It's official: chronic fatigue syndrome is already a disease.
Many people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) face a lot of criticisms and stigma. Families and friends often give snide remarks of their laziness or question why they are already feeling tired when they haven't done anything yet for the day.
But calling it as a disease and no longer a syndrome proves one thing: it is real, and it has serious effects to the health and well-being of the patient.
Institute of Medicine (IOM) has already upgraded CFS and is expected to be called systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID). The organization is responsible for providing government advice to anything related to medicine and health.
In the United States, more than 2 million people may be suffering of the disease, and that there's no known cure for it. The symptoms, on the other hand, can be debilitating. People with SEID suffer from a severe type of fatigue that doesn't go away even if they decide to sleep. Sometimes they worsen that the sufferer won't have the strength to get out of bed.
The real cause of SEIDs remains unknown, though some health experts believe that it originates from other underlying diseases, such as herpes, Epstein-Barr, rubella, and mycoplasma. Some also believe that an abnormal production of yeast in the body, which leads to candidiasis, may also lead to the disease.
Although there are still no specific guidelines in diagnosing the disease, the committee has already provided some recommendations. A patient may be diagnosed with the disease if the symptoms persist for over 6 months. The feeling of fatigue should not be caused by over exertion to any activity.
The committee also hopes that by making CFS into a systemic disease, medicine will pay more attention to garnering more knowledge and seeking treatments for it.
