Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Brownwood, TX
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a disorder that causes extreme fatigue. This fatigue is not the kind of tired feeling that goes away after you rest. Instead, it lasts a long time and limits your ability to do ordinary daily activities.
Typical symptoms of CFS include fatigue for 6 months or more and experiencing other problems such as muscle pain, memory problems, headaches, pain in multiple joints, sleep problems, sore throat and tender lymph nodes. The exact cause of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is unknown. Some researchers suspect it may be caused by a virus, such as Epstein-Barr virus or human herpes virus-6 (HHV-6), however no specific virus has been identified as the cause.
What is known is that CFS is most common in women in their 40s and 50s, but anyone can have it and can last for years after the onset thereof. Traditional medicine believes that there is no cure for CFS, the goal of treatment is to improve symptoms – certain medicines may treat pain, sleep disorders and other problems but in many cases just mask the symptoms with little or no real long-term relief from the disability. Our approach to CFS goes far beyond where traditional medicine fails and our goal is quality of life not pacifying the condition with prescription drugs.
We begin by educating our patients to have a better understanding about the body’s hormone producing organs, otherwise known as the endocrine system, and how the brain orchestrates this system helps to see the connection to CFS. It is true that there is no exact cause for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) but there is a correlation to what appears to be reduced production of hormones of these controlling glands (adrenal glands) as well as reduced cortisol production in CFS patients. There also appears to be an improper response of these hormones and other hormones due to the lack of one or more hormones to each other. In many cases, persons with CFS have significant reduction in both blood and urine levels of important adrenal hormones including cortisol. In many patients, the adrenal glands are half that of normal persons, however the problem may not be with the adrenals themselves but of the interaction between the neuroendocrine system and the immune system as disturbed in CFS.
Our treatment protocol is two-fold, first we test your adrenals by performing a complete saliva and blood spot panel and confirm adrenal hormone insufficiency. Patients with either low hormone production or a low reserve will be treated in low doses of bio-identical (natural) adrenal hormone with often drastic improved results (these are not adrenal glandulars from health food stores). We use actual (therapeutic) cortisol which is molecule to molecule identical to that of the human body and to further avoid possible side effects we avoid high doses and receive highly favorable results from (10-15mg) in CFS patients.
