Occupy CFS

For years, the Pacific Fatigue Lab at the University of the Pacific has done the best research on exercise and ME/CFS. Staci Stevens, Dr. Chris Snell, and their collaborators perfected the use of two-day cardio-pulmonary exercise testing (CPET) in people with ME/CFS. Last week, Dr. Snell announced at the FDA meeting that the University had closed the Lab but that the work will continue at new locations.

Snell and colleagues have done more research documenting abnormal CPET results in ME/CFS than anyone else in the field. Beyond documenting abnormal results, the group has also proposed physical therapy regimens based on the metabolic dysfunction revealed in the tests. The Pacific group understands ME/CFS. They do not believe we can exercise our way out of the disease, but they do recommend staying as active as possible within limitations. Stevens was the first to recommend using a heart rate monitor for pacing, and her method is still one of the best out there. When I sought my own exercise testing, I relied on the protocol devised by this group.

So why would the Lab close when it has been such a successful pioneer in this area? Dr. Snell did not elaborate at the FDA meeting, but Stevens says the answer lies in patient services. The Lab has provided exercise testing and disability evaluation to ME/CFS patients for years. I personally know several people who succeeded in disability claims because of the assessments they received in the Lab. Stevens told me that University constraints would no longer allow the Lab to provide this essential service to patients. In order to continue the disability evaluation practice, the Lab had to leave the University.

Stevens created the Workwell Foundation fifteen years ago, and it was structurally meshed with the Fatigue Lab at the University. When the decision was made to close the Lab, Workwell became the backbone of the new effort. Disability evaluation and exercise testing will now be performed in two locations: the XCEL Physical Therapy Clinic in Ripon, California and Sierra Internal Medicine in Incline Village, Nevada (Dr. Dan Peterson’s clinic). Stevens says that the relocation actually enhances the quality of care that Workwell can provide patients. Working in Dr. Peterson’s office will not only offer patients access to his expertise in ME/CFS, but patients can receive IV saline to help them recover from the CPET. That’s an option I wish I had immediate access to last year. At the XCEL clinic, patients will have access to massage therapy to help with recovery, and there is the potential for rehab services in the future. Working with the XCEL Clinic also creates the opportunity for educating rehabilitation professionals, something that Stevens has been doing for years. Stevens says that leaving the University will improve the quality of Workwell’s services because “our new partnerships bring greater diversity, more experience, enhanced services and additional professionals to help with patient care.”

Beyond the disability evaluations, Stevens says that research will continue as well. To me, this is a critical priority. Stevens, Snell and the rest of the team have done excellent work in this area and it needs to continue. Research funding has been and remains a challenge, but Workwell is pursuing grants and other funding in order to continue this research. The research team remains intact. Snell, Dr. Todd Davenport, Dr. Mark Van Ness, and others from the University of the Pacific are staying involved in Workwell. Stevens has also added a Scientific Advisory Committee to Workwell’s structure. Separating from the University may create new challenges for Workwell in terms of grant and research administration, but Stevens says that the team is committed to continuing research in this important area. Several manuscripts are in progress, and members of the team continue to speak at conferences and meetings, including Snell’s presentation at the FDA last week.

Workwell’s goal is “to facilitate an understanding of the biological basis for fatigue and provide objectively determined therapeutic interventions that will improve quality of life” for people with ME/CFS. Fee-for-service exercise testing will provide the basis for disability evaluations, and will help fund more research. Workwell will also continue to educate researchers, health care providers, and policy makers about evaluating and treating people with ME/CFS. Stevens told me that, “We have the same personnel with the same services at nicer facilities.” This change is a new chapter for Stevens and her team, and new challenges will certainly arise, but the core team remains committed to helping people with ME/CFS.

 

Exercise is an issue for every CFS patient, and there is no shortage of advice on whether and how to do it. On January 14th, the CDC hosted a conference call as part of its Patient Centered Outreach and Communication Activity (PCOCA) efforts. Dr. Nancy Klimas and Dr. Connie Sol presented their exercise advice for people with ME/CFS. I’ve seen some sharp criticism of the presentation, so I thought it would be helpful to compare their advice to the recommendations from Dr. Christopher Snell’s group at the Pacific Fatigue Lab. Dr. Snell and his collaborators (Staci Stevens, Todd Davenport, Mark Van Ness) have done the most work on exercise capacity in CFS, and published a conceptual model for safe exercise in 2010. You can learn more about their work in this webinar they gave last year.

Why Do It?

It’s common knowledge that exercise is an important part of preventing heart disease, diabetes, and osteoporosis. And I think most CFS patients would be eager to exercise if it did not make us sick. On Monday, Dr. Klimas said that deconditioning explains much of the dysautonomia seen in CFS. I think she may have overstated it because there are physically fit people who develop POTS, NMH or other orthostatic conditions, but deconditioning certainly wouldn’t help. Dr. Klimas described herself as the “perfect advocate to talk about exercise” because of her decades of research and clinical experience focused on biomarkers and immune function. She does not believe exercise is the only possible treatment for the disease (unlike proponents of the psychosocial model), but she also does not think it should be ignored.

