Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is one of the many health conditions that medical professionals are unsure how to treat; this is primarily because the cause is not known.
Theories come and go, but none have been proven.
The condition is marked by persistent, sometimes debilitating fatigue, muscle and joint pain, difficulty concentrating, memory problems and worsened fatigue with exertion.
Without a clearly identified cause, medical professionals have been struggling to narrow down what treatment options work best to manage symptoms and improve overall quality of life for CFS sufferers.
Fortunately, this effort has yielded some fruit, albeit a small harvest for now.
A recent study out of London shows two forms of therapy to deliver results in combination with standard care.
Graded Exercise and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Standard care for CFS generally involves prescription medication and advice to make lifestyle alterations.
With over 600 patients, researchers tested the recovery rates of 4 separate treatment groups: standard care alone, standard care plus adaptive pacing therapy, standard care plus cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and standard care plus graded exercise therapy.
Adaptive pacing therapy involves learning how to pace activities and when to rest; in CBT, patients work with a therapist to examine their feelings, thoughts and beliefs about their health condition and replace exaggerated and/or negative thought patterns with more positive or accurate ones; graded exercise therapy involves working your way through a series of activities that you may think are beyond your capacity.
Recovery, in this study, was defined as significant self-reported improvement and no longer meeting CFS diagnostic criteria.
Both CBT and graded exercise are mind-body therapies.
They challenge patients' perceptions of their illness and limitations.
The behavioral aspects, like exercise, physically enable some patients to become stronger and gain endurance.
The study found only 7% of the standard care group and 8% of the standard plus adaptive pacing group to recover after 1 year of treatment.
Both the CBT and graded exercise groups yielded a 22% recovery rate in this time period.
It's true that these results aren't staggering; nearly 4 out of 5 participants in the most successful groups didn't recovery.
However, for those looking anywhere they can for potential treatment options, these results are promising.
It could be that the patients who had not recovered simply needed more time; it could also be that further research will uncover differentiations within cases of CFS that point to different treatment paths for certain patients.
For now, we can conclude that mind-body approaches have a much higher success rate than standard care alone.
See more on the study at http://www.
sciencedaily.
com/releases/2013/01/130131120851.
htm.
For people with conditions like CFS, the best things you can do are keep an open mind about treatment options and understand that research is being done that may one day soon help you find the option best for you.
Don't hesitate to pursue natural, safe options in the meantime.