ME from stress ?

On the subject of viral reactivation, through Solve ME/CFS funding, Dr Bhupesh Prusty is doing some intriguing research on HHV-6 reactivation, where he has found that:

I'd really like to know more about that mechanism which remotely causes changes in mitochondria.

 

It may be worth pojnting out that stress has neen blamed for lots of illnesses, i cluding rheumatoid and ms on pretty poor evidence. Trauma was said to set off RA. Now that we know more about the mechanism I think most people have discarded the trauma evidence as too open to bias.

There seems to precious little evidence for stressful psychological stimuli triggering ME. Or traffic accidents. I suspect stress is too vague a generalisation. Viruses seem to be relevant. Maybe other immune insults but even there tbe evidence seems vague.

 

In the end stress causes everything until its disproven. But it often still sticks around as a secondary cause or trigger because few like completely dismissing their former beliefs.

 

I completely agree.
It will be interesting when we figure out what causes ME but until then i will settle for having a treatment.

 

Until then I'd grudgingly accept $1,000,000,000 a month.

Not as compensation, just to provide motivation to the gits to find a solution.

It seems smaller amounts of lost income, to governments, don't provide enough incentive to get them to actually do anything.

 

My friends with MS feel that stress, physical and emotional brings on episodes. They all think they had minor symptoms for years but a serious stress episode brought on the major attack which lead to them deteriorating so badly they were finally diagnosed. (With MRIs diagnosing patients much earlier so they do not go through the "nothing much going on, stop worrying" phase it may be different now)

 

The problem is "stress" is very nonspecific and tells us almost nothing about disease initiation or progression. Similarly, psychological "stress" is neither necessary, nor sufficient to trigger ME or CFS.

Hence while "stress" may be a risk factor, it cannot be blamed as a cause.

 

Yes, Ron is clearly referring to major physical stress events here.

Maybe there are some people for whom major emotional stresses also correlate with physical stresses ... who knows? If you took two identical people, and one was subjected to much more emotional stress than the other, would they then also become prone to greater physical stress? e.g. Some people deal with emotional stress by "throwing themselves into their work", and thereby working much longer hours and/or higher levels of persistent physical activity. Or maybe in some people there really will be an internal mechanism that leads to greater physical stress if under great emotional stress. I think the aetiology of ME, once it is better understood, will be fascinating. But the key is that it is the physical stress that kicks off the ME.

 

Following on from my previous post, but preferring to not edit it:

We know that ME afflicts more women than men, but do we know if this statistic is still true for non-parent populations? Just wondering, because it is invariably the mum who becomes the full-time parent, and as long working hours "jobs" go, parenting must be very near the top of the list in terms of physical stress.

Also the much-detested "yuppie flu" label comes from it being observed in those working in the London money markets (presumably yuppies so-named from saying "yup" all the time). But a key facet of working in those industries, is the very long and unrelenting hours they work. Yes, it is a mentally stressful working environment, but even bigger Yes, it is also very physically demanding work, especially in terms of long hours.

 

You probably know this, but it was thought to stand for "young upwardly-mobile professional" or "young urban professional". There may be some too young to remember.

 

No I didn't. But "yup" is also how some such folk tend to pronounce "yep", the common English corruption of "yes".