Aliens On Earth.com Resources for those who are stranded here Our Bookstore is OPEN Over 5000 new & used titles, competitively priced! Topics: UFOs - Paranormal - Area 51 - Ghosts - Forteana - Conspiracy - History - Biography - Psychology - Religion - Crime - Health - Geography - Maps - Science - Money - Language - Recreation - Technology - Fiction - Other - New Search... for keyword(s)   in Page Titles in Book Title/Author in Contents of Pages ---other searches--- Metacrawler Yahoo FAST Search Google Altavista Dogpile Inference Find Northern Light IWon.com MSN Search Las Vegas Sun Location: Mothership -> UFO -> Updates -> 1998 -> Oct -> Re: CFS Newspaper Article

UFO UpDates Mailing List

From: Leanne Martin <leanne_martin@hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 17:59:17 PST
Fwd Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 08:18:24 -0500
Subject: Re: CFS Newspaper Article


>From: Max Burns <AlienHype1@aol.com>
>Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 08:55:21 EST
>To: Updates@globalserve.net
>Subject: Fwd: CFS Newspaper Article

>Subj: CFS Newspaper Article Date: 26/10/98 09:28:07 GMT From:
>Doc Barry <docbarry@webtv.net> To:   alienhype1@aol.com

> The Denver Post  Sunday, October 25, 1998 Page 11A SCIENCE
>TODAY

> Renaming Illness Debated Chronic-fatigue patients, researchers
>seek more respect by Richard A. Knox The Boston Globe

> It says a lot about chronic-fatigue syndrome in 1998 that a
>main topic at a national conference on the subject in Cambridge
>last week was what to call the elusive disorder.
>
> A spirited two-hour debate on whether to junk the current name
>was "very polarizing," says one researcher. Patients and their
>advocates insist that the "fatigue" label is pooh-poohed and
>joked about among those who haven't experienced chronic-fatigue
>syndrome, also called CFS.
>
> "The name sounds so trivial. People think, "Well, I get tired
>by Friday afternoon, too", says K. Kimberly Keeney, executive
>director of the North Carolina-based Chronic Fatigue and Immune
>Dysfunction Syndrome Association of America. "The illness is
>much more devastating than the name would imply."
>>
> No less a public health figure than Dr. Philip Lee, the former
>U.S. assistant secretary of health and human services, declares
>it's time to change the name. Scientists in the field are
>sympathetic.
>
> After all, they have put up for years with colleagues who look
>askance at their research on such an ill-defined (read
>"imaginary?") disorder. But, researchers counter, what do we
>call it when we can't yet agree on what its essence is? Is it at
>
>bottom a brain disease? A metabolic disorder? An immune
>derangement? There's evidence for all and consensus on none.
>"There's unanimity on one point: The current name is really bad
>because it trivializes the illness," says Dr. Anthony Komaroff
>of Harvard Medical School, one of the most respected CFS
>researchers. "But we don't know enough to choose the right name.
>
>And we'd damn well better get it right and be prepared to live
>with it for the next decade."
>
> Whatever it's called, whatever it is, there is new evidence
>that many more people suffer from it - in the most strictly
>defined terms- than many people think, or than previous studies
>had demonstrated. A new $1.7 million study by the Centers for
>Disease Control and Prevention - the largest and most rigorous
>ever on CFS - has found that the syndrome afflicts 183 out of
>every 100,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 69. By
>contrast, the previous CDC study found between four and nine
>cases per 100,000 people.

> The new study was based on 90,000 residents of Sedgwick County,

>Kan., where Wichita lies - one quarter of the county's
>population. Researchers identified about 4,000 people who said
>they suffered serious fatigue for a month or more, and
>interviewed them in greater depth. Among those, 500 appeared to
>have the syndrome; researchers persuaded 300 of these to undergo

>physical exams and lab tests.

> Of the 300, a panel of physicians decided that 39 had bonafide
>CFS by the most strigent definition. That definition requires at

>least six months of severe unexplained fatigue plus four or more

>of these symptoms: impairment in short-term memory or
>concentration; sore throat; tender lymph nodes in the neck or
>armpit; muscle pain; pain in multiple joints without
>inflammation; unusual headaches; unrefreshing sleep, and
>long-lasting malaise following exertion.

> The most striking new information from Wichita is that CFS
>rates are much higher among women than men - 303 cases per
>100,000 for all adult women, 340 cases for white women. To put
>the rates in context, chronic fatigue syndrome in adult women
>appears to be less common than diabetes (which is more than
>three times as prevalent) or high blood pressure (66 times more
>prevalent). But it is roughly three to five times more common
>than lung and breast cancer. (CFS is not considered fatal,
>althuogh it often disables victims for years.)

>== Doc Barry


G'day Doc, Max & List,

As a CFS sufferer I find this thread interesting. A point that
may interest others is that a recent study was done here in Oz
and it found that CFS is medically provable, in a majority of
cases, via a simple physical.

The trials were done at a uni here and found that those
experiencing CFS at its most severe would 'hit the wall' - high
levels of lactic acid (?) in the blood just like athletes -
after a minute amount of effort (and often with no effort).

Thankfully I am not in the worst category (yet?) with a few of
the main symptoms (joint pain, sleep exhaustion, frail memory,
etc.). But I find the lack of physical energy the most draining
(in the way it seems to have a compounding effect on everything
else). Double that with Adult Onset Attention Defecit Disorder
(they may have started around the same time) and I lead an
'interesting' life (in the Chinese context).

Regards,
Leanne.