M.E (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) AKA CFS, (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)...

Posts and articles on this blog are not meant to be medical advice in any way. Please contact your medical doctor or qualified practitioner for all medical conditions.

Me and My M.E (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) is also known or similar to CFS, (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)…

As a first post to this blog, Me and M.E (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) also known or similar to CFS, (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)... I will give you some history on how I got to be  in the position I found myself in. From here, I will then blog about my various healing 'adventures and processes' since I was first diagnosed with M.E also often referred to as CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)

Back in the early 1990s over the course of a few weeks I began to experience total exhaustion. It was quite alien to me as I had always been so very active and this felt like something serious, so I took myself off to the doctor, and some blood was taken for analysis.  About a week later, the results were in. My white blood-cell count was a little down, but it wasn’t considered serious, and whatever it was would probably clear up on its own, and I wasn’t getting any younger, so I was told!

Well, I accepted the diagnosis and thought that this was just a temporary blip in my life.  I would just need to motivate myself  and get myself moving more.  I worked as a therapist which involved a lot of sitting and talking with my clients, so I would make a point of getting out walking briskly to get my metabolism moving again.  But whereas before exercise would have reinvigorated me, this time, I found myself feeling worse. I was burning up energy and my body just didn’t seem to be replacing it.

After another couple of months there was still no improvement at all, in fact I was beginning to feel even more exhausted and couldn’t help but to reduce my workload with clients. As a psychotherapist I knew only to well, how commitment and motivational processes would improve conditions like depression and other stress-related conditions. If I was stressed at all, it was because of the chronic pain coming from a new development… chronic mouth ulcers (canker sores) and now I was feeling totally exhausted during all my waking hours.  There was some relief when I practised zazen (Zen meditation) as my first discipline each day, but when motivating a client to get better conditions for  his/her life, I became very drained of energy very quickly and I was conscious of actually looking exhausted and this was hardly a positive or inspiring influence for my clients!

I went back to my doctors again because over-the-counter remedies were not solving my mouth-ulcers condition as soon as one sore would disappear, sometimes within hours another would take its place.   I was given  Cortisone tablets to place on the ulcers, which initially worked, but after a week or so of finishing the course, I would be in pain again.

The feeling of exhaustion was a daily occurrence now. After morning zazen, I would feel OK, for around 5 minutes, but then it was taking all my energy just to stand up from my chair.  There was nothing more that medicine could do for me.  It was suggested that I was depressed..  Well of course I was! Who wouldn’t be with constant daily exhaustion and mouth-pain?  I was not suicidal, but thoughts were coming into my mind that this was not really living.  I would have to find a way.

By chance I met a fellow therapist I knew well. He told me that I looked dreadful and I explained what I had been going through. He gave me the name of a retired doctor some two hours drive away from where I lived, who dealt with people with M.E (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) also known or similar to CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome).. Well I was chronically fatigued and in pain, so I made an appointment.  I had never thought of M.E but had heard of it cruelly referred to as “yuppie flu” and that it was like getting a dose of ‘flu that never went away. I hadn’t had ‘flu for at least 10 years, but I felt that this doctor just may have the answer.

A  week later, I was sitting in the doctor’s consulting room answering a whole host of questions about my lifestyle, exercise, eating habits and even toilet habits.  He was certain that I had M.E. And yes, my attempts to ’exercise it away’ provided a very clear indication of his certainty.  He added that there was no cure, and no way to diagnose it back then, but he had had a good success rate in reducing the symptoms significantly enough to live a full life again. I asked him about a blood test to which he replied that a blood test may show something, but he very much doubted it, and anyway, I had gone down that road, and found nothing.   I was going to have to find out what foods were triggering my problems via an exclusion diet...

Sugar Connection

I would need to go back to eating a ‘stone age diet’.  All simple foods, organic if I could manage it, and nothing processed at all. Above all – no sugar from fruit, cane or beet.  He considered sugar as empty calories and and a substance that would more than likely be feeding the disease, probably by mixing with yeast (candida) that was more than likely already in my system which was giving me the feeling of having the mother of all hangovers permanently – and that was without having had the enjoyment of having celebrated the night before!

Commitment

When I commit to something firstly I will share my commitment with others – these others will act as witnesses to empower my ability to keep the commitment even if they don’t agree or think me crazy.  In fact if I have said that I am committed, I will keep to it as if my very life depends on it.  I see it as my integrity and I would not want to compromise myself. 

