Children and teens with CFS have many of the same issues as other children with chronic illnesses, confounded by the fact that they have an illness which is poorly understood, often misunderstood, and too often misdiagnosed. And what do we tend to do when we don’t understand an illness? We tend to deny it, ignore [...]

In this ongoing five-blog series about managing CFS in children and teens, I regret that the treatment section will be the shortest! While CFS research is being done on many fronts, much about this disease remains elusive. Even the most promising treatments have only been marginally effective for a relatively small percent of patients. The [...]

As we have discussed previously, there is no diagnostic test for CFS. The diagnosis is a clinical one: the patient’s symptoms must meet the case definition criteria (See “Do I have CFS” box below) and all other medical possibilities must be ruled out. As a result, the diagnosis is often missed. Any doctor can make [...]

Today I’ll discuss the symptoms of CFS and why this diagnosis is so confusing. Ironically, part of the confusion about CFS comes from its name. The focus on fatigue tends to overshadow the numerous other systemic symptoms associated with CFS. Other names include: Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS), Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or Myalgic Encephalopathy (ME; [...]

Once derided as “the yuppie flu”, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is now recognized as a serious, often disabling, chronic illness which may affect anywhere from 800,000 to 2.2 million Americans. I thought I was very progressive as a physician and a women’s health advocate because I began speaking and writing about CFS more than 10 [...]