Dr Deepak Ravindran
Treatments and Living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a long-term severe condition of which the causes are often many, and still unknown with tests not able to make a clear diagnosis. Because of this, treating CFS is often a task of managing the symptoms and offering a plan to help support the patient.
I discuss more in this video.
foreign [Music] chronic fatigue slash Emmy I thought that I would focus this video on the treatment of this condition and generally what we now accept as living with CFS and me this takes into account that this is a severe long-term condition for which the courses are often many and still unknown the laptops are not really present to make a clear diagnosis so treatment often is around managing the symptoms and providing a plan to the patient to help them support them and increase and improve their quality of life and try to reduce the impact those symptoms have on their life and their living with other family members so the first I tend to look upon this as a Continuum of a variety of things that need to be added so we have to help patients create a plan that takes into account all the symptoms that are there since I've told you that most symptoms are going to be focused around the fatigue the pain the Sleep disturbances and other heart related symptoms or brain related symptoms often treatments are focused at looking at symptomatically managing it so for example if the heart symptoms palpitations or the pots like symptoms are significant and these May benefit from certain medications to reduce the heart rate such as beta blockers and there may be a role for other treatments of improving the volume or using some kind of tight stockings to improve the circulation so as to reduce the palpitations or the dizziness other symptoms may include drugs for looking at any kind of mast cell or immune Cell Activation that can help in calming it down so medications are one way of trying to reduce some of the symptoms pain again we could consider looking at certain medications next in terms of interventions there are not that many interventions that we right now have for CFS or me sometimes we may be able to offer certain treatments or interventions for managing the pots like symptoms in some parts of the world there is a role for giving IVC line intravenous saline has an infusion for patients who have got significant thoughts but the evidence for this is still very patchy and not often done the biggest is around Stress Management neuroscience and Stress Management understanding the impact that cortisol and other hormones have and that can be very useful in picking up those strategies and trying to learn how to use stress mitigation strategies from breathing techniques to a variety of other materials that are being talked about in them but a lot of the management of fatigue and pain is around the principle of pacing pacing is been very difficult to grasp with my understanding itself it's about knowing that we have an energy envelope the way I describe it to my patients is to actually say imagine that you are starting a day with the mobile phone that can only be charged to 70 percent you don't have the ability or the possibility to top it up to 100 so you're dealing with a mobile phone that's 70 percent so you can either choose to run it and finish it by the morning and then not have a mobile phone at all for the rest of the day or you can see how you Pace your activities so that you can make the mobile phone last for the entire day till you come back to put it for charging again metaphorically speaking and when you want to make it last for the whole day the other realization is that physical activities and emotional or cognitive activities all of which use the same energy envelope so understanding that all the activities that you do can still come out of the same energy envelope is very important in treating making people understand and living with CFS Emmy very important to take that on there and in relation to pacing sleep then becomes hugely important because that understanding of sleep hygiene understanding of various sleep techniques and AIDS to improve the quality and quantity of sleep that is so vital and there are so many strategies that have been written about and it is a very important area to focus on there is a lot of work being done to look at diet and that comes because the immune system is significantly present in and around the intestine so by looking at some form of an anti-inflammatory diet or modulating your immune system and your diet you can make a difference and change the immune system and that might affect the fatigue and your ability to manage the symptoms we talk a lot about physical activity and I don't want to say exercise but physical activity is hugely important but because we know that physical activity sometimes can make symptoms worse it's important to get that advice on what might be adequate or suitable or Safe physical activity to do and how do you paste it into your lifestyle as part of your plan to manage the condition and finally we end with therapies of Mind and Body meaning that what are the various complementary or adjunctive therapies that have shown to be of benefit in calming the immune and the nervous system down and improving the fatigue and there are a lot of good studies talking about mindfulness talking about other conditions that could be tried other treatments that could be tried which might help in managing CFS so to summarize their the way to nicely divide the treatments for cfsme at this time there are options for medications or interventions in certain symptoms there is an option for understanding the neuroscience and stress medication looking at diet is very important looking at sleep strategies is going to be vitally important and physical activity and the use of mind-body therapies finally round off a good creation of a plan to help you support and manage your CFS Emmy I hope you found this video series useful thank you for listening thank you for watching this video I hope you found the content useful and of value to you please don't forget to subscribe to my channel and hit the like button for more videos to be notified [Music]
#Treatments #Living #Chronic #Fatigue #Syndrome #CFS
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I have had mental and physical fatigue for four years which began with insomnia. I do not have PEM. All is normal in my blood work except that Ferritin and Folate are both very low. After the last three months on iron tablets I am not sure of any significant improvement. I always wake in the middle of the night. Do you think it may be ME? In other words, can chronic fatigue and ME sometimes be two different things?
Thank you for this informative video.
Omg. All makes so much sense now.. just told today this what I have.. Thank you so much for this video.
… and don’t let family and friends gaslight you!
Thank you anyway – I caught a few things. Thanks for caring enough to produce this video. Th u
I wish no background music
Thank you,very helpful summary,Dr Kevin
I like you a lot! ❤ Thank you.
Great video
Thank you ❤ just received my diagnosis today after 3 years of medical drama.
Great video!
I just started watching this video. Thank you for helping people like me!!! I have me/cfs and fibromyalgia among other things and unfortunately I have spent the past 4 years doing my own research and working with functional medicine dr and other specialists. LDN and b12 injections and lots of vitamins and supplements , pacing snd so many other things . It’s a very challenging life and lots of work
Wish you were my doctor: I'm in Scotland, I get help and my home Nasa Tilt Test was totally dismissed as proof of anxiety.
Is there any platform through which we people can communicate with u as being patient who are not getting to know what problem do they have even after thousands of blood tests and doctor is not even able to understand what disease do patient have..so atleast become available on any doctor app or make ur own so we can communicate with u and as a doctor it's ur duty to help those patients whose problem no normal doctor is able to understand