I should note that while Drs. Klimas and Sol use exercise to provoke PEM so they can measure the gene expression cascade that follows, they have published no papers on exercise physiology in CFS. Snell and his group have published multiple papers on the topic, including a study that shows deconditioning is not the cause of PEM. Despite showing that there is metabolic dysfunction unique to CFS, Snell and many other experts recommend being as active as is safely tolerated. Stronger muscles will lead to less pain. Being as physical fit as possible will improve our chances with heart disease and other long-term consequences. If we can safely tolerate a certain kind or level of activity, we should do it. The emphasis must be on the word SAFE, and activity should be tailored to each individual patient’s capacity.

Identifying a Target Heart Rate

My articles on PEM and exercise explain the body’s energy systems and the importance of heart rate in detail. For purposes of this post, I can say that both Klimas and Snell agree that heart rate at the anaerobic threshold is the limit for safe activity in CFS. So how do we identify the correct heart rate?

Dr. Sol uses a single test in which the patient exercises to exhaustion. Multiple measurements help identify the heart rate at the anaerobic threshold, and then that heart rate is used to design an individualized exercise protocol. Dr. Snell and Staci Stevens use a two day maximum exercise test to do the same thing. That second test is critical because CFS patients’ metabolic function declines significantly after the first test. In my own case, my heart rate at the anaerobic threshold went from 105 on day one to 95 on day two. Under Sol’s system, 105 beats per minute would be my maximum heart rate, but that would be too high on any day that I was not well rested. My personal view is that by skipping the second test, Sol and Klimas are at risk for setting the safety limits too high for most patients.

Not everyone can take a two-day exercise test (for a variety of reasons), so there is a simple calculation for guessing at your heart rate at the AT. Klimas and Sol recommended: 220 minus your age times 60%. In my case, (220 – 44) x 60% = 105.6 bpm (matching my AT on day one).  Stevens recommends 50%, or (220 – 44) x 50% = 88bpm (lower than my AT on day two). Here’s the problem with the calculation: a bedridden patient would not have the same limit as me (housebound) or a friend of mine (who can leave the house every day). We’re all sick with CFS; we all have metabolic dysfunction. But it’s unlikely that our heart rate limits are identical.  Patients must be cautioned that the calculation is a guess only; careful experimentation is necessary to establish your safe level.

Defining Safe Activity

Both Sol and Stevens agree that the safe level of activity is the level that does not produce symptoms. Dr. Sol said that she knows she has prescribed the right level of activity when the patient reports that he/she feels no difference. Stevens has said that any symptom flare that lasts more than a few hours is too much and that activity must be scaled back.

What qualifies as exercise? Both Sol and Stevens agree that activities of daily living should be seen as exercise. The effort required to cook a meal or shower can raise your heart rate too high, and may need to by modified to stay in the safe zone. They both agree patients should examine the activities that make them tired, and try to adapt and pace those activities. Dr. Klimas said that these methods will lead to a more even, reliable supply of energy; Dr. Snell has said the same thing.

Beyond activities of daily living, Sol suggested yoga or non-weight bearing activities such as water exercises. She recommended starting with a minute or two of activity followed by a few minutes of rest, repeated five times once a week to start. In contrast, Stevens recommends a more modest starting point of stretching and range of motion exercises. Patients should advance to low intensity, short duration activity only if the stretching is well tolerated. For Snell and Stevens, heart rate is not the only indicator of capacity. Patients must pay attention to their perceived level of effort, and avoid activities (or activity duration) that feels “somewhat hard.”

Severely Ill

There is no question that there are CFS patients who are too sick to come to a lab and pedal a bike for eight minutes. Accordingly, these patients have not been studied for metabolic dysfunction and exercise capacity. Drs. Klimas and Sol made no comment on Monday about what these patients could or should do. I interviewed Staci Stevens as part of the research for my article on exercise, and based on her advice I wrote:

A bed bound patient may need assistance to turn in bed or complete basic activities such as showering, but heart rate biofeedback can help identify the appropriate pace and duration of these activities. Bed bound patients can also try deep diaphragmatic breathing, perhaps six deep breaths at a time. Deep breathing will lower heart rate, and also work the large muscles of the diaphragm. Severely ill patients might begin with passive stretching, where a physical therapist or caregiver moves the patient’s limbs slowly and carefully to gently stretch muscles and try to improve flexibility.

This must be done very cautiously. There is simply no published data that investigates the metabolic dysfunction in bedridden CFS patients or that explains what they can do safely. The cost of trial and error can be high, so patients should be very careful.

Expectations

Reasonable and realistic expectations are an important part of any rehabilitation effort. Snell and his group describe the goal as being as active as possible within toleration, and hopefully this will lead to a more predictable energy supply (eliminating the push-crash cycle). In contrast, Dr. Klimas said on Monday that patients will show improvement if they follow the program, and that when they stay below the AT they feel “much better.” Then Dr. Klimas claimed that some patients have been able to return to work or athletics. This is an extraordinary claim, especially in the absence of published data. How impaired were these patients to start with? How long did they follow the program, and was the program standardized across patients? Did these patients show objective improvement on subsequent exercise testing? How long did their improvement last?

Personally, I was very surprised to hear Dr. Klimas make this claim. She is quite familiar with the severity of the disease, the dearth of treatments, and the danger of false hope. In my opinion, claiming that pacing with a heart rate monitor and slowly progressing exercise is curative in the absence of published data is misleading, at best. The notion that exercise will make us all better is pervasive and potentially harmful to patients. Show me the data.

