Andy & Sharon's Chronic Fattigue Web Support 2

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Continued)

Ways of Easing CFS Symptoms

There are various different ways of easing CFS symptoms. We can only highlight the ways in which have helped us. These will be highlighted below:

Getting a Diagnosis

Once you have been labelled as suffering from CFS you have won a major battle. Some doctors are very reluctant to diagnose people suffering from CFS. Some doctors don’t believe it exists! Once you have a label you know what you have! Accept it and start fighting/living with it!

GP Referral Scheme

“Inactivity breeds inactivity”! The more you don’t do anything, the more your body becomes adjusted to doing nothing. We know you can’t do anything. We know your mind and body wants to and lie down all the time and shut off. This doesn’t help! Rest is good. Too much rest is bad. You need to re-train your body to cope with activity and then re-train your mind to take total rest afterwards!

One of the best ways, which helps both of us, is the GP Referral Scheme. It allows people suffering from long-term illnesses, like CFS, to recover slowly, with the help of expert health and fitness instructors at your local gym or sports centre. There are a number of benefits to this programme. It helps you recover with assistance. It allows you free access or reduced payment on the use of a gym or swimming pool. Going to the gym and doing gentle exercises, like walking & cycling, once maybe twice a week helps! What also helps is if you have company and moral support. It goes a long way and it’s fun! Fun is a good motivator that eases the symptoms of CFS. After all forms of exercise you REST!

Aquatherapy

Aquatherapy is gentle aerobic exercises in water. When we say gentle it’s gentle! We are not talking about Mr Motivator type exercises, just simple movements like walking and stretching which helps tone the body and mind. It’s also fun! It also helps having a great instructor. After Aquatherapy, you REST!

Rest

It’s important that after any form of activity or exercise the body and mind need to rest. This believe it or not is one of the hardest things to do! I find it hard! When we say rest, we aren’t talking about listening to the radio, reading a book or laying down watching TV. This rest is total rest. No TV, no radio, no children running in and out, no telephone ringing, no washing machine on! Total rest is relaxing, not sleeping, for between 30 to 60 minutes. This allows the body to recover. Non-sufferers need a fraction of this time. CFS sufferers need hours to days to recover. You walk to the shops. You get back and rest. You drive the car. You then rest. You cook you then rest etc! You exercise one day you rest the next two. It sounds simple but it isn’t. The body needs to recover and this is the most important step in recovering or easing the symptoms of CFS.

Cognitive Therapy

Cognitive Therapy is another way of re-adjusting your whole lifestyle mentally, physically and emotionally. This is usually carried out with the assistance of a Clinical Psychologist.

Cognitive Therapy looks at your past lifestyle to see if there are any physical, emotional or mental scars which might have assisted in the onset of CFS. It is fair to say that most sceptics blame possible emotional and psychological scars as the likely cause of CFS. Until CFS is properly understood we won’t know either way.

Cognitive Therapy then looks at the present to see what is your lifestyle and looks at ways to change your physical, emotional and mental/psychological ways of thinking and doing. It’s a long slow process. It aims to slowly change the way you think and do things so there is a balance between your life and CFS. It’s hard! It’s very hard to break down the vicious circle of CFS or the ‘roller-coaster’ effect of feeling good feeling bad! Its aim is to slowly reduce the variations of good and bad. It also works! Well it works for us. We aren’t totally cured but then again our lifestyles have improved from being unable to move for weeks, to partial recovery for the majority of the time.

Cognitive Therapy looks at the following and makes changes:

It looks at your day-to-day activities. It tries to eliminate the non-essential and too demanding activities and makes you plan your activities/exercises with periods of rest and recovery. It introduces new ways of thinking and doing things, again this maybe different between different people.

Incorporating rest sessions into your daily life. (30-60 minutes or more is needed by a CFS to recover from an activity or exercise)

Ways of reducing mental or psychological stress. It looks at the way of thinking and doing things in the past - family, work, money, relationships etc. Stress is a significant factor and is proportionally related to CFS. Eliminating thoughts and re-thinking past, present and future actions helps eliminate stress, which in turn reduces the effects of CFS.

Ways of reducing emotional stress. This works on the same lines as mental stress but looks at the emotional side. CFS not only causes mental anguish and frustration, but also is emotionally disturbing. By doing a few of these tasks highlighted in this section, slowly but surely your life drifts from ‘Limbo’ back into reality. Emotional stress is also reduced by the use of Anti-Depressants.

Improving concentration by the introduction of light reading.

Improving sleeping patterns.

Sleep

Most CFS sufferers have sleep problems. The first real problem is non-refreshing sleep. All people need sleep to recover from the days activities. If you are a CFS sufferer it doesn’t matter how many hours of sleep you get – you nearly always wake up feeling like you haven’t slept at all. Some people have problems falling asleep, even when totally exhausted, yet others find that they can fall asleep with no problems but wake before the night is over and are unable to drop off again.

Ways of improving your sleep routine:

	Avoid caffeine.
	Avoid eating too late into the evening/night.
	Wind down your mind before going to bed, e.g. no reading, no TV or computers.
	Try using Lavender Oil in a bath or on your pillow – it’s a well-known relaxant.
	Relaxation massage.
	Milky drink.
	Soothing music.

Should you wake in the night, don’t lie there tossing and turning; get up and do one of the above. We’ve tried it and it works for us!

Summary

Everything on CFS is based on our own experiences. Chronic Fatigue is individual to each sufferer. What works for us might not work for you and vice versa. Always go to your GP before you try any treatments. If you have any problems, questions or need advice please feel free to email [email protected]

Last revised: 15/03/01

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