Tag Archives: Conditions and Diseases

Epiphany on Classical Acupuncture & Chronic Fatigue

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“All this time I thought I had Chronic Fatigue,” Jackie said as a light bulb seemed to appear over her head.

I was at a new dentist this week after accepting that I wasn’t going to make it to Palo Alto, where my dentist of over ten years is located. Jackie was taking X-rays of my mouth while she asked me questions about the condition that was causing me to snack intermittently. At one point, I said something about how the fatigue wasn’t the worst part – although that’s bad enough. But it’s the difficulty recovering, including the inability to sleep though wiped out, that’s the toughest.

That was when Jackie had her moment. Like many people she struggles with her energy level but, unlike this Chronic Fatigue patient, she rests and returns to normal.  Continue reading →

Chelation Therapy & Chronic Fatigue

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Looking back on it now, I don’t know why I was so upset. It was merely another step in my recovery journey. I guess at the time it felt like my life was over…

When “Dr. Jordan” suggested testing me for heavy metals, I assumed the results would be negative. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to do the test. We could cross that off the list of possibilities and move on to the next thing. By now, I knew I had Chronic Fatigue and I knew that while the pH Miracle treatment protocol had helped me tremendously, there was still a missing piece in my recovery puzzle. But finding out that the mercury, cadmium, arsenic and lead levels in my body were off the charts had not been part of my plan.  Continue reading →

Why Ask Why?

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I could feel the panic rising inside me. It was 2007 and I had finally found out what was wrong with me after two years. But this had the effect of burning up my savings faster as I pursued treatment. It was like running at top speed towards the edge of a cliff. You need momentum in order to have a chance of taking off into the air. But you might fall over the edge. To make matters worse, my improvement appeared to be stalling.

There was nothing else to do except call Tracy Beckerley. “Why did I get Chronic Fatigue?” I had met Tracy at my birthday celebration during healthier times. The party favor was a fifteen minute Tarot card reading and I loved the way Tracy combined her psychology degree with intuitive skills.  Continue reading →

Where Are My Boundaries?!

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“Dr. Hayden’s” other Chronic Fatigue patient was thinking of trying a clinic I also happened to be considering. The patient felt unsure about the clinic and had asked Dr. Hayden to investigate. So, in the middle of my appointment, Dr. Hayden asked me.

Wait. What?  Continue reading →

The Limits of Logic in Healing Chronic Fatigue & Fibromyalgia

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I was in a flat somewhere in Edinburgh, Scotland when I got into a conversation about Euclidean geometry. My fellow undergraduate was studying mathematics (I was getting a Bachelor’s in chemistry), and had just learned a system of mapping three dimensional space using circles. This meant that what we had all been taught as children – x, y and z axes that were straight lines – was merely a particular way of looking at things. It had come from Euclid‘s approach to describing shapes mathematically. Instead of looking at space as being made of cubes and straight lines, you can look at it as circles and spheres. What we’d been taught as the way to map 3D space was actually just one way, based on one man’s theory. Whoa.

Then there’s the theory of light. First Newton said rays of light were made up of a series of particles or corpuscles (the corpuscular theory of light). My memory gets a little sketchy here but I believe this competed with a wave theory of light for a while. Sometime in the nineteenth century, someone set up an experiment to test which theory was correct. The wave theory correctly predicted the results of the experiment and won the day until Einstein came along. I can’t tell you what is happening on the pioneering edge of physics today but I do know that as recently as when I was in high school (or not so recently) quantum physics helped us to equate the corpuscular nature with the wave-like nature of light. Whenever I solved problems in Advanced-level physics, I knew how to choose which equations to use based on which aspect of light I was dealing with.  Continue reading →

Twelve Chronic Fatigue Triggers and Their Gifts

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I happened to reconnect with my father’s sister shortly after I first fell sick six years ago. I hadn’t seen her since I was about seven years old. When I was having difficulty recovering from surgery about a year later, she mentioned that she’d gone through something similar. She too had undergone a myomectomy as a young woman and found herself unable to function afterwards. “How will I ever return to my law practice if I can’t even read the newspaper?” she’d asked herself. It took about six months but she eventually got better.

