Chronic fatigue syndrome poses a major problem for traditional medicine. The medical establishment has fumbled in its treatment to the point of sometimes claiming that the illness does not exist, but chronic fatigue is a major problem in the United States, particularly among women. According to 2013 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between one and four million Americans are afflicted with the syndrome, including four times as many women than men.
Chronic fatigue syndrome is the term used to describe a state of constant exhaustion. A syndrome is a disorder that includes a collection of symptoms but is not necessarily a disease entity. Although not labeled as such until the late 1980s, chronic fatigue syndrome is quite similar to other disorders that have been known for centuries. In the nineteenth century, for example, a common complaint of middle-class women was neurasthenia, which was characterized by chronic exhaustion and a variety of other physical symptoms.
Why is it that for years Americans with a debilitating illness were not recognized as having a disease? They were simply told that chronic fatigue syndrome does not exist. Dr. Dean Black says, “If you go back to the last century, you can read about women suffering from nervous disorders—so many of them that clinics had to be set up to care for them. There was always the search for a cause, but one couldn’t be found, so doctors wouldn’t say it was a disease. It had to be in the patient’s mind. This is not a new way of sweeping things under the carpet.
“Medicine’s power base is the idea of its basis in certainty, which hinges on the concept of a single linear cause-and-effect relationship. That’s why medicine is always looking for a single causal factor. This is called the theory of specific etiology.”
Dr. Black compares the situation of chronic fatigue syndrome to that of the Epstein-Barr (EB) virus, which was initially thought to cause chronic fatigue syndrome, although later this theory was challenged. “That is why they were so happy to discover this EB virus,” he explains. “It seemed marvelous to them because it served to justify the single-cause idea. Yet, as has been frequently pointed out, everyone may have Epstein-Barr [because it is so widely distributed]. Chronic fatigue syndrome is caused by many factors operating together. But this idea has been excluded by traditional medicine, which refuses to come to grips with multifactorially generated disease. Medicine is reluctant to accept this multifactorial explanation because it holds to this idea of absolute truth, which requires simplicity and must have one cause and one effect.”
Dr. Andrew Gentile stresses that we need to differentiate chronic fatigue syndrome from other health problems: “Since chronic fatigue syndrome has no known cause, we need to rule out other disorders whose cause we do know. The working definition provided by the government for this disease says there is no other illness at the root of it. Differentiating it calls for great care, since fatigue is ubiquitous as a symptom of many diseases, such as anemia, low thyroid, hypoglycemia, and a variety of other illnesses. These other illnesses must be clearly ruled out.”
A number of studies have looked at viruses in connection with this syndrome. One theory posits a single viral agent. Dr. Gentile states, “I have heard chronic fatigue syndrome being called a number of things from Epstein-Barr to mononucleosis.
“Epstein-Barr was brought into the discussion by way of a lab in Philadelphia that exclusively studies this virus. One of the lab assistants was negative for current and acute Epstein-Barr virus, but during the course of the study developed the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome. He was treated and found to be positive for Epstein-Barr virus. So we had the first studied case in which a person went from Epstein-Barr-negative to Epstein-Barr-positive at the same time that he had all the symptomatology for chronic fatigue syndrome. That began a flurry of studies investigating the Epstein-Barr connection. We now know there is not a high degree of correlation between the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome and Epstein-Barr serological titers. So Epstein-Barr is probably not the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome.”
Dr. Gentile goes on to note that the Epstein-Barr virus is widely distributed in the populace. Most people have it by age eight. Thus, there is no clear distinction between those who have it and those who do not. We would expect many more people to be ill with chronic fatigue if it were indeed Epstein-Barr that was causing it. Several other candidates have presented themselves, including human herpes virus 6 (HHV-6), a B-lymphocyte virus that was studied by the National Institutes of Health, and human T-cell lymphotropic virus (HTLV-2).
