How To Be 7.5x More Likely To Develop Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

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!