Ep 137 ME/CFS: What’s in a name? (A lot, actually)

This Podcast Will Kill You

Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

Health & Fitness, Science

4.8 • 17.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2024

⏱️ 103 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In many ways, this week’s episode on myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a companion piece to last week’s episode on Long Covid. The two share many similarities: a wide range of debilitating symptoms lingering long after infection, an illness which can transform from day to day or week to week, dismissal and downplaying by the medical community, a big question mark under “pathophysiological cause”, and so many others. These parallels can tell us a great deal about our concepts of disease and how we deal with uncertainty in science and medicine. But the differences between these two can be equally revealing. In this episode, we dig into what we know and what we hypothesize about the biological underpinnings of ME/CFS before tracing the twisty history of this disease, as popular perception switched back and forth and back again from “real” to “imagined” disease. We wrap up the episode with a look at some of the current research and promising treatments for ME/CFS. Both ME/CFS and Long Covid demonstrate the power of patients and patient advocates in raising awareness about poorly understood diseases and the impact that sharing personal stories can have. You can find more incredible work by Katie Walters, the provider of one of our firsthands for this episode, by clicking on this link. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is exactly right.
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1:08.8	Hi, my name is December. I'm 29 and I was diagnosed with myalgic and sufflomylomyelitis,
1:16.6	probably fatigue syndrome or ME CFS a week before I turned 26. I was always kind of a sick kid. I had quarter in school where I didn't need to take a day or more off due to illness.
1:27.6	At the time that was struck up to a poor immune system.
1:30.3	As I got older I think professors and classmates thought I was being lazy and skipping class rather than being sick.
1:37.0	If I had any illness, it would take me out for a lot longer than the average person.
	...

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