Dr. Neenyah Ostrom, author of America’s Biggest Cover-Up, believes that HHV-6 may be involved. “What is interesting is that there are two types of this virus. One form is found very widely in the general population, and the other is found in people with cancer, AIDS, chronic fatigue syndrome, and other immunological problems. This virus can attack the immune system very effectively, and I believe it will eventually be found to be instrumental in causing chronic fatigue syndrome, AIDS, and some forms of cancer.”
Other viruses that have been thought to contribute to chronic fatigue syndrome are Coxsackie virus, adenovirus, enterovirus, and the hepatitis virus, among others. Dr. Gentile states, “The consensus among practitioners is that a single virus probably does not cause this illness. We have to carefully distinguish between cause and trigger. Clearly, a virus may trigger a cascading set of events in various body systems: neural, endocrine, cognitive, and hormonal. A variety of abnormalities may be found in these systems, but if viruses do trigger these imbalances, then they quickly hide within the normal cells—which is usually how viruses behave—while their effects wreak havoc in the body system.”
It is as if the virus triggered something in the immune system that makes the system unable to self-regulate and find its way back to homeostasis. Thus, each time the immune system is stressed by a toxic load from the environment or from food allergies, or when infections are reactivated, there is a breakdown. The flareups and relapses occur and recur frequently, reproducing all the symptoms. These relapses then compound themselves. If a patient is not sleeping every night, symptoms such as exhaustion and lowered immunity crop up.
“We know, by the way,” Dr. Gentile adds, “that the rhythms of this illness dovetail nicely with ninety-minute circadian rhythms. In sleep, we have a REM [rapid eye movement] cycle that occurs every ninety minutes, and this is the cycle by which our immune system is synthesizing proteins. The immune system works lock and key with this cycle. But if one has a sleep disturbance caused by a virus or a set of viruses from this disorder, one’s sleep will be off and therefore the immune system will be off.”
Dr. Majid Ali sees the surrounding environment and lifestyle as playing causal roles. He says that the immune system becomes injured by environmental pollutants such as mold, formaldehyde, and pesticides as well as by allergenic foods, poor nutrition, stress, and lack of physical fitness.
The late Dr. Shari Lieberman, a professor of nutrition, expanded on this point. She published articles and several books, including The Real Vitamin and Mineral Book. “We as a country are not healthy. We have all these discussions, lectures, books, and so on, concerning a healthy lifestyle. We have the information, but we are not actualizing it. I don’t think people understand how all of the body’s circumstances are impacted by the immune system.
Dr. Michele Galante also believes that allergies are important: “The patients I have seen have been very allergic not only to pollens and airborne agents but especially to foods and chemicals. These people are so sensitive and so debilitated that a short exposure to perfume, nail polish, gas fumes, carbon monoxide, or even just paint, such as from a freshly painted room, will give them headaches, make them weak, even make them emotionally upset. Chronic fatigue syndrome is closely connected to allergy.”
Unfortunately, Dr. Ostrom adds, “some of these allergy-causing substances are unavoidable. Chemicals in our environment, aside from those in our foods (coloring, preservatives, and so on), are everywhere. There is chlorine in our water; the air is filled with pollutants—things that were not in our ecological system fifty or sixty years ago. Recent phenomena that accompany technological advances, such as the mercury in silver amalgam dental work, are weakening our systems. Each of these chemicals in itself does not necessarily have so strong an impact, but exposure to all of them together, day after day, for many years, overloads the liver and immune system. Electromagnetic influences, previously ignored, are now also under discussion. Many believe the cathode rays from computers affect the electromagnetic fields of the body, for instance, as does the electromagnetism of cellular phones, radio waves, and television waves—things relatively new to our environment.”
Chronic fatigue syndrome can also be explained in terms of immune system depression related to a failure in metabolic regulation. When glucose production is up, it brings on hypoglycemia, with a high degree of glucose in the blood causing an increased level of insulin, which lowers the glucose level excessively. Because of poor utilization of glucose, fatty acids increase in the blood to provide a sufficient level of energy. A high level of triglycerides will occur, and the immune system will be depressed because it needs a new army of T lymphocytes, which are not being produced because of derangement in lipid metabolism.
