Thread by @BadgleyLaurence

CFS MYSTERY FURTHER UNSOLVED: CFS is function of “severity” of acute infection, but not of psychologic or measurable physiologic parameters, and for a variety of viral disorders. Huh! How can this be? Impossible! Why?

https://twitter.com/badgleylaurence/status/1354342190080778240

Well, let’s look at what import “severity of illness” has for a host that evolves chronic fatigue. In the study, chronic musculoskeletal pain was common amongst CFS suffers, but the pain generators were not studied. Soft tissues are the most likely explanation.

Persons beset with musculoskeletal pain commonly seek a sedentary status in order to avoid arousing musculoskeletal pain transducers.

As little as two weeks of dedicated bedrest can lead to profound loss of muscle tone & mass. Widespread compensatory painful muscle spasms are likely consequences of widespread musculoskeletal weakness.

The authors did not quantify subject’s pain nor do Surface Electromyographic (SEMG) studies. That weak muscles beget additional bedrest is a good proposition. That additional bedrest begets greater muscle weakness is a good proposition.

Persons given to profound bedrest are usually indoors & bereft of exposure to the sun. Vitamin D, a hormone which when deficient has wide reaching physiological consequences, was not measured by the study authors.

Persons given to profound bedrest are invalid and likely targets for nutrient-deficient diets so common amongst residents of healthcare institutions.

Unable to fend for themselves, the study subjects might have been fed caregiver-convenient foods rather than fresh fare gathered from their own foraging labor, & fare suited to their own tastes, amounts, & pleasures of consumption.

The study authors made no attempt to characterize the nutritional status of their study subjects. Surely, an energetic person is product of a diet that provides nutrients participant in the Krebs Cycle & which are precursors of mitochondrial ATP.

Who knows what levels of dysbiosis-generated unhealthy CNS bio-chemicals the study subjects might have incurred at whimsy of a sluggish intestine deprived of upright posture & intestinal transit times not stimulated by gravitational effects on intestinal content mass.

Study authors offered no body weight summaries nor numbers of bowel events to reflect on these bodily functions. However, they substituted finite measurements of arcane cytokine ebbs & flows, which failed to reveal CFS causations.

CONCLUSION: perhaps study subjects experienced debilitation as iatrogenic injuries at hands of the troop of clinical practitioners who guided their convalescence & who gave inception to the study by reporting several & various severe viral illnesses within their patients.

@threadreaderapp unroll