Understanding Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Band-Aid Diagnosis or Root Cause Issue?

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Band-Aid Diagnosis or Root Cause Issue?

1. Understanding Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) – Dr. Zimmerman breaks down the diagnostic criteria for CFS, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis, including persistent fatigue, post-exertional malaise, and unrefreshing sleep.
2. Overlapping Symptoms & Misdiagnosis Risks – Many conditions share symptoms with CFS, such as autoimmune disorders, thyroid dysfunction, and neurological issues. Without proper testing, a CFS diagnosis may be a "band-aid" rather than addressing the true cause.
3. Key Systems to Evaluate – Dr. Z emphasizes the importance of examining three major systems: the immune system (COVID, mold exposure, autoimmunity), the nervous system (concussions, strokes), and energy production (blood sugar, thyroid, anemia, hormones, sleep). The nervous system should still be evaluated even if you haven't had a concussion or a stroke.
4. The Link Between Long COVID & CFS – Many post-COVID symptoms closely resemble CFS, suggesting viral triggers may play a significant role. Identifying immune system dysfunction is key to proper treatment.
5. A Whole-Body Approach to Recovery – Instead of symptom management, Dr. Z advocates for a root-cause approach, integrating functional neurology and medicine to optimize brain-body health and restore energy levels.

🔹 Listen now to learn how to uncover the real reason behind your chronic fatigue and take steps toward lasting recovery!