Dr. Neil Block explains that lack of necessary vitamins, including C, E, and betacarotene, can affect the immune system, as can a lack of minerals, particularly calcium, vanadium, copper, magnesium, potassium, molybdenum, boron, iodine, selenium, and chromium. The trace minerals are especially important for organ function.
Dr. Block also points to hormonal imbalances, particularly thyroid imbalance (especially hypothyroidism), which affects women six times as often as men. It tends to develop spontaneously between the ages of twenty and fifty, although it can come at any time, often from unknown causes. The rare causes, which are the ones known for this disease, involve either a superabundance or a deficiency of iodine in the body, although the latter is unlikely in our society, where we have iodized salt and other sources. Another rare cause is consuming too many of certain vegetables, such as cauliflower, broccoli, and brussels sprouts, which tend to bind the active ingredient and inhibit thyroxin production.
Other hormones frequently out of the normal range include the adrenal hormones and the gender hormones. It is not unusual to have imbalances in the estrogen that governs the ovarian function or in other governors, such as LH [luteinizing hormone] from the pituitary gland or progesterone.” In fact, women frequently come to Dr. Block with lack of menstruation, milky discharge from the breast, breast tenderness, or more menstrual cramps than usual.
Dr. Galante remarks, “The allopathic drugs, conventional drugs, antibiotics, and steroids are major influences. The use and abuse of these drugs in childhood, for example, sets up chronically weakened conditions that will extend into adulthood and contribute to a predisposition for chronic fatigue. These drugs are suppressive in nature, not curative. They themselves impose an illness on the system. This may be one of the largest of the causal factors.”
Dr. Ali talks about a young person suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome who went to a medical clinic and was given a prescription for steroids. We know steroids suppress the immune system, so why would anyone give these drugs to someone with this disorder? Steroids can create a sense of well-being and euphoria for a couple of days, but it is false.
Dr. Gentile tells us that chronic fatigue seems to reduce a person’s tolerance to stress. He has had patients who were marathoners before contracting the illness. They report that they had been working hard and then got sick with fever and chills. The illness waxed and waned. They would feel better at times and go back to running but then quickly relapse. These patients cannot tolerate stress in either the physical or the psychological form. Stress will exacerbate the illness again and again.
According to Dr. Paul Epstein, a key tenet of naturopathic medicine is to treat the underlying cause. “A person diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome has a suppressed immune system, which can be documented by blood tests and other measures. But what caused this? It may be improper diet; then the patient will need to eat properly. But we also need to ask why she adopted that diet in the first place. If the answer is stress, we can then ask what caused the person to follow certain patterns of reaction to stress. As we treat the patient, going through all the different problems layered one on top of the other, we eventually get in contact with the person’s core self.
“One way to make this contact is through the inner child. Many people have been influenced by John Bradshaw’s work on recovering and healing the inner child and on seeing how the wounds and scars of childhood may have led us to create lifestyles that are addictive. Thus, even as I help the person medically by giving advice on diet, stress reduction, and so on, I remember this. If we do not touch deeper problems, healing may not occur.”
Chronic fatigue syndrome causes fatigue and usually begins after the onset of flulike symptoms. The fatigue is not a simple tiredness; it is an exhaustion accompanied by feelings of being unwell. Many people have difficulty getting out of bed and may become weakened to the point of needing to lie down all the time. Often patients are bedridden for months; extreme tiredness can last for years.
Chronic fatigue syndrome may be accompanied by depression, irritability, headaches, low-grade fever, infection, confusion, focusing difficulties, diarrhea, sharp muscle pain and weakness, swollen glands, and sleep disorders. The woman is not able to fall asleep or stay asleep and does not feel refreshed or restored even after much sleep.
According to Dr. Martin Feldman, “Immune system difficulty somehow pulls down hormonal function. Almost all patients with this syndrome have low adrenal function, and many have low thyroid function. So we have a hormonal mix-up causing fatigue, but behind this is the viral disease pulling down the immune system.”
