Medical attempts for explanation
While in the medical laboratories of the whole world scientists still search for the causes of CFIDS, practicing physicians and therapists in all world collect the symptoms of CFIDS, since the syndrome can show up in the most different forms. On the basis of these realizations of many years this extensive symptom complex is presented, which was arranged to the major part by Dr. Jay Goldstein:
It must be stated that by any means not all symptoms have to arise with each CFIDS patient at the same time. Additionally still some associated syndromes arise, which generally do not apply likewise to each CFIDS case. These syndromes particularly are bizarr, and they do not point by any means to a psychotic disturbance (because they are partly objectively provable). We will still deal with it in more detail.
In summary we can say for CFIDS - in the sense of the holistic view of man - that this syndrome may cause at the same time symptoms in bodies, mind and spirit:
Body - different pain conditions, disease symptoms, loss of energy
Mind - Depression, fear, psychoses
Spirit - Concentration problems, memory disturbances, spiritual symptoms (HCS, HSII)
As already mentioned, CFIDS was in the past a disease with thousand names. The different naming followed thereby different regularities, e.g. the region, in which the disease arose frequently (e.g. Iceland disease, Tapanui flu, Lake Tahoe mystery disease etc.), according to the assumed cause (e.g. ME syndrome = myalgic encephalomyelitis) or according to the group concerned (Gulf War syndrome, Yuppie flu etc.).
The fundamental direction of the medical research always was to assign CFIDS to a well-known or still unknown type of exciter or - what unfortunately happened also rather often - the existence of CFIDS was simply denied. The problem is that in most CFIDS cases no significant laboratory values may be found, so many physicians named concerned people either as "hypochonders" or as "depressive" and passed them to psychotherapists where they were treated with normal antidepressives.
Paradoxically this medication sometimes helped, what is after today's medical knowledge level not even amazing, because the therapeutic effect of antidepressives in different pain conditions is in the meantime actually well known, e.g. in cases of disk complaints and other pain conditions, also without presence of a manifest depression.
Nontheless in CFIDS cases the actual cause was missed in this way, because it is today clear that CFIDS is not purely a psychological and/or psychosomatic disease, so that a founded treatment should co-operate belonged into the hands of a psychologically trained general physician rather than a pure psychotherapist.
In the meantime also the school medicine recognizes now CFIDS as independent complaint picture and does not see therein anymore - as before - only a special form of well-known infections. Australian scientists proved that CFIDS concerned people show a metabolic disturbance, as glucose (grape sugar) is converted to lactic acid - a clear sign for oxygen deficiency in the blood.
All attempts to see CFIDS caused by a well-known type of exciter failed so far.
In detail the following diseases were in suspicion, which can produce a similar symptomatology:
1. Myalgic Encephalitis
2. Epstein-Barr-Virus
3. Poliomyelitis
Particularly the Poliomyelitis is today still a candidate for the explanation of CFIDS for many physicians, since the symptoms of the well-known post polio syndrome are to a large extent identical to those of CFIDS. However the post polio syndrome presupposes that the concerned people went through a manifest polio, which is generally not the case in CFIDS.
Physicians who are concerned with CFIDS cases know that with such people the most different pathogens can be found. Particularly frequently there are Herpes exciters, which may be responsible for different cancer illnesses, above all pancreas carcinomes, lymphomas, tumors in the nose range, blisters -, prostata and ovarial tumors as well as tumors of the lung system. A so strong amassment of most different pathogens makes it rather improbably that one or several of them are applicable as cause for CFIDS, but rather that this is only the result of general immune weakness.
This is a disease discovered recently, where it comes to a defect with the generation of the enzyme Rnase-L. Thus this enzyme becomes ineffective and energizes the body only for the formation of still more incorrect Rnase-L. Thus the immune system of the body can weaken viruses, but cannot kill them anymore. Since that time many physicians believe, CFIDS is only released by Rnase-L enzyme dysfunction syndrome (R.E.D.D.) The question remains however, how it could come to the enzyme defect, thus whether R.E.D.D. is a cause or only secondary consequence of CFIDS. Usually physicians are quickly using the reason "genetically", what often not is directly provable. In contrast to it there are very interesting investigations, e.g. from the Rosary Hill college in Buffalo, New York, according to which enzyme activities in the body are generally stimulated by magnetic fields. The at present constantly removing magnetic field of the earth would therefore have a restraining effect on enzymes. Further research resulted in that particularly Rnase-L enzymes may mutate by effect of electromagnetic frequencies within the ELF range, as in the case of CFIDS was observed.
While the search for an exciter thus was not very successful as cause for CFIDS so far (and it continues nevertheless), there are at the same time more and more proofs for the fact that CFIDS can be caused quite clearly both by certain toxic or electromagnetic effects in connection with increased sensitivity.
(1) Dr. Jay Goldstein's CFS Symptom Checklist. M. Kaplan, 1995.
(2) Grazyna Fosar, Franz Bludorf: Hyperkommunikation - Eine neue wissenschaftliche Interpretation von „UFO-Erfahrungen".
(3) Donna Higbee: Human Spontaneous Involuntary Invisibility. Santa Barbara 1995.
(4) R.E.D.D. Information Center 1999.