The Comparison

There are many similarities between the advice of Klimas and Sol on the one hand and Snell and Stevens on the other. Both sides agree that patients should be as active as they can safely tolerate. They agree that activities of daily living should be seen as exercise. Both recommend using a heart rate monitor to pace activity by staying under the anaerobic threshold. Both recommend starting very slow with exercise, and avoiding exercise that increases symptoms.

There are also some differences. The two groups calculate the safe zone differently, with Klimas and Sol potentially setting limits higher than patients’ anaerobic thresholds. Klimas and Sol offered no advice to bedridden or other severely incapacitated patients, while Snell and Stevens offer at least a little guidance. Finally, Snell and Stevens do not suggest that their program is curative in any way. They suggest a cautious but realistic goal of eliminating the push-crash cycle. In contrast, Dr. Klimas was quite expansive in her claim that her program had helped some patients return to work.

Despite their differences, both groups give the same basic advice to CFS patients: use a heart rate monitor to help you recognize when you are doing too much; ensure adequate rest; be as active as you can without triggering symptom flares or post-exertional malaise. This is a good starting point, but I hope that one day we will have access to physical therapists and others trained to help us navigate these limits. From my own experience, trying to apply this expert advice on my own has been unnecessarily frustrating.

Sing with it with me: It’s the most challenging time of the year!

Some CFS patients I know feel like summer is the most challenging time, between the heat and kids being off school. For me, it’s the holidays. Every year, I try to adjust my expectations and scale back on what I try to do. And every year, there is at least one day that has me on the verge of sitting in a corner, rocking back and forth and muttering about glitter.

The queue of blog posts I want to write currently stands at seventeen, and some are more time-sensitive than others. There is also the FDA meeting on Ampligen this week. But in service to my efforts to pace my activities and be realistic about my capacity, I’ve decided those posts will have to wait.  I want to keep writing for you, and some of the upcoming posts are important. But I need to spend time with my family, too. And I would really like to get to New Year’s Day and not need the entire month of January to recover from the holidays.

So I hope you will be patient with me, and that you’ll come back in a few weeks when I start posting again. I wish you a joyous holiday season, and a Happy and HEALTHY New Year for us all!

One of the most frustrating aspects of coping with CFS is the lack of definitive data. A PubMed search for “chronic fatigue syndrome” yields 4,877 results (as of today), but as a patient on the front lines I have to make treatment decisions based on theory, supposition, and anecdotal evidence.

Case in point: I’m wearing a heart rate monitor and reducing my activity to stay below my anaerobic threshold based on a few studies that show CFS patients have disruptions in their energy metabolism. There is even a published case study showing that following this pacing method and short duration exercise leads to improvement in functional capacity and activity recovery. But because my anaerobic threshold is so low, I exceed my heart rate limit just by climbing 12 steps. An expert advised me to reduce my activity to stay below the heart rate limit, even if it meant stopping halfway up the steps to rest or using a shower chair. Another expert endorsed the use of beta blockers to lower my heart rate. That topic is worthy of a separate post, but there are patients who have benefited from this approach. Sue Jackson has written excellent posts about her experience doing just that, and she credits beta blockers with drastically improving her functional capacity. When I asked the first expert about beta blockers, the expert responded that beta blockers would not change my actual anaerobic threshold but would mask when I was exceeding my limit by lowering my heart rate.

So how do I decide what to do? Expert One advises significantly reducing my activity to obey the heart rate limit, and not using medication to lower the heart rate. Expert Two advises using the medication to lower heart rate in order to increase my activity levels. There is no research that definitively answers this question. There have been no case control studies or systematic long-term follow up. Both experts can support their theories with anecdotal patient data. Both experts can support their theories with sound reasoning. There is simply no data that answers the question: which method is better for my health?

Large treatment trials, longitudinal studies, and sophisticated research into etiology and disease course drive treatment decisions for many diseases and conditions. If I had breast cancer, detailed analysis of the tumor would tell my doctor which chemotherapy regimen to use and for how long. If I had a broken hip and a heart condition, a physical therapist would be able to prescribe a rehab program suitable for both conditions. If I was HIV positive, triple therapy would be prescribed and tightly monitored to make frequent adjustments.

But those of us with CFS are left flapping in the wind. I think even the best CFS expert doctors in the country would acknowledge that treating people with CFS involves a lot of trial and error, educated guesses, and fine-tuning. The CFIDS Association recently stated that CFS patients on Patients Like Me report trying over 800 different treatments. This is insane! It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see how much will stick.

Making CFS treatment decisions should be like playing sudoku – there might be some trial and error, but there is inherent logic to the puzzle. Instead, making these decisions feels like the Sunday New York Times crossword on steroids, with incomprehensible clues and multiple right answers. No one can get all the right answers based on insufficient data. Should I take the beta-blockers, or should I buy a shower chair? Your guess is as good as mine. Literally.

I have been working really hard at resting. That probably doesn’t make sense, but I have been struggling to incorporate preemptive rest into my routine and it feels like a lot of work. The rationale for preemptive rest is that scheduled breaks help your body restore its energy capacity because you are not pushing to the point of exhaustion. Bruce Campbell explains preemptive rest very well, and credits it as a key component of his own recovery.