Dr. Michael Vesselago uses laboratory tests to diagnose his patients and then treats them accordingly. He looks for viruses as well as allergies and stress. “I test the person for allergies with an IgE RAST [radioallergosorbent test] and get back a report showing how the body responds to more than one hundred tested foods. We adjust the diet so that the person is no longer eating allergy-causing foods, and that alone brings about a significant improvement in over 70 percent of individuals.
“If someone collapses unduly fast or wakes up tired and requires several cups of coffee to get going, then I will focus on the adrenals first. I do a test for adrenal function that involves checking cortisol, which is one of the main adrenal hormones. From that I get a picture of how well the adrenal glands are coping with stress during the day.”
Dr. Martin Feldman says that the first step in the analysis of any woman who comes to him with fatigue, whether mild, moderate, or severe, is to profile the patient to see how she fits with the five major problems associated with the syndrome:
Dr. Feldman also tests the thymus, spleen, and lymphatic system. “You could test the T-and B-cell counts. That’s easy to do, but it’s very expensive, so in daily practice it’s easier to test thymus electrical energy. You can also do this for the spleen. When we find a weak thymus circuit, we can try any aspect of therapy within the weakened circuit to obtain a resonance that will help strengthen that circuit.”
Dr. Gentile is more concerned with self-diagnosis. “If you feel you have chronic fatigue syndrome, ask yourself these questions: Have I had debilitating fatigue for six months? Do I have flulike symptoms? Have I not found any physiological cause? Do I have pronounced sleeplessness? Do I have low stress tolerance so that if I take a short walk or try any sport, I feel vaguely ill and tired?”
Dr. Majid Ali states that most physicians have a tendency to focus narrowly on a problem. But, he says, “I don’t think trying to find a diagnosis for one or two symptoms is terribly important. What is important is how the patient describes his or her suffering. We need to think of what we can do at a molecular and energetic level to relieve his or her suffering and restore his or her health.
“I’ve seen patients whose lives have been devastated by chronic fatigue syndrome. They’ve gone through all these drugs, antivirals, steroids. With each drug, they get better initially and then nose-dive. What do we do?”
The key to finding treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome, according to Dr. Gentile, is choosing the right expert. “It has reached the level of scientific respectability, and most practitioners and medical examiners believe it exists. It is important to have someone who is up to date on the literature and who has seen a minimum of fifty to one hundred patients, someone who understands the ups and downs of the disease and is aware of the number of different treatments that have developed.”
He points out several ways to locate a credible expert. For one thing, there are chronic fatigue syndrome support groups in every major town in our country, and now worldwide, that have lists of physicians who have specialized in the disorder. There are national groups, such as the Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome Association. They maintain a list of doctors who understand the disease, have treated it, and are sympathetic.
“This last trait is so important,” Dr. Galante explains, “because many sufferers have gone through scores of doctors. We’re treating a woman now who has already seen seventy-five physicians all over the world. She was ready to give up because she feels people do not believe her. So a critical part of treating this illness is belief. A second thing to bear in mind is that because this is a chronic illness with a wide range of symptoms, it will tend to fall between the cracks of all the medical subspecializations. With this disease, it will not be adequate to go to a single physician. It would be worth considering putting together a team, which would include a GP/internist, one who works both with traditional and alternative therapies; an allergist/infectious-disease specialist; and a psychologist/psychiatrist. This team could coordinate to work out a treatment plan so that the client understands what is coming next. And if these treatments don’t work, the team could determine why that might be and what would be worth trying next.”
Dr. Ali tells us that in dealing with a chronic, devastating illness like this, hope and the spiritual element are essential for long-term success. He has had cases that truly stretch the bounds of credulity. “Creating hope is very easy to do; sustaining hope is difficult, but it is central to healing. By the time I see patients, they have each seen at least seven specialists. They’ve had biopsies, CAT scans. When they come to me, it’s not that easy to simply reassure them, after they’ve seen the previous failures, that they’ll get better. But fortunately, by the time they get to me, they’ve listened to some of our tapes, read our books, and, most important, talked to some of the other patients who have gotten better. So when they come in and they meet our nursing staff, our ancillary staff, they realize we are all serious. If they ask how my program differs, we say this: They do not have the option to remain sick.”
