Treatments for ME Chronic Fatigue Syndrome #shorts

I have had ME/CFS since 2007. Over the years I have tried an array of holistic and mainstream medical treatments.

THINGS THAT HELPED

🟢Functional medicine
Also called integrative or naturopathic medicine
Aims to IMPROVE your health by discovering and treating the root cause of your illness rather than MANAGING your illness using symptom suppressing drugs
Diagnosis involves laboratory tests not used by mainstream medicine
Treatment is a combination of diet changes and nutritional supplements
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🟢Acupuncture
Very effective at calming my body and reducing stress/anxiety. I always slept very deeply after a treatment
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🟢Chinese herbs
Helped reduce my sensitivity to supplements
Improved my energy
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🟢Antimicrobial herbs
After taking these I no longer felt horrendously ill 24/7. My dizziness, nausea and general feeling of being poisoned significantly reduced. Movement became easier
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🟢High dose probiotics
Currently taking 55 billion CFU (aiming for 100 billion)
Tummy feels lighter
Sleep improved
Generally feeling better
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🟢Enforcing boundaries
Learning to say no and prioritising my own needs has been crucial to keeping my energy levels stable and avoid crashing

THINGS THAT DID NOTHING
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🟠Yoga
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🟠CBT - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
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🟠Meditation
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🟠EFT – emotional freedom technique
Tapping on points on your face to release emotions and trauma

THINGS THAT MADE ME WORSE
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🔴Gluten-free diet
I replaced white, wheat based products with whole grains such as brown rice and quinoa. I gradually developed digestive issues but it took a year before I realised the cause was the gluten-free products. By this time my stomach was so bloated I looked six months pregnant! Within days of returning to eating gluten my bloating significantly decreased & over the coming weeks my energy improved. I later discovered I had SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. The whole grain foods I replaced the gluten foods with had been feeding the bacterial overgrowth causing gas and excessive bloating
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🔴Dr Lam
I have been bedbound for 2.5 years as a direct result of his treatment
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🔴Physio – GET - Graded Exercise Therapy
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🔴Toxic relationships
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🔴Not listening to my body
Ignoring my symptoms and using my willpower to push through
Being pressured into treatments I felt were not appropriate

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KNOWLEDGE & EXPERIENCE

I regularly ask questions to the ME/CFS community via Instagram stories, typically seeking peoples knowledge and experience on a specific topic. Their words of wisdom are then complied into a short video which is posted on YouTube and Instagram

View the videos here

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[livingwithmecfs]

What treatments have you found helpful? And what didn’t work?
I love hearing about other peoples experiences so feel free to share in the comments

[j]

Things that have helped me:
1. Vitamin B1. Makes an amazing difference for
2. Sun exposure on my back (because I normally avoid the sun at all times to prevent aging). I feel so amazing after I get a bit of sun on my back!
3. Juicing. If you have gut problems you might have trouble absorbing some of the nutrients from your food. Fiber is also tough on my system nowadays, and juicing removes that, leaving vitamins and enzymes in a form the body can easily benefit from regardless of the state of the gut.
4. S. boulardii and bovine colustrum (I use Travelan brand) to fight yeast overgrowth in the gut.
5. Lemon water in the morning.
6. Celery juice (I have mine later in the morning). Although I don't get organic celery, I prep the celery by soaking it in water with a sprinkle of baking soda to help remove pesticides.
7. I do get neck pain so when that happens a neck brace helps support my energy levels and I also avoid anything that makes the neck problems flare up.
8. I try to live as simple and low stress/minimalist as possible.
9. Avoiding toxic people who are energy vampires.
10. I have saunas to detoxify and destress.
11. I keep a symptom diary to try to help identify patterns on good and also bad days.
12. I don't do it all of the time but oil pulling seems to help as well.

[SammyAt]

My journey with ME/CFS started after i received the Pfizer Covid Vaccine in the Spring of 2021. Been dealing with dizziness, brain fog, headaches, and worst of all fatigue and PEM which is absolutely terrible. Never even had heard of ME/CFS before any of this and it took me doing my own research to find out this is what i have.

[Katthechristian]

1. boundaries
2. a job that better suits me
3. loving myself
4. supplements
5. having a kitty kat (pet)

just now starting regular smoothies and animal flow, and i already love them both!