I was very resistant to trying it. My functional window of opportunity is so small and fleeting. Why should I interrupt an activity to rest, especially when I feel like I can keep going? I’ve always been a power-through-it kind of person, and I’ve approached CFS the same way. Taking two scheduled breaks a day to lie down and rest, regardless of how I feel, has been a huge emotional disruption. I hate this daily reminder that I am weak. I hate feeling like a sick person who has to lie down after an hour on the computer. I don’t want to need this rest. I shouldn’t have to need it. I should be able to overcome these limitations, not feed them or cater to them. When I started taking these rest breaks, I hated it so much I would lie on my bed and fume about it (and yes, that defeats part of the purpose of resting).

But I wanted to give this method a fair trial. I knew I had to change the way I think about the rest breaks in order to get any benefit from it. I thought about treatments for other diseases and how those patients probably don’t enjoy the process either. If I had cancer, I would hate chemotherapy but I would do it. In fact, I think I would attack chemotherapy with a “let’s do this!” attitude. Cancer? Screw cancer, give me the chemo – I’ll take it and kick cancer’s ass. Rather than seeing preemptive rest as a burdensome imposition, would it help me to treat it as a daily medicine?

I don’t get pissy about taking my medications; I need them, so I take them on schedule every day. But I am still struggling to feel that way about preemptive rest. For example, I should lie down right now but I want to finish this blog post before lunch. I’m at war with myself every day because my expectations and desires are always bigger than my energy capacity. No matter how short my list is, no matter how much I have reduced my expectations, I never accomplish everything on my list. Taking rest breaks feels like a disruption and waste of time.

Would I resent chemo like this? All the horrible side effects and agony of chemo have a purpose: to rid you of cancer. I see my medications the same way: I take pain medication and it helps my pain. I am trying to bring the same attitude to preemptive rest. The rest breaks are necessary, just like my pain medication, and I should embrace it as another part of my arsenal. I realize that it might take months to see benefits from any treatment, whether it’s chemo or a new pain medication or rest breaks. I know I have to stick with it, and part of that process is adopting a positive attitude towards a method designed to help me. I am working hard, every day, to give rest breaks a fair chance.

Update (11/30/12): After I published this post, ME/CFS Self-Help Guru posted about reframing challenges in a positive way.

 

I went to a concert on Saturday night. I know, right? Given how sick I have been, and how much I have struggled after outings, a concert sounds pretty crazy. In fact, I haven’t been to a concert in many years.

My first date with my husband was the Cranberries concert at The Tower Theater in 1994. We only dated two months before I got sick, but in that time we saw the Soup Dragons, Youssou N’Dour, and Stone Temple Pilots (give me a break, it was 1994!!!). Over the years, we’ve purchased and wasted tickets to more concerts than I can count. I’ve made it to a few, but more often than not I’ve been too sick to go. Concerts are a nightmare to people with CFS: it’s at night (sometimes very late); it’s loud; it’s crowded. Sensory overload is part of the package, on top of the physical effort of just getting there. Even on the few occasions I was able to make it to a show, I had to deal with terrible relapses afterwards. I always ended up wondering if a two hour concert was worth two or three weeks of recovery. After awhile, I gave up trying.

So why now? I am a huge fan of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and seeing them in concert has been on my “Bucket List” for several years. This was more to me than just another concert. I love – no, LOVE – their music and what they are doing as a band. The Chocolate Drops are rescuing black string band and fiddle music and updating it for a new generation. This music is pure; the happy songs are joyful, and the sad songs are honest. These are songs about life: life is hard but take joy where you can find it, even in something as simple as cornbread and butter beans. Their music makes me think of family, leisurely afternoons on the porch, simple food, laughter, and sweet tea. The only Southern things about me are the fact that I was born in Arkansas and my years-long search for the perfect biscuit recipe, but this music touches my heart in a way I can’t fully express. Watch a few of their performances (try this one, this one and this one), and see if you don’t feel the same.

Still, my ability to go to a concert is a crapshoot at best and carries the steep price of weeks of illness afterwards. Seeing the Chocolate Drops in concert always seemed out of reach because their concerts were in the city, or had an opening act, or were too far away. Then an appearance in Reading, Pennsylvania showed up on their schedule and I started to plan. The distance was doable; there was no opening act; the theater is small; there was wheelchair seating. I cleared the decks for preemptive rest, giving up three other events in October to save the energy for this. The week prior to the concert, I restrained myself from doing just about everything. Even so, I felt shaky and weak on the day of the concert and probably would have stayed home if it was anyone besides the Chocolate Drops.

We sat in the first row, which meant we could see how the band members coordinated with each other throughout the concert. This is a talented group of musicians, each of them playing multiple instruments. They played a number of songs that are not on any of their albums, and talked about the history of the music they play – black string band, Piedmont fiddling, and the minstrel legacy. I was mesmerized by the bones, and despite a demonstration I still don’t understand how they get such complicated sounds just from knocking them together. The entire evening was magical from start to finish. My Mom, mindful of my limitations, pointed out we could leave early but the only way to get me to do that would have been to drag me out.