Another component of treatment is supplements. The intention is not only to repair damage and stabilize the weakened immune system, but also to overboost the system.
At Dr. Ali’s clinic I watched a nurse making up an intravenous chronic fatigue syndrome protocol with vitamins and minerals. She said that patients who come in are very tired and have joint pains, headaches, and memory loss, and that these IVs help repair cell membranes and boost the immune system. About 90 percent of the patients have responded well. Dr. Ali will usually order a set of five to begin with, she says, and after that he can measure the patient’s response, see how deep the problem is, and whether she requires further treatment.
“I see these drips as jump-starting the cellular enzymes,” Dr. Ali says. “The enzymes, which are detoxification enzymes, are dependent on minerals and vitamins. If I feel there is enough time, when the patient is not acutely ill or has been chronically ill for a number of years, I will try to use a more conservative approach. But when I see people with severe, incapacitating fatigue, I use the IV. In fact, in one of our studies where we compared one group that had the IV and one group that didn’t, we saw that the IV speeds up the recovery process.
“We have fourteen different formulations or protocols to manage different clinical problems in our IV drips. For chronic fatigue syndrome, we use vitamin C, magnesium, calcium, pyridoxine, pantethine, zinc, B vitamins, molybdenum, potassium, copper, and selenium. Most of our protocols have fifteen to eighteen items, and we change their quantities depending on the individual’s state.”
Dr. Feldman has found that chronic fatigue sufferers are lacking in vitamins A, B5, B12, and E; bioflavonoids; the essential fatty acids; zinc; selenium; and GLA (gamma-linoleic acid).
Dr. Neil Block discusses his treatment: “If proteins or amino acids are low, we can try to individually supplement the amino acids. If minerals are lacking, they can be given individually or in tandem, trying to operate by an economy of scale so that a patient doesn’t have to take from more than ten to fifteen bottles at a time.
“As for hormonal imbalance, I have 20 to 25 percent of my chronic fatigue syndrome patients on thyroid hormone. I prefer to use the more natural brands of thyroid hormone. Again, I believe in giving both the male and female hormones. We also have to try to adjust the pancreas and adrenals. For the pancreas I use chromium or chromium picolinate. For adrenals, the glandulars or homeopathics, and sometimes things such as licorice, tend to help multiple hormones. If we are working on the pituitary, we use glandulars, the homeopathics, and on rare occasions I use a lot of the amino acids to try to build neurotransmitter activity. The amino acids to be used are arginine, tyrosine, and phenylalanine. Tryptophan was also once useful to me until they took it off the market. I’m also not afraid to use, correctly and in small doses, items obtained from the pharmacy. What I tend to shy away from are the tranquilizers, such as Valium and Librium. I do make use of antidepressants on occasion.”
Often his patients have seen other physicians and holistic healers and may need only one or two things to turn the body around on multiple levels. “With neurotransmitters being easily adjusted nowadays, with items like the antidepressants such as Paxil and Zoloft, which lack drastic side effects and have a response beginning in two to four weeks, they’re worthwhile. It’s nice for a patient who has suffered two, four, or six years to take these new agents and within two to four weeks get at least some indication of the direction in which he or she is going.”
Dr. Steven Whiting, author of The Complete Guide to Optimal Wellness, tells us about enzyme supplementation. There are two forms of supplementation, he says, and it is important to understand the difference between them. One type of product you can get at health food stores consists of whole enzymes and actually contains such things as pepsin and trypsin, the real enzymes. They have their place, and they have their drawbacks. Their primary use is for chronic disease and for people who are very debilitated. The big problem with using them is that the body can grow dependent on them quite rapidly. When they are taken orally in the form of supplements, the body is not always encouraged to make them on its own.
“The second group of supplements,” Dr. Whiting says, “is called enzyme precursors. These are substances that not only contain the raw materials for the body to build its own enzymes but frequently contain the vital stomach acid hydrochloric acid, which helps the body build many of the protein digestants. Remember, proteins are digested in the stomach, and carbohydrates and starches are digested in the intestinal tract. This is why a very unique enzyme system has been created and needs to be maintained.”
