Hacker News Reader

Comment by lindsaywaterman | Hacker News Reader

Hello - I'm not sure I totally understand your question however I am sorry you have suffered so much with this. In my experience there is often an overlap between central sensitization and other chronic illness. So for instance, 30% of people with Rheumatoid Arthrtiis have fibromyalgia. Which means ,they have joint pain and fatigue even when there is no active RA. So it's never wrong to try a pacing approach to see if it helps. Good luck! (cfsselfhelp.org)

View on HN

>So it's never wrong to try a pacing approach to see if it helps.

How many people who've had chronic fatigue or post-exertion malaise for a few years do you think haven't tried pacing?

I'm sure some have not tried it, but my guess is that it occurs to most as a pretty obvious thing to try even without a health-care provider's or information source's suggesting it.

Even if a person's first response to chronic fatigue is to try to power through it and work even harder, after a few months of that strategy's not working, most people it seems to me will try taking it as easy as practical for a while.

I would say most of the 100s of patients I have seen w cfs or fibro haven’t given pacing a good try - either they do t have the common sense you mention, or they do, but are unable to make the changes required to actually pace. Ie making boundaries with family, leaving an abusive partner, taking time off a cherished job etc. And then, it is very rare for a person to, once they have removed these more external sources of stress, start to work on pacing their internally generated stress (ie “free floating anxiety” etc) through dedicated mindfulness and appropriate psychotherapy.

OK. Also, I can see how a patient might neglect to consider the hypothesis that he must pace mental work as well as physical work.

Exactly - mental, physical, and emotional work. IMO real pacing is extremely difficult, requiring a real transformation in life approach over the course of 3-5 years. And without certainty that making the sacrifices will pay off, most people take only half-measures, get poor results, and conclude it doesn’t work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com