And then it happened, as I figured it would. During their performance of Leaving Eden, the magnitude of the experience crashed over me like a wave. That song makes me tear up on a good day: “I can’t tell my daughters all the things I’m scared of. But I am not afraid of that bright glory up above. Dying’s just another way to leave the ones you love.” I thought about the sacrifices I had made just to be there and share this experience with my family. I thought about the price I would pay afterwards. I had fantasized about this concert during long days of being bedridden, with no assurance that I would be able to fulfill this dream. I would have wept right there in the theater, but I bit back the tears so that my husband and parents would not be concerned. I let that music pass over me and through me. Sometimes, especially during the worst times, I am afraid. I feel like CFS will never get better, there will never be a treatment, and every crash could be my last: the one from which I will never recover. Those are long and lonely hours, and it is easy (perhaps natural) to forget that everyone at some point experiences the same level of suffering. This music reminds me that I am not alone; it tells me that I can carry on. This is soul-full music.

For a few hours on Saturday, I was paroled from the prison of my illness. I laughed, sang, clapped, and tapped my feet to some of my favorite songs. I felt triumphant in overcoming my disability and finding a way to achieve this dream. Thank you, Carolina Chocolate Drops, for your music and for sharing that moment with me.

 

 

No walls can keep me protected
No sleep, nothing in between me and the rain
And you can’t save me now
I’m in the grip of a hurricane
I’m gonna blow myself away
(Florence + the Machine)

 

Hurricane Sandy made a beeline for my house. At least, that’s how I felt. We stocked up on food and water, assembled all the flashlights and batteries, and charged up the emergency radio. My husband flood-proofed the basement and and set up a mattress in the room farthest from all the big trees. We have a gas stove, so we knew we would be able to cook. We were ready.

And I was a mess. First, I stopped paying attention to the news because it upset me so much. Then I worked on a blog post to distract myself until my brain stopped working. Then I rushed to cook things before the power went out. And finally, I fell asleep on the couch while my husband monitored the basement and our power and the trees.

I’ve never experienced so much anxiety before a storm. Part of it was all the hype from the tv and social media. And part of it was legitimate given the scope of the storm and its aftermath. But I was acutely conscious that much of my anxiety was fueled by my powerlessness. What would I do if a tree fell on the house? How would I cope in a noisy shelter? What if we lost power for a week? What if the basement flooded? My journey into pacing has made me painfully aware of just how disabled I am. I no longer hold any illusions about my capacity to do physical work, or to handle stress, or to live outside the normal routine. I do not have capacity for those things. I feel like a prisoner in my home, and the prospect of damage to that home was simply overwhelming and deeply frightening to me.

Thankfully – miraculously – we were fine. We never lost power. The neighbor’s enormous tree fell away from the houses. Our basement did not get wet. Our families were not quite so fortunate. One disabled relative had to evacuate to a hotel for a week while her home was without power. Other relatives lost power when a tree fell on a neighbor’s garage, taking out two utility poles. And a family cottage at the Jersey shore was in the direct path of the storm, and flooded. There are months of paperwork, cleanup and repairs ahead to cope with that. But all of us are safe, and that is the most important thing.

The storm aftermath highlighted the extent of my impotence. My husband moved the disabled relative to the hotel. My husband spent a full day helping to clean out the flooded cottage. Me? I emailed the lawn service to ask them to clean up the leaves and branches in the yard. I was incapable of doing anything else. No one expected anything of me, except me. I watched our family work hard to cope and recover, and my contribution was to answer the door on Halloween.

This Makes. Me. Crazy. And sad, and useless, and powerless, and angry, and afraid, and dependent, and resentful. Why is this my life? How can I endure existing but not being of use? I’m not an elderly woman who has raised her family and contributed to society over many years. I imagine that it is easier to rest and let others do for you, after you have done for them over the years. But I am in the prime years of my life, trapped in a body that just gives out on me after the smallest physical tasks. I sat here, feeling like the hurricane was aimed at a bullseye on my back, and there was not a single damn thing I could do about it.

But I also know I am blessed and protected. The havoc that Sandy wreaked on millions of others is heartbreaking. Others are living the worst case scenario that I feared, and here I sit. Safe. But powerless to help anyone.

 

Let’s play a game. Imagine you have a large puzzle that makes an Impressionist picture of a colorful cottage-style garden. You can put it together as long as you have the picture on the box. First you assemble the lower left corner, all lavender and yellow flowers. Another section of red roses sits somewhere in the middle. Near the upper right corner is a section of white and gray paving stones, and you also put together an area of green herbs although you are not sure where it goes yet. This puzzle will take a lot of time to solve, but with the finished image on the box you know that you’ll put it together eventually.

Now imagine the box is gone. All you have is a white/gray blob, and lavender/yellow section, the red rose section and another green blob. The rest of the pieces are all mixed up together, and while you can separate out some edge pieces and consolidate others by color, without the box you cannot even be certain what the final picture should look like. It’s frustrating, isn’t it, to have all those pieces on the table and not see how it fits together or even know for certain that you have all the pieces. That’s the feeling I got reading the American Family Physician’s article on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Diagnosis and Treatment. I dissected the AAFP patient information sheet on CFS in a recent post, but now I think it’s important to examine this review article by the same authors. The article attempts to present a finished picture of CFS for family practitioners, but so many pieces are missing that the paper bears little resemblance to the CFS I live with.

