Perhaps a stupid question but isn't it more likely that menstruation caused symptoms in addition to ME/CFS symptoms, rather than exacerbating those? In that case it wouldn't not tell use more about ME/CFS pathology.
ME/CFS is more common in women, so it isn’t completely unreasonable to expect that some of the unique characteristics of women’s biology influences the symptoms.
Me either, since it's all subjective. If you include healthy people and ask them how much their fatigue increases on their period, who knows if a 2 point increase means the same thing to people who are healthy and people who are already fatigued.
Fatigue is a tiny part of it .
Yeah, we’d need a biomarker that’s tied to symptom severity first.
I'm not sure that is "more" likely. We really don't know all that much about normal/healthy menstruation either so who knows what is common.
Which is insane!! I feel ashamed on behalf of men of science and medicine..
Just an example, but I don't think other symptoms would be much better.
Yes, the main differences with menstrual phase were headache and migraine. If someone has a migraine bad enough to have to rest in a quiet room, as well as period pain, they are probably reporting that their fatigue level is a bit worse too. I reckon it wouldn't take much more than that to shift the dial on fatigue reports enough to match what was found in this study.