He continues: “For the average person looking for a good enzyme product, I recommend one that would contain at least the following things. First, hydrochloric acid. After years of eating junk foods and dead, lifeless foods, we need it to help with stomach digestion. According to a survey by the University of California at Berkeley, only 9 percent of the population eats the recommended number of fresh fruits and vegetables per day. This product should also contain protein digestants, which should include papain and pepsin. There should be fat digestants, ox bile and pancreatin. Also a starch digestant, which would be bromelain.”
“The bulk of the five years of research I have done for my book is about what I call whole-spectrum nutrition. We have been able to isolate about 102 nutrients that the body needs every day. These include the sixteen vitamins, the three fatty acids, eight to twelve amino acids, and about seventy-two minerals.
“What we found out in working with patients such as those with chronic fatigue syndrome in a clinical environment is that the concept that has developed in the last twenty years of using potency to address chronic diseases may have been only part of the picture. In reality, we are finding that the ratio of nutrients to each other is as important as, if not more important than, potency alone.”
Many herbs can help to heal the immune system and thus play a role in chronic fatigue syndrome. Herbalist Letha Hadady offers some recommendations. Strengthening agents include Chinese ginseng, dandelion, false ginseng, Andrographis, Eclipta alba, and honeysuckle. Honeysuckle flower, Andrographis, and dandelion may also help destroy germs. Chinese blood tonics include han lien tsao, which is called Eclipta alba in Latin and grows wild in the American Southwest. It builds blood without any side effects, such as inflammation. You can take it every day in powdered form. Hadady also mentions fo ti, which builds blood while it keeps us cool.
There are three types of ginseng: American, Chinese, and false. The American type provides more moisture and more saliva and is good after a fever. Chinese ginseng, called ren shen, gives us energy. Dang shen, or false ginseng, makes us feel stronger without feeling hotter. All can be used in soups. When dang shen and astragalus are used together, the first lifts our energy and the second sends our defenses to the surface. Cayenne pepper increases circulation and makes us feel stronger.
There are also herbs for relaxing the nervous system. Siberian ginseng can be taken as an extract or in capsule form. Valerian, taken in capsules, can quiet the nervous system: “For people who are depressed,” Hadady says, “we need to bring them to their center as a way to be grounded and to feel more whole. Use ginger and mint. Mint helps bring the worries out of the head, and ginger helps burn them away because it is digestive and heating, so it brings us warmly to our centers. They make a good combination.”
High Energy preparation is an herb mixture that uses Western and Eastern ingredients: gotu kola, American ginseng, damiana, red clover, peppermint, and cloves. It strengthens the adrenals and lungs.
Hadady adds that cloves and hot water will increase your energy and make you breathe more deeply.
Dr. Lieberman looked at American plants to find ones that can strengthen the debilitated immune system that accompanies chronic fatigue syndrome. “I’d say hands down that about the most important herb in this area is licorice root,” she said. “A specific valuable compound found in this root is glycyrrhizin, available in health food stores as a supplement. It’s not the easiest thing to find, but a few companies make it. Glycyrrhizin is just remarkable at boosting the lymphatic and immune systems, the white blood cells, and the thymus gland.”
Glycyrrhizin can actually be therapeutic in relation to some of the viruses implicated in chronic fatigue syndrome. Glycyrrhizin stimulates the production of interferon naturally. It supports the thyroid gland and boosts natural killer cells and other aspects of immune functioning. A therapeutic dose ranges from 75 to 300 milligrams per day. It’s important to monitor your blood pressure while taking this supplement. “I haven’t seen many patients’ blood pressure go up when taking this, but it will occasionally happen,” Dr. Lieberman noted.
Another antiviral is echinacea. Dr. Lieberman believed that it is not used nearly enough for chronic disease and immune dysfunction. Many people use it for influenza, but it can be useful for other viruses as well. Echinacea has a remarkable ability to naturally stimulate interferon, natural killer cells, and phagocytes.