Generally Speaking

“Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Diagnosis and Treatment” by Dr. Joseph Yancey and Dr. Sarah Thomas gives an overview of CFS for family physicians. They review the Oxford and Fukuda criteria, the basic lab workup recommended by CDC, and a list of exclusionary conditions. In a section on etiology of CFS, the authors quickly cover the immune system, genetics, psychosocial, adrenal system, and sleep/nutrition. Finally, the treatment section focuses on cognitive behavioral therapy (they say it works), graded exercise therapy (this works too), nonpharmacological (nothing really helps) and pharmacological treatments (these don’t work either).

In the authors’ defense, there are significant space limitations in the American Family Practitioner journal: 1,500 to 1,800 words in the case of clinical review articles like this one. There is no way to include all the information about CFS that family doctors need in such a limited space. It also appears that neither Yancey nor Thomas are CFS experts, based on the very limited information I could find online. I emailed Dr. Yancey, the corresponding author for the paper, on October 24th with a few questions but to date I have not received a response.

Method Madness

Drs. Yancey and Thomas describe their research methods as follows:

A PubMed search was completed using the MeSH term chronic fatigue syndrome. The search included randomized controlled trials and clinical trials in English from the past 10 years. We also searched the Cochrane database, Essential Evidence Plus, the National Institutes for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site. Search date: August 26, 2011.

This methodology accounts for some of the missing pieces. First, anything published after August 26, 2011 was not captured in the search. That includes the IACFS/ME Primer, NCI’s paper on the risk of cancer among elderly CFS patients, the ME-ICC criteria, and the Rituximab trial. But before we forgive the authors’ oversight of these papers based on the date of their literature search, consider a curiosity I found in the paper references. The authors cite one paper published after August 26, 2011: The FITNET trial of internet based CBT for adolescents with CFS is included as reference Number 27. Does that strike you as odd? If the authors truly limited themselves to the references found on August 26, 2011 then this paper should not be included. Furthermore, of all the papers published after August 2011 to include in a review of CFS treatment and diagnosis, why was a CBT paper the one cherry-picked by the authors?

Even within the boundaries of the search methodology, the authors missed some papers that would have been helpful in their overview sketch of CFS. I attempted to recreate the authors’ search in PubMed, and found more than 1,300 clinical study papers alone. These include all of the letters critical of the PACE study and Tom Kindlon’s many letters and papers on the potential harms and inaccuracies in CBT/GET studies. Other important papers such as the spinal fluid proteome by Schutzer, et al., the differential gene expression post-exercise paper from Light, et al., and the cytokine network modeling by Broderick, et al. were captured in the PubMed search but did not make it into this review paper.

Finally, there are several seminal papers that are not returned in the PubMed search. The Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome published the Canadian Consensus Criteria by Caruthers, et al., in 2003. This case definition is gaining broad acceptance among policy makers and researchers, but it does not show up in a PubMed search because the journal was never indexed in Medline. Another example is the Van Ness, et al. study showing the significance of two-day exercise testing in differentiating CFS patients from controls. This is a critical paper, suggesting a possible diagnostic test (albeit an extremely unpleasant one) for CFS. But because the journal was never indexed, these papers do not show up in a PubMed search and so non-experts like Yancey and Thomas never see them.

Cognitive Bias

I do not know what Dr. Yancey and Dr. Thomas believe about CFS, including whether they believe the illness is primarily psychological in origin. After reading this paper, however, I fear this may be the case. I can best illustrate this through examples.

In the opening paragraph of the article, the authors say “CFS is often mentally and emotionally debilitating, and persons with this diagnosis are twice as likely to be unemployed as persons with fatigue who do not meet formal criteria for CFS.” What about physically debilitating? If the authors recognized the physical disability experienced by many CFS patients, and the physical suffering of all of us, wouldn’t they mention it in this paragraph? This simple omission is a very subtle way to communicate that people with CFS are not physically ill.

There is a brief discussion of the case definition in the paper. According to the authors, the 1988 CDC definition focused on physical symptoms, and the 1991 Oxford definition “emphasize mental fatigue over physical symptoms.” But the criteria, printed as Table 1 in the article, require fatigue to be “severe, disabling, and affects physical and mental functioning.” I’m no fan of the Oxford definition, but even I can see the requirement of physical disability. Again, Yancey and Thomas gloss right over the fact that CFS has serious, physical symptoms.

In discussing the biopsychosocial model of CFS etiology, the authors say: “CFS is often associated with depression, which has led many physicians to believe that CFS is a purely psychosomatic illness. Evidence supporting this conclusion is lacking.” Fair enough. But then they say, “Strong evidence suggests that childhood trauma increases the risk of CFS by as much as sixfold.” Sigh. I covered this in my dissection of the patient information sheet. Childhood trauma may have physical systemic affects, but I am not aware of any evidence showing that CFS patients have higher rates of trauma compared to patients with other illnesses like MS or lupus or diabetes or cancer. In my opinion, it is misleading to single out childhood trauma as a risk factor for CFS in the absence of such evidence.

The authors devote space and attention to CBT and GET studies, and this is understandable given the fact that CBT and GET treatments have received the most study in CFS. CBT “can help persons with CFS recognize how their fears of activity lead to behaviors that ultimately cause them to feel more fatigued and disabled.” It is true that CBT can help patients correct activity avoidance behavior, but in my experience this is a very small minority of patients. Even the CDC, target of so much criticism, does not describe CBT this way. The CDC says: “CBT can be useful by helping them pace themselves and avoid the push-crash cycle in which a person does too much, crashes, rests, starts to feel a little better, and then does too much once again.” This is a more appropriate description of CBT that acknowledges the importance of self-management and the prevalence of the push-crash cycle, as opposed to the activity avoidance highlighted by Yancey and Thomas.