I now recognize her symptoms as meeting the minimum definition of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which suggests that I have (1)a genetic predisposition to this disease. Not only did reconnecting with her give me access to this information, I managed to summon the courage to tell her about the inexplicable, special connection I have always felt with her. ❑She told me she’d always felt the same way… Continue reading →

Understanding the Mind-Body Connection in Chronic Fatigue & Fibromyalgia

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Or, Forgiveness Part VI

Am I Crazy? Understanding the Mind-Body Connection in CFS/Fibromyalgia

by Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D.

The first half of this article was reprinted here last week.

The Mind-Body Connection

All illnesses have a psychological component. Although the highly stressed executive may have a bacterial infection such as Helicobacter pylori or excess acid causing his or her ulcer, it helps to remove the three telephones from his or her ear while treating the infections and excess acid.

I find that I, and most people with CFS/FMS, are mega-type-A overachievers. As a group, our sensitivity and intuitive abilities are high. We often had low self-esteem as children and tended to seek approval, sometimes from someone who simply was not going to give it. This, combined with our sensitivity to the feelings of others, caused us to avoid conflict and to try to meet other people’s needs—at the expense of our own. Many of us closed off our feelings and our empathic nature for a while because we were too young to handle their intensity. Because of our approval-seeking and low self-esteem, we often drove ourselves to being the best at what we did, or to try to be all things to all people. Not being able to say no because we wanted to avoid conflict or loss of approval led us to feel as though we could not defend our emotional boundaries, and left us feeling drained. We responded to fatigue by redoubling our efforts, instead of resting, as our bodies tried to tell us to do. As we depleted our energy reserves—sometimes while feeling great on an adrenaline “high”—we encountered the physical trigger to our disease (“blew our fuse”), whether it was an infection, an injury, childbirth, or something else. This trigger, combined with physical problems such as yeast overgrowth or hormonal deficiencies and, often, a genetic tendency to the disease, set the process in motion. Continue reading →

Am I Crazy?

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Or, Forgiveness Part V

Am I Crazy? Understanding the Mind-Body Connection in CFS/Fibromyalgia

by Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D.

In medicine, we have a bad habit. If a doctor cannot figure out what is wrong with the patient, the doctor brands that patient a “turkey.” Imagine calling an electrician because your lights do not work. The electrician checks all the wiring, can’t find the problem, and says, “You’re crazy. There’s nothing wrong with your lights.” You flip the switches and they still do not work, but the electrician just says, “I’ve looked. There’s no problem here,” and walks out the door. This is analogous to what many CFS patients experience. I apologize for the medical profession’s calling you crazy just because we cannot determine the cause of your problem. It is inappropriate and cruel.

Fortunately the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), one of the major governmental agencies responsible for CFS (and other) research, is spending millions of dollars on advertising to dispel the misconception that CFS is all in your mind. They are working hard to teach both doctors and the public that CFS is both a very physical and devastating illness. Hopefully, getting treatment will be easier in the future. Continue reading →

The Three Times My Bladder Failed

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Or, Forgiveness Part III

Sefi Atta won the inaugural Wole Soyinka Literature in Africa Prize and is a high school friend. Her latest book is Everything Good Will Come. When we reconnected recently, I learned a few surprising things about her memories of me! In this Forgiveness series, I’ve written about sources of overwhelming stress in my childhood, which I now understand contributed to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. What Sefi wrote about her impressions is reprinted below with her permission. It helped me to understand the stark difference between my inner life and outward appearances, and the value of reconciling the two in order to heal.

The Three Times My Bladder Failed

by Sefi Atta

When I was ten years old I had a piano teacher who hated me – Okay, perhaps she didn’t, but I couldn’t sight read music and this clearly irritated her. She would glare at me as I tried my best to wing it. Continue reading →

Glimpses of Healing: Lagos. London. New York.

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Or, Forgiveness Part II

I don’t remember why I was walking through the library of my new boarding school in England, with a guitar in my hands. I’ve never known how to play one. It was close to bedtime and there were a few girls from my year sitting in the carrels. Somebody asked me if I played the guitar and I said yes. Then I encouraged everyone to come out and sit around me.

I was the new, 15-year-old girl from Africa. During those first two weeks, I had been mostly quiet while I took in my new surroundings. I can’t say what I was thinking that night. Maybe it was simply time to break my silence. Once everybody was sitting politely in a semicircle around me, I dramatically put one foot up on a chair, took the guitar out of its case, perched it on my knee, and strummed away. Continue reading →