I have also visited chronicfatiguereatments.com and they agreed with a few of the suggestions here including the anti-oxidents, the B6, and they also suggest many times getting an adrenal suppliment.
The person I am working with has a high carb diet, which is the first thing I will suggest he changes.
Then I will be suggesting the acai, goji, calcium, magnesium, and powerdrive, which has B6 and tyrosine. I will get him to add one of them every two days to see how he responds to each of them.
Additional information he gave me was that he took ritalin, at one point, perscribed by his doctor and it had a severely detrimental effect on his wellbeing. General blood test says everything is normal, except he has low blood pressure.
I have had CFS, and my father also suffered from it. Severity varies among sufferers, but for me, I could not work out at all for a couple years. I was trying to do an amount of exercise that I could recover from in less than a day or so. When I say “recover,” I don’t mean the kind of recovery where you are ready for another tough workout, but rather just enough energy to walk into another room. As my fatigue worsened, my weight workouts got shorter and less frequent until they stopped altogether. Then my morning walk got shorter and shorter. Eventually, it got so that after any walk longer than 5 minutes, I could barely get out of bed the rest of the day.
It sounds like exaggeration, I know, but it’s true. I would literally get out of bed only one time to go to the bathroom, and I would have to stop along the way 2 times to rest. It is sort of similar to the weakness you feel when you have a really bad flu. Climbing one flight of stairs would generate the same burn and feeling of soreness that a brutal weight training workout would have created when I was healthy.
My father tried a lot of supplements and so did I. The one thing my father felt helped was CoQ10, and he wasn’t getting very good doses compared to the products available today. I also feel CoQ10 was very valuable, and I also consider magnesium supplements essential for me. But the most effective supplements simply made the fatigue less bad.
By the way, the CFS diagnosis is made only after eliminating other possible causes of the symptoms. If there is endocrine dysfunction, for example, it’s not CFS. No one knows what causes CFS or the closely related fibromyalgia or how to fix it.
I haven’t heard from you in awhile. I’ve always enjoyed your posts. Fortunately my CFS has never been as bad as yours, and it is true, there are a number of gradations.
I agree. Exercise generally makes things worse, not better.
I’ve used CoQ10 and NADH… but did not get much remission from them. With the supplements I’ve used I could probably have my own health food store. lol
How much remission do you have now would you say? Are there any other treatments you’ve found helpful?
The FAILSAFE diet seems to have been the most promising treatment for me.
I haven’t heard from you in awhile. I’ve always enjoyed your posts. Fortunately my CFS has never been as bad as yours, and it is true, there are a number of gradations.
I agree. Exercise generally makes things worse, not better.
I’ve used CoQ10 and NADH… but did not get much remission from them. With the supplements I’ve used I could probably have my own health food store. lol
How much remission do you have now would you say? Are there any other treatments you’ve found helpful?
The FAILSAFE diet seems to have been the most promising treatment for me.
plantpoisonsandrottenstuff.info FAILSAFE stands for Free of Additives, Low in Salicylates, Amines and Flavour Enhancers [/quote]
Hi Dopa, thanks for the kind words. I’ve been busy and so didn’t log on for a few months this winter.
I definitely didn’t try many supplements compared to you. Yikes. If someone I knew were to have CFS now, I would have recommended they try many of the supplements you listed. It’s disappointing that few of them seemed to help.
I feel that I have complete remission now. I do have some days with fairly low energy–nothing at all like with CFS, but also not quite the high energy and drive I had consistently in my 20’s before the CFS. However, I can train as much as I want with only positive and no negative effects. The constant sore throats, sinusitis, low blood sugar, etc. are completely gone.
[quote]forevernade wrote:
I don’t think CoQ10 would be a good idea, because my client has low blood pressure when his CFS is in full swing. CoQ10 can lower blood pressure.
Does anyone know of the significance of the blood pressure change when taking CoQ10?
Is there another delivery system or a supplement similar to CoQ10 which does not lower blood pressure?[/quote]
That is interesting. I had low blood pressure as well. I did not measure for myself to see if CoQ10 lowered it further. However, it’s quite possible it will not lower blood pressure that’s already low. I’d try the CoQ10 and monitor blood pressure for any change while taking it.
[quote]andersons wrote:
Hi Dopa, thanks for the kind words. I’ve been busy and so didn’t log on for a few months this winter.
I definitely didn’t try many supplements compared to you. Yikes. If someone I knew were to have CFS now, I would have recommended they try many of the supplements you listed. It’s disappointing that few of them seemed to help.
I feel that I have complete remission now. I do have some days with fairly low energy–nothing at all like with CFS, but also not quite the high energy and drive I had consistently in my 20’s before the CFS. However, I can train as much as I want with only positive and no negative effects. The constant sore throats, sinusitis, low blood sugar, etc. are completely gone.[/quote]
Hi Andersons,
Is there anything in particular you think helped in your remission? I am still not over the hump yet, but am reasonably functional. I would like to be able to work out more often than 1 to 2 times per week.
