For more than a million people in the United States Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is incapacitating. People with Chronic Fatigue do not feel tired, they feel exhausted. A little rest does not refresh them. In addition to that, they have at least four of the following symptoms: serious memory or concentration problems, multi-joint pain, sore throat, tender lymph nodes, headaches like they've never had before, muscle pain, unrefreshing sleep, or severe malaise after physical or mental exertion. Their problems must have been checked to be sure there isn't another cause for them. Their symptoms must have been ongoing for six months or more. They have a real disease. This definition is according to the premier disease-tracking organization in America, the Centers for Disease Control.
Yet you will still hear people call it the yuppie flu. This offensive term implies that there is a group of people in America (1 million plus people, remember) who are so spoiled and such hypochondriacs that they have invented a disease for themselves. They're apparently from a class of people, the yuppies, with so few troubles that they have to make some up. I have heard more than one person imitate a "yuppie" and they all seem to do it by speaking in a whiny voice with an exaggerated valley girl accent. So yuppie flu, I guess, is a disease of middle class whiners. Not really.
In fact, nobody wants to have CFS. The disease strikes all income levels, all ethnicities and racial groups, all ages (though people in their forties and fifties are more susceptible), all genders (though women are four times more susceptible), and in countries around the world, according to the CDC. It is not something that only happens to young upwardly-mobile professionals.
Some people feel this is a disease that only strikes a psychiatrically impaired segment of the population. People with CFS must be neurotic, or severely depressed, if they don't have even more debilitating mental conditions.
In fact, the CDC says some people with CFS may be subject to panic attacks, depression, irritability, or anxiety. This may be as a result of the problems patients face coping with their disease, or it may be that problems of this kind are distributed through the population with CFS the same way they are distributed through the general population. It is interesting to note that before Tuberculosis was fully understood, people with TB were sometimes considered to be of a particular temperament, either as a consequence of their disease or as a cause of it. Read the old novels Heaven Has No Favorites, Camille, or The Magic Mountain to experience literary exploration of this world view. Of course, we now know TB is caused by bacteria, not by a personality type.
One of the most painful misunderstandings about CFS is that people who suffer from it are malingering. It's not that they find themselves unable to go to their job everyday, it's that they're "allergic to work."
In fact, some people with CFS, the number is unknown, do remain homebound. This is not because they want to be unable to go to the beach or a movie as well as to their jobs; rather it is because they have a real disease which sometimes won't permit them to leave home. The CDC says that there is no effective treatment for CFS, and that its cause remains mysterious. Yet, says the CDC, 40% of patients show some improvement. Those are not great numbers. In the future, we can only hope that our understanding of this disease, and of the people who live with it, will improve.
http://www.cdc.gov/cfs/cfsdefinition.htm
http ://www.cdc.gov/cfs/cfsbasicfacts.htm
http://www.cdc.g ov/cfs/cfscauses.htm