Is it metabolic?

Hi all

I've always struggled relating our fatigue and slowness or inability to recover to healthy people because our issues isn't their tiredness nor do we recover as they do with rest.

However watching (as us bedridden people do in boredom with mush brains) those "stranded on island survival" programs recently I was struck by how much hunger caused no energy weakness was much more relatable. One narrator even said, when hunger sets in the metabolism shuts down, then doing simple activities exhausts them quickly and they don't feel like getting the food they need (or something similar). Seeing people spread on the floor after collecting a bit of wood looked much more ME type energy issues and also fuel deficiency would explain why no matter what rest the body can't exercise or recover. Their brain function suffered too.

My questions are

1) despite the absence of other symptoms does this similarity seem fair to you
2) with the research now, is acquired cellular dysfunction in terms of the cycle of energy & fuel usage or such where it's now pointing to?
3) could this area have been looked at before given our debilitation? Was it thought that because we don't share signs of mitochondrial disease, they couldn't be dysfunctional? Was research deterred by the psychological/deconditioning narrative, unluckily missed because the Drs interested didn't have this specialism or is it that only in 2018 we have the technology?

Edit I don't know how to make my title right when I can't edit it?

 

Just is it metabolic? That might not even be the right terminology, metabolomic might be.

Other explanations of weakness to me could be being impaired neuro signalling, other causes of cell sickness, the brain getting inappropriate signals or over loaded or wrongly reacting with excessive fatigue to something, chronic infection etc. Sorry for my clear lack of scientific education on display, I'm just trying to get to grips with possible reasons why we are so debilitated and understand what is the most evidence based or likely explanation so far for that - excluding obviously false illness beliefs and deconditioning.

 

Yep, it's metabolic.

(seriously, I don't know, but it sounds plausible to me)

 

Thanks @Trish

 

I have watched this same program and been struck by the same thing. How the "contestants'" exhaustion after not eating, sleeping and/or drinking for several days brings them to a condition much like ours...curious though, almost all of them say even after having a nibble of some food source or some water how much better they feel and how they can feel energy reentering their bodies at a cellular level (my words)....we do not get this feeling when we eat/sleep or drink, leading me to believe there is something broken in the way our body/uses/metabolizes food/sleep/water....I just hope the current research is getting closer to understanding why this happens to us and what is causing the breakdown in our systems.

It's also interesting to see contestants after they have been home for awhile and have recovered basically back to normal after their bodies had reached the state of metabolic depletion....their systems were not broken in any way just deprived of basic necessities to create energy; once they had those necessities again they could function normally. It's all very interesting. Who knew such kooky reality shows cld be so thought provoking for ME/CFIDS patients.

 

Starvation induces a hypometabolic state - low T3 paper recently noted this , whilst linking to Naviaux's dauer paper. So mechanism may be similar.