Great input here. How are you guys doing? I thought I must be the only one on the planet to be hard/stubborn/(dumb?) enough to keep trying to work out with 20 years of fms/cfs/mps symptoms. Have really been avoiding this place lately because it is so frustrating reading about all these great routines, intensity, frequency, etc. when my own experience is enduring pure hell(you know the symptoms) for days and weeks on end for one good workout.
Myself: at 38 down to once a week workouts plus walking 1 hour 2-3 times a week, very low reps only at least 5-10 minutes rest between sets, about 5-6 exercises a session, three different workouts to get all the major compound/core exercises in, often have to take the fourth week off for recovery on top of that so it takes three-four weeks to get a “normal’s” weeks worth of lifting in. striking workouts few and far between with low reps, lots of rest, etc. intensity of striking just wipes me out but I’m mentally dependent on being able to throw if I had to defend myself.
carb/choc/caffeine cravings: some success here with very low carb diet but still eating way too many calories to lose the weight I’d like to (20 lbs or so of superfluous tissue hanging around yet) dropped all alcohol (no more homebrewing or microbreweries, sob)
Had some success with keeping myofascial pain/trigger point down when able to exercise more, but then the fatigue kicks in more and puts a stop to any progress on that front.
I know that this is an old topic but I am hoping that some of the people who posted are still around.
I thought that I had tried everything possible to get rid of my fatigue and be able to train more often but this tread has given me a lot of new ideas.
One of the things I would like to know is how do you know if it really is CFS? My doctor has ordered general blood work to check my health. According to the results I am healthy. According to my doctor this means that I suffer from CFS. But I am not certain that the test my doctor ordered are the right ones to rule out all other possibilities. So what test should you get to rule out all other possibilities? The test that my doctor ordered are:
Hi all, I just wanted to mention to anyone with cfs/me/fibro or if you know anyone with ms/als/parkinsons/ra to please get tested for lyme disease. Lyme disease is oft times called the great imitator as it can cause such a wide variety of symptoms and appear to be so many other different diseases. It is one of the most misdiagnosed diseases. I was diagnosed with cfs 8 years ago, then 2 years ago it came to light that it was actually lyme/lyme coinfections and not cfs. Once I began learning about lyme disease I realized that the same pattern had happened to many other people originally diagnosed with cfs/me. (If you live in Canada send away to Igenix labs in the US for testing as the Canadian testing is woefully inaccurate).
Iâ??ve fallen out of touch with the cfs scene once I shifted my focus to lyme, so the following will probably be old news to anyone with cfs, but on the off chance it could help someone, some proposed hypothesises for some cfs subtypes are methylation cycle block/glutathione depletion or XMRV infection. For methylation cycle block/glutathione depletion look into Rich Van Konynenburgâ??s work or Amy Yaskoâ??s work for treatment protocols. Concerning xmrv virus, as far as I know, the research into its possible causation of cfs is at its very infancy, so there arenâ??t any treatments of course, but hopefully it proves to be helpful in the future.
Itâ??s late here and my batteries are running low so I hope that was all coherent. To anyone with cfs/me etc, please, please donâ??t give up hope.
I apologise for resurrecting a very old thread but I came across it while searching for bodybuilding and chronic fatigue syndrome in google which prompted me to register to this forum.
I’ve suffered with CFS for 10 years now and while having made an almost full recovery in most aspects of my life I really struggle with my weightlifting. I’ve been lifting properly for about 3 years now and my progress is pitiful to say the least.
I eat in a surplus, with meticulous attention paid to my macros, and I get a what I guess a normal person would consider adequate rest but my body just doesn’t respond. I’ve tried various workout programs; full body, push pull legs, upper lower, 3 day split, 6 day split, phat etc. Also experimenting with varied intensity and frequency to no avail.
I’ve also changed to doing a calisthenics/weights hybrid routine with greater emphasis on the calisthenics following advice from my physio due to problems from an old back injury. Surprisingly this program has left me feeling more burnt out than I have felt in a long time.
I noticed a number of you have praised the use of a low carb diet for people with CFS but I was wondering what sort of p/c/f ratio you would recommend?
Also in terms of routine I was wondering what you’ve found to be the most beneficial to you? After three years I’m still no closer to finding my sweet spot in terms of recovery, intensity and volume.
I had been through some pretty intense fatigue and similar symptoms not too long ago, coming down from some SSRI drugs for anxiety and getting some pretty intense dissociation as a by product which set mental exhaustion and disorientation ; though at times it was hard to say if the tiredness was stemming more from mental or physical as a start point, It seems you do not have one without effecting the other though… My thoughts to anyone going through CFS or other similar challenges.
From what I have read and understand about CFS they say physical exercise can commonly set relapse or worsening symptoms, I guess there is a lot of conflicting info out there.
Hope you find the answers you are looking for Jheard.