I committed to the doctor’s stone age diet.  Vegetables, no salt or flavourings that had been manufactured.  No sauces or gravies containing chemicals,  flavourings, sugar or artificial sweeteners;  no packet foods or breads... generally no food stuff that a caveman could not get.  But cooking was allowed, but near-raw with the vegetables was better.  If I could be totally committed to this, then at a later date, we would be able to discover what substances I was eating that was acting as a trigger of my ME.

Upon returning to the doctor a fortnight later, I think I amazed him when I told him that I had kept to the stone age diet 100%.  Apparently most of his patients would cheat. I knew about this from my own experiences with some clients.  But I was the client this time, and  I didn’t think this was a big deal, as I was only too aware of the value and power of keeping one’s word as I had seen it so often, and motivating my clients to keep commitments was the main function in my interaction with them in my work; it was certainly the most powerful ‘tool’ that I used.

 My next post will relate my experiences of eating the stone age diet and my learning curve of taking back the quality of my life and work.

Commitment. My Healing Path

Please Note: All posts and articles on this blog are not meant to be medical advice, so please contact your medical doctor or qualified practitioner for diagnosis and advice of all medical conditions. 

My commitment to heal continues.

My second appointment with the food doctor was  three weeks after the first.  I was pleased to be back as I was sure that he would find a way to help ease the severe withdrawal symptoms that I had been experiencing.

He asked me how I had been getting on with the stone age eating plan.  I told him that I had found it difficult and at times very uncomfortable, but I was determined to stick with this way of eating until there was no more craving or withdrawal symptoms.

“How often have you cheated?” he asked.

I was amazed that he asked. “Not at all,” I answered.

“Not once?” he queried more intensely. “I can’t remember any of my patients sticking to the plan 100% especially with the elimination of sugar, as it is highly addictive and that’s what makes it so dangerous to health. It not only effects physical health, but is a great persuader in the mind that it’s harmless, because with some people, it takes years before any symptoms can appear, by which time they would not be convinced that sugar was a problem for them." The addicted mind,” he added, “can use every argument and trick you can think of, to satisfy its craving.”

The Power of Commitment.

“Well, I can’t see  the point of embarking on a coarse of treatment and then cheating”, I said, “But I will tell you I have been having hallucinations of smelling cakes baking!” It is like when one sits in Zen meditation, the mind will hallucinate to try and get you to quit the discipline.

I could really identify with what he was saying about the tricks of the mind, because in my teenage years, I had become addicted to smoking and when I finally quit, thoughts would flood to me that one cigarette won’t hurt, as I could quit again tomorrow.  I was very familiar with the power of the mind and imagination, and used it against such tricks, by visualising the next day, that if I had even one draw on a cigarette, I would be buying a full pack before finally quitting again; perhaps next year or maybe never!  However...

I told myself, “why wait? Quit now! Experience the craving. Let it do its worse, for it will definitely pass or nobody would ever quit”.  I would need to experience the craving, because it would only get stronger if I tried to deny it is there. I quit smoking this way and have never started again. But now, it was about my eating, a little different because I was not about to quit eating! But my commitment was established for the next 6 months.

I continued to talk to him for a while about my Zen practice and the ‘commitment interaction’, a process I used with my own clients on their initial appointment with me. I would say..   “If you are not prepared to commit 100%  to the therapy process, then it is not wise to begin, because  you would be effectively reinforcing the habit of procrastinating and giving up.”  I wouldn’t proceed to make another appointment-session with them, until together we had established this sort of high-level commitment to making it work. 

Commitment can really work miracles in this way, and here I was with my food doctor, committing myself in the same way... 100%. I further explained to him that I was committed to give it 6 months as I totally trusted in his past research, and his experience of the  stone-age eating plan, with both his clients and himself.  I learned that he himself, had suffered from bad digestive issues that he had cured with diet.  After  6 months, if I could see positive results with the eating plan, I would permanently integrate it into my daily life, not as a diet, but as a way of eating.

My doctor’s  instructions were to continue with the stone-age diet and see him again within a month to give chance for all withdrawal symptoms to ease further and then we would be testing various foods and substances, to discover more specifically what single foods/family of foods I was sensitive to.  He reminded me that we all respond differently to exclusion diets that were in effect acting like a detox, and that I may still have some symptoms that we would investigate further at my next appointment.

I drove back home with the feeling that I was at last on the right track.  A chance conversation about my ailments had brought me to an unusual healing path that I would never have considered.