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Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Can Psychotherapy And Exercise Help?



[Recently] in The New York Times, David Tuller [wrote] about a study published in The Lancet that shows that psychotherapy is an effective treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome. In his article “Psychotherapy Eases Chronic Fatigue, Study Shows,” Tuller writes:

The new study, conducted at clinics in Britain and financed by that country’s government, is expected to lend ammunition to those who think the disease is primarily psychological or related to stress.

The authors note that the goal of cognitive behavioral therapy, the type of psychotherapy tested in the study, is to change the psychological factors “assumed to be responsible for perpetuation of the participant’s symptoms and disability.”

In the long-awaited study, patients who were randomly assigned to receive cognitive behavioral therapy or exercise therapy, in combination with specialized medical care, reported reduced fatigue levels and greater improvement in physical functioning than those receiving the medical care alone — or getting the medical care along with training in how to recognize the onset of fatigue and to adjust their activities accordingly.

Interesting. Generally I like to stay away from the “it’s all in your head” debates. I’ll let the commenters do the talking here.

*This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Plenty Of Speculation

Humans love to find patterns in the world. Sometimes patterns exist, sometimes they are imaginary. Sometimes you can see a pattern that may be interesting and ignore its significance. As a resident I used to say that anyone who smokes three packs of cigarettes a day has to be schizophrenic. It was meant more as a joke when, in fact, it was later discovered that tobacco helps ameliorate the symptoms of schizophrenia. I need to pay more attention.

Part of my job is to look for patterns as a key to the patients diagnosis. Diseases and pathogens tend to (more or less) cause reproducible signs and symptoms and looking for that pattern is often the most helpful clue towards finding the diagnosis. Of course things are never as easy as one would like, as you have to consider whether you are seeing common manifestations of a common disease, uncommon manifestations of a common disease, common manifestations of a uncommon disease and, the hardest, uncommon manifestations of an uncommon disease. When I have a complex or uncertain cause, I explicitly run through that, and other, litanies so I do not miss a unusual diagnosis.

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has, at least to my way of thinking, two patterns. I see the occasional CFS patient in clinic and, I hope, pay attention to their disease patterns. I keep in mind I may be seeing a pattern that does not exist, but looking for disease patterns is what doctors are trained to do. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*

Is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Caused By Retroviruses?

When I first heard that a retrovirus had been identified as a possible cause of chronic fatigue syndrome, I withheld judgment and awaited further developments. When I heard that two subsequent studies had failed to replicate the findings of the first, I assumed that the first had been a false alarm and would be disregarded. Not so.

It’s a classic case of wishful thinking outweighing good judgment. One unconfirmed report of an association between the XMRV virus and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) resulted in a rush to test for the virus, speculation about possible implications, and even suggestions for treatment. And the subsequent negative studies did little or nothing to reverse the trend. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*

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