Graded exercise therapy is very controversial for CFS patients, mainly because traditional GET uses a scheduled increase process as opposed to a patient-driven increase process based on symptoms. Not surprisingly, this issue is not discussed in the paper. The authors do mention that a heart rate monitor can be used to avoid overexertion during exercise, but there is no mention of the body of evidence on CFS exercise testing and pacing methods. They even cite a study that suggests improvements in GET do not correlate with increases in exercise capacity, suggesting that GET may actually work by “decreasing symptom-focusing behavior in persons with CFS.” Pacing, the only behavioral technique that truly helps CFS patients, is not mentioned by name, although the authors do say:

Patients should be encouraged to take rest periods as necessary, and to practice relaxation techniques. Although there is no evidence these modalities are effective, they are unlikely to be harmful and may be helpful.

Neither CBT nor GET is curative because it does not target the underlying mechanism of illness. CBT is not curative for cancer or heart disease either, for the same reason. Drawing the conclusion that these therapies are not curative because of the patient is a fallacy, but this is the conclusion that Yancey and Thomas suggest:

Despite the positive results of CBT and graded exercise therapy, the effects are usually moderate and rarely lead to resolution of CFS. Patients with poor social adjustment, a strong belief in an organic cause for fatigue, or some sort of sickness benefit (i.e. financial incentive) tend to have worse responses to therapy. Unlike with many other illnesses, membership in a CFS support group was associated with worse outcomes.

The study cited by the authors in support of these statements is this one from 2002. That study points out its own limitations: it uses the Oxford definition, lost 17% of the patients to follow-up, and did not actually measure the exercise capacity of the patients. But this is the kind of evidence that is sufficient for Yancey and Thomas.

The overall tone, selective quotation, and reference choices give me the impression that the authors believe CFS to be a psychological condition, at least in part. I do not know this for a fact, but if I read only this article about CFS and nothing else, I would believe that it is an emotional problem. It’s not just the amount of space devoted to the psychosocial research. The authors focus on the psychological elements to the exclusion of discussion of physical disability, post-exertional malaise, and the well-documented physiological findings in this illness.

Missing Pieces

There are huge gaps in this paper. Orthostatic intolerance, an issue for most CFS patients, is not mentioned at all. Post-exertional malaise is not explained, and no CFS exercise studies are referenced. The importance of medications and other treatments in managing sleep and pain issues is ignored, and pain is barely discussed at all.

This article illustrates a few pieces of the puzzle, mainly CBT, GET and the psychosocial model of CFS. A family physician reading only this article would not be able to separate chronic fatigue from CFS patients, and would understand almost nothing about the complexity of CFS. I found the tone to be generally hopeless: try therapy and exercise but it probably won’t help you much. Maybe a motivated physician would visit the CDC website (and this illustrates the importance of fixing problems in those materials).

No one will be able to assemble the CFS puzzle using the pieces in this article. Too much evidence is ignored, too much emphasis is placed on the psychosocial pieces, and there is very little information about how to manage the other symptoms of the illness. I know the full picture exists and I can identify the gaps. But a family physician who does not have the picture of the box will not recognize all that is missing and will never be able to assemble the pieces in a way that will help CFS patients.

I fear that doctors will rely on this article to provide the same kind of advice I received from doctors in 1994: keep going to the gym, staying in bed is the worst thing you can do, get some counseling, there is nothing else we can do to help you. This bad advice and hopelessness did not help me, and may have even hurt me by keeping me much more active than my body could tolerate. It was years before I found and received adequate care for pain, sleep, and orthostatic intolerance, and even more years before I found expert help for pacing and activity management. This article will do nothing to change the way doctors treat CFS, and will reinforce the destructive pattern already in place.

I’m on the verge of tearing my hair out, and I suspect I’m not the only one. The American Academy of Family Physicians published a review article about CFS (paywall) on Monday, accompanied by a patient information sheet. From the very first sentence, this information sheet is a disaster. It packages harmful misinformation for family doctors to share with patients. Let’s take a look:

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a disorder that causes you to be very tired.

NO! No it does not! A person with sleep apnea is tired. A nursing mother is tired. A perfectly healthy person studying for the bar exam is tired (ask me how I know). CFS does not make me tired. CFS causes prostration, a medical term that means a collapse from complete physical or mental exhaustion. Using the word “tired” is not only medically inaccurate, it falsely minimizes the severity of my disease and my experience.

People with CFS may have other symptoms, such as poor sleep, trouble with remembering things, pain, sore throat, tender lymph nodes, or headaches.

Can you spot what’s missing? Post-exertional malaise! The generally accepted hallmark symptom of this disease is not on the list. It is the first symptom on the Fukuda criteria list of accompanying symptoms. But it’s not listed here and not explained to the patient.

Not everyone with CFS has all of these symptoms.

I know hundreds of CFS patients. Every single one of us has experienced these symptoms for extended periods of time, if not daily, over the course of years. While it is technically correct that the Fukuda criteria do not require all of those symptoms, it is an oversimplification to simply say we don’t have all the symptoms. And of course all the other symptoms and overlapping conditions are not mentioned at all.

