"What is the latest thinking with respect to the cause of the condition"
It's not really a 'condition' - rather, it's a series of symptoms they just lump together and give a name.
They have no idea what it is, what causes it.
It's very difficult to diagnose, other than patients are always 'tired'. And there are many different kinds of 'tired'.
I thought I had it, but I wasn't sleeping enough and drinking too much red bull, not getting enough water, probably too much stress.
Doctors had no clue. All I did was sleep regular hours, stopped drinking energy drinks, drank water - and over a few months I 'got better'. But it was a really weird experience.
Some people get 'it' bad.
My bet is that there are probably a number of reasons that people get it - some of it is psychosomatic - and that it might have something to do with a messed up endocrine system - i.e. the system that regulates melatonin, insulin etc..
It's true that a "syndrome", by definition, is a collection of symptoms that seem to co-occur. And it's also true that there are many possible causes of low energy.
But there seems to be one particular cause, not that anyone seems to know for sure what that is, that produces a set of symptoms that is more specific than generalized fatigue. The symptom sometimes called "post-exertional malaise" is, AFAIK, unique to this disease. One doesn't necessarily feel tired while exercising; instead, the tiredness (often accompanied by headaches and sometimes other symptoms) hits hours or even a day after the exercise.
So when the OP writes "Instead of trying to continually increase my exercise, I’d learned to focus on staying within my ever-changing limits", I know she has the same thing I do, because that's my experience exactly. Whatever you had, in contrast, sounds like it had some other cause.
All I did was sleep regular hours, stopped drinking energy drinks, drank water - and over a few months I 'got better'.
You didn't have it, by any current definition of the disease (Canadian/Fukuda criteria). "Chronic fatigue syndrome" is an unfortunate misnomer - fatigue is one symptom but far from the only one.
Ergo 'I had it' - because it's a condition defined by it's symptoms.
The kind of 'fatigue' I had was very odd: it was not 'sleepy tired' and it was not 'energy tired'. I wasn't in need of a nap, and if I went to the gym, I kept my regular pace no problem.
It was a weird tiredness that hit several times a day, and made me not want to do much.
Granted, it was more mild than others.
Granted, I may not have 'had' whatever causes it in others.
Also - I did take a lot of 'pro-biotics' as well, basically it supposedly restores the bacteria in your gut. But it's not particularly scientific.
I can tell you it was an odd feeling, unlike any other.
>You didn't have it, by any current definition of the disease (Canadian/Fukuda criteria).
I'm not sure how you can determine that from the parent comment.
>"Chronic fatigue syndrome" is an unfortunate misnomer - fatigue is one symptom but far from the only one.
The parent comment never said he/she only had fatigue. In fact the mention of "symptoms" would kind of imply that fatigue wasn't his/her only symptom, wouldn't it?
Convergent symptomatology is a problem. Very hard to tease out what's going on when you have a group composed of people with different diseases (with same symptoms) plus perhaps a couple unusual presentations of somewhat normal diseases. The old run statistical regressions to find out what's going on fails completely.
It's not really a 'condition' - rather, it's a series of symptoms they just lump together and give a name.
They have no idea what it is, what causes it.
It's very difficult to diagnose, other than patients are always 'tired'. And there are many different kinds of 'tired'.
I thought I had it, but I wasn't sleeping enough and drinking too much red bull, not getting enough water, probably too much stress.
Doctors had no clue. All I did was sleep regular hours, stopped drinking energy drinks, drank water - and over a few months I 'got better'. But it was a really weird experience.
Some people get 'it' bad.
My bet is that there are probably a number of reasons that people get it - some of it is psychosomatic - and that it might have something to do with a messed up endocrine system - i.e. the system that regulates melatonin, insulin etc..