS following SARS-CoV-2 infection was 4.5% (531 of 11,785) compared to 0.6% (9 of 1439) in uninfected participants.❞

There are then different numbers if we look per 100 person-years, as the study also did—in which case, we get a re-modelled increase in risk of 5x instead of 7.5x, but a) that’s still not good b) the “here-and-now” figures of 4.5% vs 0.6% are also relevant.

Read in full: Incidence and Prevalence of Post-COVID-19 Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: A Report from the Observational RECOVER-Adult Study

The killer nobody wants to talk about anymore

Of course, as we all know the pandemic is over, because politicians declared it so, which is very reassuring.

Nevertheless, COVID is currently the still 4th leading cause of death in the US, placing it higher than stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and others.

See also: Emergency or Not, Covid Is Still Killing People. Here’s What Doctors Advise to Stay Safe

So, while it’s very good to take care of our hearts, brains, blood sugars, and so forth, let’s at the very least continue to keep on top of our vaccinations, avoid enclosed crowded spaces where possible, etc.

And for extra boosts to one’s chances: Why Some People Get Sick More (And How To Not Be One Of Them)

What if I do get (or already have) long COVID and/or ME/CFS?

Well, that is definitely going to suck, but there are still some things that can be done.

Here’s a big one: How To Eat To Beat Chronic Fatigue ← this will not, of course, cure you, but it’s a way of getting maximum nutrition for minimum effort, given that for someone with chronic fatigue, effort is a very finite resource that must be used sparingly

Finally, here are some further resources:

Support For Long COVID & Chronic Fatigue

Take care!

How To Grow New Brain Cells (At Any Age)

It was long believed that brain growth could not occur later in life, due to expending our innate stock of pluripotent stem cells. However, this was mostly based on rodent studies.

Rodent studies are often used for brain research, because it’s difficult to find human volunteers willing to have their brains sliced thinly (so that the cells can be viewed under a microscope) at the end of the study.

However, neurobiologist Dr. Maura Boldrini led a team that did a lot of research by means of autopsies on the hippocampi of (previously) healthy individuals ranging in age from 14 to 79.

What she found is that while indeed the younger subjects did predictably have more young brain cells (neural progenitors and immature neurons), even the oldest subject, at the age of 79, had been producing new brain cells up until death.

Read her landmark study: Human Hippocampal Neurogenesis Persists throughout Aging

There was briefly a flurry of news articles about a study by Dr. Shawn Sorrels that refuted this, however, it later came to light that Dr. Sorrels had accidentally destroyed his own evidence during the cell-fixing process—these things happen; it’s just unfortunate the mistake was not picked up until after publication.

A later study by a Dr. Elena Moreno-Jiménez fixed this flaw by using a shorter fixation time for the cell samples they wanted to look at, and found that there were tens of thousands of newly-made brain cells in samples from adults ranging from 43 to 87.

Now, there was still a difference: the samples from the youngest adult had 30% more newly-made braincells than the 87-year-old, but given that previous science thought brain cell generation stopped in childhood, the fact that an 87-year-old was generating new brain cells 30% less quickly than a 43-year-old is hardly much of a criticism!

As an aside: samples from patients with Alzheimer’s also had a 30% reduction in new braincell generation, compared to samples from patients of the same age without Alzheimer’s. But again… Even patients with Alzheimer’s were still growing some new brain cells.

Read it for yourself: Adult hippocampal neurogenesis is abundant in neurologically healthy subjects and drops sharply in patients with Alzheimer’s disease

Practical advice based on this information

Since we can do neurogenesis at any age, but the rate does drop with age (and drops sharply in the case of Alzheimer’s disease), we need to:

Feed your brain. The brain is the most calorie-consuming organ we have, by far, and it’s also made mostly of fat* and water. So, get plenty of healthy fats, and get plenty of water.

*Fun fact: while depictions in fiction (and/or chemically preserved brains) may lead many to believe the brain has a rubbery consistency, the untreated brain being made of mostly fat and water gives it more of a blancmange-like consistency in reality. That thing is delicate and spatters easily. There’s a reason it’s kept cushioned inside the strongest structure of our body, far more protected than anything in our torso.

Exercise. Specifically, exercise that gets your blood pumping. This (as our earlier-featured video today referenced) is one of the biggest things we can do to boost Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, or BDNF.

Here be science: Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, Depression, and Physical Activity: Making the Neuroplastic Connection

However, that’s not the only way to increase BDNF; another is to enjoy a diet rich in polyphenols. These can be found in, for example, berries, tea, coffee, and chocolate. Technically those last two are also botanically berries, but given how we usually consume them, and given how rich they are in polyphenols, they merit a special mention.

See for example: Effects of nutritional interventions on BDNF concentrations in humans: a systematic review

Some supplements can help neuron (re)growth too, so if you haven’t already, you might want to check out our previous main feature on lion’s mane mushroom, a supplement which does exactly that.

For those who like videos, you may also enjoy this TED talk by neuroscientist Dr. Sandrine Thuret:

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Prefer text? Click here to read the transcript