What's in a label and looking at the bigger picture: Considering the importance of using the right descriptor when conveying the seriousness of your condition to yourself and others whilst exploring a possible link between CFS / ME and neurodiversity.
What happens when huge amounts of energy get stuck in the body as trauma, leading to a freeze response or shutdown? How does this intersect with chronic conditions such as CFS, fibromyalgia, sensory defensiveness or other syndromes and does being autistic make you more prone to this? How can somatic therapies be used to discharge years of trauma? Exploring through my own deep-dive into the territory.
How does chronic illness relate to hibernation and what can we learn from that? Importantly, what key part do glutamates play in both, leading to a far better grasp of how to approach your own recovery protocol?
Learning to live with any of the syndromes (CFS, POTs, fibro, CSS, EDS, MCAS, to name but a few) can be incredibly tough. From dealing with doubters and denial, discrimination, misunderstanding, thoughtlessness, rejection, loneliness, fear, self-doubt and all the other rigours of long term chronic illness, this post takes a look at it all.
Here's my update, after almost 6 months of following a mega-dose thiamine (B1) protocol, and its good news so far...
It may seem like a reasonable suggestion, that you increase your exercise to recover from chronic illnesses such as long covid or CFS...or is it really a terrible mistake that could make things much worse? Exploring the paradoxical role of exercise for recovery from these highly contrary conditions.
Perhaps more than any other aspect of chronic illness I have ever had to deal with, including chronic unrelenting pain, dysautonomia has the ability to throw your entire life into disarray, permeating every single aspect of your life in ways that can be as invisible to the casual bystander as they are devastating. Is there a bright side, things we can learn, ways of living with it better?
The effects of vitamin B1 (thiamine) deficiency are widespread, sometimes bizarre, much-more common in the western world than we think...and look a lot like certain chronic conditions we all know so well in this space. So, what does saturating the body with high dose B1 do? I'm about to find out...
Introversion, visual or non-linear thinking, social anxiety, chronic or social fatigue, autism, high sensitivity...looking at all the many, often overlapping, factors that might make writing preferable to conversation for a lot of people and considering is this wrong, of just wonderfully different?
When one small thing breaks the camel's back, its usually time to stop and pay full attention. So often, its a clue to how we have been giving ourselves to everything, and everyone, else and not to our own needs...a key trait to notice when we have chronic conditions (because there seems to be a link)...
Living whole 