Chronic Fatigue Part2

I'm calling this part two because in yesterday's post I mentioned I have been diagnosed with EBV and CMV viruses, which are the precursors to chronic fatigue syndrome , also knows as Mono.

In a friend's Blog I mentioned that in my opinion, it's nearly impossible to soft-diagnose chronic fatigue in athletes because athletes are used to pushing themselves and have a high pain threshhold, which means they often associate complaining about aches, pains and fatigue as a potential sign of weakness, something you don't want to display to the competition or else they'll eat you up whole.


Athletes are used to being tired and fatigued....that's what training is all about....so to ask them how they're feeling, how they're recovering, how they're performing and/or other subjectively geared questions leaves room for error and athletes could be sick but not know it until it's way too late.

Such was the case with me; a lot of fatigue, a decrease in my recovery time , not necessarily a decline in my performance, but certainly an increase in the time I needed to recover (which I chalked up to getting older) and decline in my desire to work out. The biggest sign was my moodiness . Looking back, I became really short with people and lost my patience on several occasions. Again, I chalked it up to just being tired and stressed out from work, life, etc.

So, the question is how to you monitor the signs that could lead to the outbreak of chronic fatigue and the answer, in my opinion, is regular blood tests and a doctor who knows what to look for. If it wasn't for Dr. Harper's holistic knowledge of the human body, mixed with listening to me about what ails me, and him putting 2 and 2 together and ordering the right blood test, I would not have been diagnosed accurately.

And now, my course of remedy is taking it easy, eating well, hydrating and sleeping it off.

I should also mention that 90+% of the population have these viruses in our bodies. The EBV and CMV viruses in particular live in a dormant state in our livers. Only during times of stress, either physical, emotional or both, do they sense that the immune system is lowered and they come out to cause havoc in the body. This circles back to taking care of yourself, resting and recovering along with proper nutrition cannot be downplayed.

Finally, these viruses are passed along very easily through saliva and other body fluids; sharing a drink, using utensils, getting body liquids in your mouth, etc. People in day-cares and schools tend to get these viruses because kids tend to urinate a lot! and some times, as sick as this may sound, the urine ends up inside their mouths. The lesson here is not to sicken you but to share that these viruses are easily passed on, that the majority of us have them in our bodies and that if your immune system is functioning properly they'll remain dormant without causing too much trouble.

Rest, eat well, and drink plenty of good water!

Thanks for reading,
Kam