We all know what it is to feel fatigued occasionally. It is a normal signal broadcast by the body to slow down and obtain sleep. For those who are in a good state of health, a solid nights sleep will recharge their batteries and return them to feeling top notch again. They awake with a gleeful anticipation of the challenges of the day ahead and are driven with an inner strength that seems to say "bring on the day!'"

The above scenario, however, is not the case for everyone. For many, waking in the morning brings on a sense of inadequacy and dread as they face challenges they have no strength to mount the attack with. These growing numbers of people in our population are in a chronic, persistent, state of unrelenting fatigue. They find themselves altering, on a daily basis, between tired, very tired and plain old exhausted. Dragging themselves into the medical physician's office these are the individuals who are being labeled with the medical diagnosis of "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" (C.F.S.).

Prior to "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome"

At least as far back as the eighteenth century, there are numerous references to the etiology (cause) of fatigue and its role in disease, George Miller Beard, an American Neurologist, popularized the idea that nervous energy can become exhausted and in an 1869 article coined the term "neurasthenia". The problem was characterized by digestive problems, mental fatigue and mood changes. Beard hypothesized that the problem was due to increasing technology which was taking its toll on the individual's homeostasis. He mentioned inventions such as the steam engine, telegraph, and others as putting strains on an individuals total nervous energy pool'. The notion of lost nerve energy as playing a vital role in disease was taken up with considerable enthusiasm by an American founder of neurology, S. Weir Mitchell, who became a vocal advocate of his "rest cure" required to restore the energy of the nervous system and heal neurasthenia in these patients'. Numerous explanations have arisen for chronic fatigue since then.

I Beard. G.M. Neurasthenia or Nervous Exhaustion. Boston Med. SurgJ. 3:217 , 1869

2 Mitchel, S.W. Fat and Blood and How to Make Them (2nd ed.) Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1882. Pg 27-32

Learn more about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and its resolution
(an extract from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - A Garbage Can Diagnosis)

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