@m.e_and_more

There are #MillionsMissing with #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis. Your #friend, your #family, or your #lovedOne sent you this because they live with an #incurable #untreatable #chronicIllness and #disability.

#MECFS is a misunderstood disease. Many people first hear it by the misleading name #ChronicFatigueSyndrome of #CFS but #MECFS is about so much more than the #dehbilitatingFatigue it is a #neuroimmunological condition thst can affect many organ systems across the body.

In particular it affects the #mitchondria stopping rhem from making the #ATP essential for life. This #mitchondrialDysfunction is worsened following phsyical or mental exertion. This causes the defining symptom of #MECFS #PostExertionalMalaise

#ME can also cause #neurological inflammation leading #migraine and #FND as well as #dysautonmia like #POTS that causes abnormal heartrate, bloodpressure, and temperature responses to everyday tasks like standing or bathing.

In short it is a severely dehbilitating #neuroimmunological disease and your loved one needs your support to #StopRestPace and treat their body right before it is too late. #severeME is as dehbilitating as late stage AIDS. You may be able to help save someone from this #livingDeath if only you take the time to learn and care.

I urge you to learn more about ME. The informstion here only scratches the surface. The Open Medicine Foundation @openmedf. ME Action @meactnet, Emerge @emergeaustraliainc, and The Hummingbird Foundation are all great places to start. As are my blog, instagram and resource page.

Not all #LongCovid is #myalgicEncephalomyelitis.

While its super important to raise awareness of the simularities of the #millionsMissing with #MECFS and #millionsMore with #LongC it is also essential to recognize that only a subset of #covid #longhaulers meet the criteria for a diagnosis of ME.

ME aka #ChronicFatigueSydnrome is not the same as #chronicFatigue. The defining symptom of ME / #CFS is #PostExertionalMalaise or an exhasurabtion of metabolic, neurological and immune dysfunction symptoms 24-48 hours after exertion.

When you are talking about long covid patients who experience #PEM you should talk about MECFS because that is what these patients have.

When you are talking about long covid patients be clear that only the subset with PEM have MECFS.

It is important for patients with long covid to receive the correct diagnoses, because while there are no FDA approved treatments for ME, many commorbidities do have effective medication options. Management of ME must also be tailored based on a patients commorbidities.

Patients with MECFS and post viral fatigue syndrome must not be prescribed GET or CBT. This includes all long covid patients with PEM.

Long covid patients who experience PEM should be advised to #StopRestPace and informed about the importance of pacing agressively not just to prevent symptoms from fatigue but to prevent PEM in the following days. This is regardless of whether they have PVFS (less than 6 months post covid) or MECFS (more than 6 months)

Because long covid is a broad category that encompasses patients MECFS #MCAS #fibromyalgia #POTS #dysautonomia #autoimmune and #autoinflammatory diseases in many combinations the prognosis for long covid patients is much more variable than that of ME patients and recovery is more likely in early stages of ME, long covid patients who recover should not generalize their experience onto MECFS patients more broadly and should continue to support MECFS research.

I am one of #MillionsMissing with #MECFS. #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis is a severely disabling #postViral #neuroimmunological #ChronicIllness with no FDA approved treatments and no cure. Only 5% of #pwME recover (Health Rising, 2021).

Before getting sick I was a choral singer and carillonneur performing all over North America and Europe. I interned for Google in Data Anonymization. I was a student one semester from graduation at Wellesley College. I swam, skiied, danced, walked, and studied with ease. ME stole my life, and yet still I am here, not dead, not living, just missing. My brain is clouded and my limbs turned to lead.

ME patients functioning scores are worse than those with depression, stroke, MS, heart attack, or HIV. Only comperable to those with widespread #chronicPain and cancer patients in #palliativeCare (Standford MECFS Initiative, 2019).

#SevereME is often described as #livingDeath and despite this grave level of illness housebound and bedbound patients still lack the homecare support and palliative care necessary to stop preventable suffering.

Outdated practices such as #GET and #CBT lead to many patients becoming severe and despite being formally withdrawn must be ended completely. Patients with #LongCovid need to be advised to #StopRestPace to minimize the spread of this horrible disease.

My #SevereME started out mild. But I was not advised about #PostExertionalMalaise or #PEM the defining feature of MECFS. I did not pace and I slowly had my life stolen by this terrible disease until I became #bedbound over a year go. Please #LearnFromME and implement pacing before it is too late.

Research into ME is extremely underfunded and necessary to improve long term outcomes for patient with #ME.

Despite an economic burden of 36-51 billion dollars per year in the US alone, the NIH provides ME with 14x less funding than necessary to be funded equally to its disease burden. (Open Medicine Foundation 2021, Health Rising 2021)

I urge all who see this to fight with me. This disease is real and not rare. We need treatments and research now. Already far too many are missing, help us come back to life.