[swoo]

Thank you. The ideology that you need to 'keep trying' with exercise, and the shaming not trying hard enough, have given up made me worse. I struggle with thinking im not trying hard enough. I miss movement so much. But everytime i try i get such bad PEM. Even the most gentle of stuff. When i read people getting back to movement, im so happy for them, but also i feel so rotten that im failing.

[theantiqueactionfigure]

A ketogenic diet has probably helped my CFS more than any other treatment. Certainly not a cure but it took me from bedbound to housebound at least. It got my weight back to where it was when I could still exercise too which has been helpful.

[marshmallow]

I was just diagnosed. But I'm also gluten and dairy intolerant. This is going to be a long road, but I'm staying positive.

[thirstknowledge]

‘Enforcing Boundaries’ an absolute must do! #smallcircle

[Justanything]

Things that really affect me is to live the way I like to

[randallhesse]

I've found that digesting food seems to take all my energy away from me. Then I crash with post exertional malaise. So in order to keep me from being bed bound all day I practice intermittent fasting. It keeps me from crashing. I'm thinking about trying methylene blue.

[NeoStarImpact]

MPH did the trick for me after 20 years of fatigue which got worse when I got Covid. MPH I did not even expect to help me with tiredness. I started taking it to treat my ADHD that got diagnosed this year. I noticed quickly that it substantially reduced my tiredness and thought this might be euphoria or just a short lived boost. But it kept doing the thing. 6 months later and it is still as strong as day 1. This stuff got me finally into a position where I was able to claim my life back thanks god. Step by step.

[taddavis]

You rule. This video is great. Thanks!

[Melody]

I had extremely similar symptoms and nobody could understand why. Couldn't sleep although being extremely tired, muscle pain, headaches, thinking hurted, couldn't speak properly, couldn't digest food, light and sounds hurted me, I was essentially tied to bed. I went through many misdiagnosis but I luckily didn't suffer for too long because, quite long ago, some kind of silent epylepsy was hypothesized. EEG and sleep study didn't show anything relevant, as well as other exams, but they weren't convinced anyway, they said that most of my symptoms were tied to unstable electrical activity in my brain despite tests showing everything was "fine". They gave me an antiepileptic and 30 minutes later I had all of my energy back. I'm still taking it on a prescription and I've never had symptoms since then. This maybe won't help in your very specific case but I think it was worth to share my experience. Maybe make your neurologist read this.

[stephen-giantslayer]

Thanks for this! I’m heading into heavy PEM & endeavouring to make some kind of sense out of it. If my body was a plane then it’s stalled & in a nose dive: brace-brace-brace!

[paulb]

It’s really interesting to see what has helped you

[Chaos]

Actually, I feel like my realationship is getting toxic through the overall situation with patient-carer-dependency 😪 where I am not able to provide the support that would be helping my partner during her recovery (severe long Covid, pots, me/cfs, PEM). I am the one working full time and caring for her (almost bedbound). There is no one supporting additionally as we‘ve moved from Germany to the uk and rarely her sister or mother travelling over. Which makes me stressed and she feeling lonely and combination is often escalating in fights and she is getting into an even worse crash through emotional stress. Lot fights happening and it is super hard to stay always calm when even small/minor things causing a huge fight.

[kyloren]

Thanks for what you are doing in this Channel, keep up the good work ❤️

[kathyhhb]

But what is most helpful for me is a mental trainer. When I was a child something bad happened to me. And about 2 years later I also became seriously ill after i worked on a car fair on the weekend, I think when I was around 16, and doctors couldn't really help, at first they made a drug and alcohol screening which was negative, i got tons of medications for the heart, and my parents were not happy with me, i was a minor and sick. I moved out with 14 already. But then I got a recommendation to a mental trainer who was also a doctor, he was very old and experienced. He always hypnotized me and it feels super amazing and relaxing, he said always "All my growing abilities will be used exclusively for the benefit of my master, I will restore physical and mental health, I will always have full control over my abilities and senses on this and every other level of consciousness, the more often we do these exercises the deeper I go, deeper than before." It's usually helping me when someone tells me what to do. Like to be stronger and stand up and to walk around.

[RMTH]

Methylene Blue. Made me worse the first two weeks and then I started feeling better. Never thought a blue dye would have such a potent effect on me.

[kylechavez]

I believe I have cfs it happend after I got covid . I have a question . When u over do it does your chest get really heavy with pressure and pain it feels like someone is sitting on your chest? It happens if I take to many steps any more then 200 and or when I try to sweep and mop the floors? It puts me down for most of the day and sometimes for the next few days . Showers are the worst too