ME/CFS Week: A Spoonful of Sugar

When it comes to sickness, treatment seems obvious - though not always affective. Have an infection? Antibiotics. Cancer? Surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Even with the common cold we know to rest, drink fluids and eat chicken soup.
So why is it that when it comes to ME/CFS everyone seems to treat it differently? Some patients are on so many pills that they'd rattle if you shook them, while others don't even take paracetemol for a headache.

Basically the reason is lack of knowledge about the disease. As a result different doctors take different approaches, which is perfectly understandable and will eventually lead to better understanding of the illness and its treatment. In the spirit of awareness and settling curiosities, I've listed below some of
the treatments for people with ME/CFS. It could help you keep track if a friend is talking about their doctor appointments and whatnot.

Pacing

A word that most people with chronic illness are sick to death of. It's the word every doctor and consultant uses all the time. Basically it refers to limiting your activity so as to not overextend yourself. Sometimes you don't realise you're tired til you're already too far gone. Over time you can build up your energy and stamina but it can be frustrating in the meantime. The idea is to not let yourself get too tired as you'll crash the next day, but instead keep your day-to-day energy as consistent as possible. This is the only treatment I'm aware of that actually helps your health improve, most others seem to make you more comfortable and functional in the meantime.

Medicating

Medicating is exactly what it says on the tin. It's treatment through the use of prescription or over the counter drugs and tonics. Usually for ME/CFS this is a combination of painkillers, stimulants and or sleeping aids. While the right combination can give great and fast results, the short term and long term side effects can be pretty awful. Because of this many doctors try to avoid it, particularly if a patient is hyper sensitive as many are.

CBT

CBT stands for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. It's a form of therapy which focusses on acknowledging your limits and structuring your life around them as efficiently as possible. Obviously it can't help with the physical aspects of the illness but it can often really help the managing of the illness which in turn helps you recover faster.

Natural Remedies

Probably sounds like hippy dippy stuff, right? Well what I'm talking about here isn't I-don't-need-chemo-I-have-a-magic-leaf-to-fix-me stuff. It's more about finding the small benefits of various plants and things and using them to ease your symptoms. For example using ginger to settle your nausea, or chewing coffee beans to perk you up. It's less affective than many other routes but has almost no long term side affects and can make day-to-day life much more comfortable. It's also good for people who are sensitive to preservatives and such.

GET

Doctors really like initialisms, it gets super confusing. This particular one stands for Graded Exercise
Therapy. It's kind of like physiotherapy in that it's a way of helping recovery through exercise but it works a little differently. With GET you receive a list of exercises but only in very small amounts of each. The idea is that over time you slowly build up strength and gradually increase your exercises.


Most of these are used in conjunction with others, it'd be rare that you'd find someone only using one. Of course, someone's choice of treatment is entirely up to them but it'd be helpful for both of you to be able to discuss it properly. If you'd like more information there's plenty available online but I'd advise avoiding stuff that says one is perfect or one doesn't work at all ever, as each has its merits and drawbacks.