Transcript

Hey everyone, this is Dr. Zimmerman. This week for our live stream, okay, for Brain Reset, we are looking at chronic fatigue syndrome. Chronic fatigue syndrome, aka known as myalgic encephalomyelitis. What we are going to do is first, we are going to look at what this actually is from a diagnostic criteria perspective. What are the symptoms people have? And then, well, what if it's not truly a great diagnosis? What are things that you should be considering? Because when you reach a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome, myalgic encephalomyelitis, you should have ruled out a variety of other things. Because if not, you've given someone a diagnosis based on symptoms versus the underlying symptoms causes and the root biology of what is going on. So the very first thing we're going to do is I'm going to share my screen and we're going to look and see, well, what should actually be done. Here we go. So this very first one that we're gonna look at, okay, this is the Institute of Medicine, two thousand fifteen diagnostic criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome, once again, aka myalgic encephalomyelitis. When we look at this, there are required symptoms and a length of time that you should have it. So you should have three required symptoms and at least two, one of two additional symptoms to get the diagnosis. So what are these things, right? We should see a pretty significant impairment in people's ability to engage in daily life. It needs to last greater than six months. Now, this fatigue is profound. It's new onset, okay? This is not something someone's had since they were very little. It is new. Now, there's not a good reason for it from too much physical exertion, and it doesn't matter if you rest. It doesn't do anything. Next, post-exertional malaise. So after you do things, physical, mental, or emotional, this wipes you out, okay? Days, weeks, or even longer, it can truly impact you. You may also have light and sound issues. Now, symptoms can definitely get worse, once again, after you've done things. And lastly, unrefreshing sleep. So even if you get a great night's sleep, right, you sleep eight hours, nine hours, it just never seems enough. Now, there may be additional symptoms that people have from cognitive impairment to orthostatic imbalances, okay? So this is changing positions, going from laying to sitting, sitting to standing, being lightheaded, dizzy, and other things like that. Now, there are a wide variety of other symptoms that people may have. Muscle pain, joint pain, headaches, sore throat, night chills, visual, nausea, food sensitivities, and chemicals. Now, when I look at this list, I say, huh, you know what? There's a lot of other things that have overlapping symptoms with chronic fatigue syndrome. If it's overlapping, you really need to make sure that you are rolling those out. And don't worry, we are going to get to those things that should be rolling out in the future. If you have comments, let me know. And if you haven't, make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel. You may want to put my, I'm Dr. Zimmerman. I'm licensed both a doctor of chiropractic, the diplomat in chiropractic neurology, as well as a nurse practitioner. And I've helped people for over a decade improve their chronic health conditions, even after they've been to multiple providers. And we do it through a whole body perspective. Now, this is from a research article called Myalgic encephalomyelitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, the biology of a neglected disease. And it's because many people are diagnosed with it and they're kind of really just tossed to the side. You're depressed, you're anxious. You know, here's your medication. Now they look through the different criteria over time. So we looked at two thousand fifteen now from a different body, the National Institute of Health in twenty twenty one. They said, well, you know what, maybe if you've got these symptoms for a minimum of four weeks in children or six weeks in adults, so this is not the six month timeframe that was referenced in twenty fifteen. OK, so it is still the post-exertional malaise, sleep disturbance, debilitating fatigue and then cognitive difficulties or orthostatic imbalances. So if you meet those criteria, you could have chronic fatigue syndrome, aka myalgic encephalomyelitis. Now, what we truly want to look at and understand is what is this thing, okay? So go to Google, right? This is a chronic debilitating disease that affects many body symptoms, including the immune system, nervous system, and energy production. So I think it's super important that we highlight this. So we said chronic debilitating diseases that affect body systems, right? So we said it impacts the immune system, it impacts the nervous system, and it impacts energy production. We are going to dissect this later because when you are being evaluated and treated for myalgic encephalomyelitis, you should actually work through all of these. It should not be a, oh, you've got diagnosed with this. No, no, no. You should work through these, which we are going to work through these. And we're going to look at things that impact the immune system, things that impact the nervous system, as well as things that impact energy production and utilization. Because if you don't have that worked up and you're being diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome first, you are now getting a band-aid diagnosis, right? We're just gonna lump everything in there versus a root cause diagnosis. So hope this is making sense. Hope you're catching on, okay? Right before we do that though, we are going to look through some of these other symptoms as we go back to the research. Now, this is looking at common symptoms from that same article we were just talking about. Post-exertional malaise, persistent fatigue, pain, headaches, chest pain, muscle weakness, GI symptoms, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, neurological Brain fog, problems finding words, attention, hypersensitivity to light and sound. Genital urinary issues. Also, flu-like symptoms, sore throat, tender lymph nodes, okay? Allergies that are like, where'd these come from? Respiratory issues, persistent cough, shortness of breath, autonomic dysfunction. So, ninety-five percent of myelogenous encephalitis, chronic fatigue syndrome patients have worsening of symptoms in the upright position. Dizziness, fainting, tachycardia, POTS. So POTS is when you go from laying or sitting to standing and you get a rapid increase of your heart rate based upon your age of either thirty to forty beats per minute without a substantial drop in your blood pressure. Sweating, spatial disorientation. OK, so these are a lot of different symptoms. Now we've got to break this down. Here's where we're going to go to the whiteboard. And we are going to break this down and help you have a framework of what should be done. Because we've worked through the diagnostic criteria. We have worked through the symptoms that people experience with chronic fatigue syndrome. But how do you actually work through this? Now for each one of these, okay, we could go in more detail, but we're gonna go with three for each one. So for the immune system, What are things that impact the immune system? Well, we know COVID. So if you've been looking at the symptoms of long COVID and myalgic encephalomyelitis, chronic fatigue syndrome, you'd be like, holy smokes, those overlap a ton. And you'd be absolutely right, those do. So could it have been something that developed after COVID, right? What else? I see a lot of people who have mold issues. Their immune system is overreacting to mold, creating massive inflammatory responses, driving a lot of symptoms. This is best measured using blood tests for immune reactions versus urine testing. I'll do a whole separate video where we look at the differences and why I use blood, even though I used to use urine in the past and I threw that in the garbage. So COVID, mold. And then I'm going to put a general umbrella here. And I'm saying autoimmunity. Many people who have autoimmune disorders were previously diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome because their autoimmunity had not been diagnosed up to that point in time. What are some of those common autoimmune disorders people have? Rheumatoid arthritis. Hashimoto's, very, very common. Type one diabetes, Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, multiple sclerosis, right? And there's many more. We can't measure all the autoimmune diseases. We don't have the ability yet. So if you're dealing with stuff, right, let's make sure it's not these. Get a good workout because if you have any of these, guess what? This is a band-aid diagnosis. It's not a root cause diagnosis. So That's what we've got there. Okay. Now with the nervous system, these things all here, these all can impact the nervous system as well. So there may be some overlap, but let's say nervous system. We're gonna go first with concussion. Chronic fatigue is very, very common with concussions, okay? When the eyes struggle, there's balance issues. Chronic fatigue is an expectation, not the exception. So gotta make sure there's no concussion, okay? Next, there are things such as stroke, and then ultimately, Everything from here could be thrown in there because immune system dysfunction does not just stay within the body. It can impact your brain and create a lot of the symptoms we see with the chronic fatigue syndrome, which we've talked about. Dizziness, fatigue, headaches, right? Now, energy production and utilization. Here are the three we are going to look at. One is going to be blood sugar. Where's your A-one C at? Where's your insulin? Know where those are at. Next. Thyroid. Know where your thyroid levels are. If you haven't, watch our longer video that we did dissecting thyroid, symptoms of it, how it impacts the body, as well as what labs you should truly get performed. And next, anemia. Iron-based issues, B vitamin-based issues, those all impact it. And for a bonus, why not? Let's throw in hormones. And then one more, sleep issues, right? Because we did say with chronic fatigue syndrome, myalgic encephalomyelitis, if you have issues, With sleep, right? You usually get good sleep, but you never feel refreshed. That's very common with chronic fatigue syndrome. So once again, chronic fatigue syndrome, this is becoming more and more common, but before you accept the diagnosis, you should work through the immune system, the nervous system, and energy production utilization, because all the symptoms fall underneath these umbrellas, and chronic fatigue syndrome may be the right diagnosis for you or it may just be a band-aid diagnosis given to you because no one has worked in enough to actually help you find out what is wrong if you have questions let me know My goal is to keep doing these live streams to provide a lot of good information to you. If you have future topics you'd like me to cover, once again, cover anything with brain health. I'm Dr. Zimmerman, once again, licensed as the doctor of chiropractic with a diplomat in chiropractic neurology. I'm a nurse director. practitioner, and I help people with chronic illness find the underlying issues to what's going on through a whole body approach, not the brain, not the body as standalone because our body works together as a whole unit. So how the brain impacts the body, how the body impacts the brain. So until next time, this is Dr. Z.