The liquid extracts of echinacea work best, Dr. Lieberman said. Use 50 drops once or twice a day, depending on the severity of your symptoms. “It’s been recommended that you use echinacea four days on, four days off. There is some concern that if you use it all the time, you may adapt to it and it may stop boosting certain aspects of immune function. We don’t know that for sure, but to be on the safe side, that’s my recommendation. But I keep my patients on glycyrrhizin long term, though I gradually cut the dose down and maybe eventually have them on 75 milligrams per day as a prophylactic.”
Gracia Perlstein, an alternative health care practitioner with a private practice in New York, says that for chronic fatigue, food is the best medicine. “We really don’t have any existing drugs on the market to help this condition. In fact, most drugs will weaken immunity and delay recovery further. It is best to approach this with natural supports to inherent healing processes.” While there are no quick fixes, she makes the following recommendations to speed up recovery.
A diet of pure, nutrient-rich whole foods is imperative. “You want to include plenty of fresh organic vegetables. Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts are very important for their immune-enhancing properties. You want onions and garlic, the poor man’s cure-all.
“Choose from a wide assortment of whole foods. Don’t eat the same few over and over again. In this weakened state you can develop allergic responses to foods consumed repeatedly in large amounts. Eating different foods will ensure that you get a variety of nutrients and will keep you from developing allergic responses. Amaranth, quinoa, and other grains not commonly eaten by Americans are good to include. Really emphasize the green foods. Have a dark green salad daily. Super green powders are very helpful as well. Add them to juices, but do not emphasize sweet fruit and carrot juice.”
Proteins should also be emphasized. “The best sources.” Perlstein says, “are vegetarian because of the low toxicity and ease of digestion. Good vegetarian proteins are tofu, tempeh, fortified soy milk, and legumes. You can benefit from small amounts of fresh fish because fish is high in omega-3 fatty acids. But there are some precautions you must take. Be sure to find a market that gets fish from clean, unpolluted waters and make sure they do not dip it in chlorine, which is a common practice. If you eat farm-raised fish, it should be organically raised. If you eat poultry, it should be naturally raised as well, free of hormones and pesticide residues. Consume only small amounts of animal protein, no more than three to four ounces a day.
“The best way to have protein is in a soup. An excellent old Chinese recipe for an immune-enhancing soup combines a whole astragalus root with onions, garlic, ginger, and free-range chicken, fish, tofu, or tempeh. Some fresh green vegetables and a handful of brown rice are added to that. The soup is brought to a boil and then simmered. Some miso is added for flavor. This is highly nourishing, easy to digest, and excellent for helping a weakened individual regain strength.”
Don’t forget your liquids. “Drink plenty of pure water daily,” Perlstein says. “In colder seasons unsweetened herb tea, such as immune-supportive echinacea tea, is a very good source of liquid. Cold water is a little shocking to the digestive system for people with chronic fatigue syndrome, so you want warm liquids and plenty of them.”
Homeopathy is Dr. Galante’s specialty; it has been very effective against chronic fatigue syndrome. Homeopathic remedies, all made from natural substances, are given in microdoses. The essence of homeopathy is to select for each individual a remedy based on her or his unique physical constitution and manifestation of symptoms.
Registered nurse and acupuncturist Abigail Rist-Podrecca points out that the chi, or bioelectrical energy, flows through pathways called meridians in the body. Disease, she says, is associated with an energy blockage. Acupuncture needles inserted in some of the 365 points can open the blockages so that the energy can flow smoothly through the meridians. In addition, the needles dilate the blood vessels so that more blood flows through the area, bringing more oxygen and nutrients, which aid all aspects of health.
A benefit of tai chi is that it increases one’s awareness both internally and environmentally. “Then you can choose which to work on, whether there is something physically wrong or something in the environment that needs to be corrected,” says practitioner and educator Eric Schneider.
According to Schneider, you have to cultivate a part of your body that can observe phenomena dispassionately without having to grab on to every experience and run with it, so that when you find yourself in stressful situations, you can say quietly, “Oh, so this is what is happening now. What can I do about it? What are my options, and how am I feeling?”