Childhood trauma (for example, physical or sexual abuse) may raise the risk of getting it.

I am aware of two studies that showed a higher prevalence of childhood trauma among CFS cases compared to healthy controls (this one and this one). Here’s the problem: childhood trauma may raise the risk of many disorders later in life. Without comparing the prevalence rate of trauma among other illness groups, there is no way to know if the association with CFS is unique. Are there studies comparing the incidence of childhood trauma among people who develop multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, hepatitis, heart disease or  . . . oh, that’s right. Doing that kind of study in those illnesses might be offensive because those illnesses are real. But we can do those studies in CFS with no problem.

Two treatments can help with CFS: cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and graded exercise therapy. With CBT, a therapist teaches you about how your thinking affects how you feel and act. With graded exercise therapy, you slowly increase your physical activity, which hopefully increases your function.

You know where this is going, right? Setting aside the arguments about whether CBT and GET studies actually show a benefit, and setting aside how this sort of statement plays right into the mental illness meme, let’s talk about GET. Will GET increase CFS patients’ functional ability? Maybe some patients, but it should be pursued with extreme caution and prejudice. As the work of the Pacific Fatigue Lab and my own exercise testing results show, the energy metabolism systems of CFS patients are severely impaired. We do not make or use energy, or recover from activity, the way other people (including other illness groups) do. Graded exercise must be undertaken very carefully because it takes very little activity to push a patient into a severe crash.

I shudder to think about how family doctors will use this information sheet, and what it will do to the patients who receive it. What is truly remarkable about it is that it bears only a passing resemblance to the full review article and the AAFP’s patient education page on CFS. But this watered down, oversimplified summary of misinformation about CFS will undoubtedly be used, and it is likely to make things worse for patients, not better.

So does anyone – journalists, doctors, policymakers, or other observers – wonder why the CFS Advisory Committee and patient advocates have been begging CDC to fully revise its website and remove the harmful content that filtered into this information sheet?

This is why.

Does anyone wonder why the CFSAC  recommended that the CDC remove its Toolkit from the CDC website?

This is why.

Does anyone wonder why an alliance of organizations and patients wrote a lengthy and heavily referenced position paper in support of that recommendation?

This is why.

Does anyone wonder why there was such vigorous disagreement at the CFSAC meeting about whether professional societies like the AAFP should be invited to participate in revising the CFS case definition?

THIS. IS. WHY.

 

 

Update November 2, 2012: Author Toni Bernhard published a great article about the AAFP patient information sheet.

Update October 31, 2012: I’ve also published a detailed analysis of the AAFP review article on CFS.

Pacing is . . . actually, my descriptions of pacing generally involve expletives that are not appropriate for this blog, so we’ll stick with “Pacing is challenging.” One positive side effect of my pacing efforts, though, is that I am still celebrating my birthday one month after the fact.

Last week, I went out for a birthday lunch with Friend K. We’ve been friends for 22 years now, and K knew me for four years before I got sick. We went to law school and took the bar exam together, and undertook a mammoth road trip together. When I started dating my husband, K was the first friend I asked to check him out. Hanging out with K is great because she really gets the illness, and so I don’t have to talk about it but I can if I want to. She told me the latest stories about her sons, and generally made me laugh my ass off. For a few hours, I felt like a normal person having lunch with her best friend, and it was glorious.

I also went out for a birthday dinner last week with Friend M. I met M soon after I got sick, and she is another rare gem: a friend who gets it. M and her husband read a prayer at our wedding, and she is one of the most loyal and giving people I know. For my birthday, M took me to one of my favorite local restaurants for dinner and we closed that place down. The meal was sublime, but having M’s undivided attention for four hours was even better. She told me some great stories about her eight year old daughter, including the “court proceedings” in which M has been accused of posing as the tooth fairy. I felt just like the women at the table next to ours, enjoying a girls’ night out with one of my closest friends. These moments of normalcy, of interacting with the world the way I used to, are so rare and precious.

And then there was the payback. The day after that dinner, I was crashed but I didn’t care. It was totally worth the pain and post-exertional relapse. I was still high on the joy of being with my friends. But then I was crashed for two more days, and I started to question the price of normalcy.

My attempts to implement stricter pacing techniques have challenged me far more deeply than I expected. I’m questioning everything now. Before the exercise testing, I was absolutely convinced that having occasional episodes of normalcy was worth the crash days. Outings like these feed my spirit and make me so happy. But now I wonder if it’s the right thing to do. Do I have to give up the last few remnants of my healthy life in order to cope with my sick life? How do I strike the right balance between accommodating my physical limitations and hanging on to who I am? What else do I have to give up in order to live crash free?

I feel like these are deep, existential questions. For 18 years, I have sacrificed my body in order to enjoy occasional outings with my friends, to participate in CFS advocacy, and to take care of my family. If pain and crashing was the price of continuing to participate in my life, I paid it gladly. But is this the right way to balance the equation? Is having dinner with a friend worth three days in bed? Facing that consequence is not fair, and I don’t want my life to be this way. But this is my reality. I need some kind of owner’s manual to tell me how to figure this out. Do I punish my body by exceeding my physical limits? Or do I punish my soul by living within those limits? It’s a no-win situation, and I don’t know how to answer these questions any more.