However, it takes ten years to achieve what is called the gung chi, which means that the body is able to contain energy. This is not a quick fix.
Imagery is a therapeutic technique that helps people explore themselves through words and symbols so that they can understand the language of the subconscious. According to Dr. Paul Epstein, “Usually what comes up is the issue that is at the core of what will be the healing. People may get in touch with childhood wounds or abuse from the past that needs healing. Perhaps they’ll get in touch with the fact that the work they are doing is not real work.
“In one such case, with a person suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, we found that the illness was a case of a person trying to get love. She had not let go of trying to get love from her mom and dad. She was still stuck at that place. And the pain and grief of not having that love were not only weakening her immune system but keeping her stuck in the unhealthy way she was living her life.
Dr. Majid Ali reiterates some of Dr. Epstein’s message: “What I demonstrate to my patients is that the way you look at the world around you determines the biology under your skin. If you can be in a self-regulatory, healing mode, your brain activity, heart activity, muscle energy, skin energy will all be functioning positively. Or you can be trying to figure things out, think everything through in an overly intellectual way, and your biology will be as up and down as the New York skyline. This is the stress mode, and it causes disease. Another mode is an even, steady-state mode, a resting mode.
“Our goal is to perceive the energy in these modes and understand how the energy profoundly affects the electrophysiological profile. Can we allow this energy to guide us into the healing mode? We want a transition from an ordinary, thinking, nervous, stressful mode that causes disease to a nonthinking, meditative, deep-breathing mode that makes us well. That is our goal.”
Dr. Nancy Lonsdorf, who has 25 years of experience in Ayurvedic medicine and co-wrote A Woman’s Best Medicine, defines fatigue as an imbalance in the body’s rest-activity cycle. According to Ayurvedic principles, the natural structures of rest cycles allow the body to recover from activity cycles: “A state of chronic fatigue means that the body has not fully rejuvenated itself.”
Dr. Lonsdorf reports that many of her clients overcome fatigue by adhering to the basic rules of Maharishi Ayurveda, which address rest, activity, digestion, cleansing, and meditation.
Dr. Epstein wants to help patients listen, explore, and understand the message of their disease, which is the key that unlocks the door to recovery. “After the diagnosis and medications, natural or other, there still has to be an exploration of healing for this person,” he says. “We might have conditioned immune-suppressant responses built into our attitudes, beliefs, the way we live our life, the way we think, and the way we eat. An illness cannot be fixed from the outside; there is no magic bullet for chronic fatigue syndrome.
“People heal themselves by engaging in a self-healing process, by looking at their life and its meaning. It may seem rather complicated, but it is not. It is based on the knowledge that we do not get sick overnight. The condition may manifest suddenly in certain symptoms, but it took years and years to arrive. And it was not from one virus, not just from Epstein-Barr or herpes or parasites, low blood sugar, or electromagnetic pulsations. It was a combination of all of them.
“What is needed in treating chronic fatigue syndrome or AIDS and similar problems is a new approach. We should be looking not for the quick fix or what will work for everybody but for an approach that is individualized and holistic and empowers the patient to get involved in the cure and gives that patient belief and hope that healing is possible.
“There are two points in my treatment that I’ve been told by patients have helped them most: that I have given them hope and belief that healing is possible and that I have shown them that there are things they could do to help themselves. I don’t heal anybody. Doctors don’t heal anybody. They support people as they heal themselves.”
An increasing body of evidence is showing the benefits of natural modalities to overall health and well-being. Following is a sample of recent peer-reviewed scientific studies on chronic fatigue syndrome.
A 2014 report in Panminerva Medicine determined that a proprietary form of French oak wood extract administered to people with chronic fatigue syndrome in supplements of 200 mg/day for at least six months yielded notable improvements in mood with no side effects. Chinese researchers reported in a 2015 issue of Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine that Cistanches Herba and Schisandrae Fructus may be useful for the treatment of CFS with Yang deficiency. The astringent and immunomodulatory actions of the latter may also be beneficial to CFS patients with Yin deficient symptoms such as increased sweating, dry mouth, and immune dysfunction.