The Explanation of MECFS You NEED to Hear

When we speak about recovery; it often feels like a big plate of spaghetti placed before us; all mangled and tangled up in a pile, with confusing approaches to getting well, that at times even seem contradictory. Yet, in this amazing technological age, we SEE people getting well, so we know it's possible. Truthfully all of these recovery stories, if you listen closely enough, are NOT really talking about different things; they are talking about the same thing, in different ways, or from different angles. 

Whatever you’re doing in recovery, a true understanding of MECFS is to me, Pillar #1 (of the 4 pillars that I speak about so often, and you can learn more about here), and the foundation by which everything else is built upon thereafter. 

So I'm going to lay it out for you here; my understanding, as clear and concise as possible as to what is going on in MECFS. 

What actually is MECFS? 

MECFS has been classified at the nuero-immune institute of south west Florida, (where one of the greatest research scientist of our days, Dr. Nancy Klimas does nothing but live, breathe and sleep MECFS research), as a "neuro-immue" disease.

Note: The neuroimmune system is a complex system of the body, that describes interactions between the nervous and immune system, which are hard-wired to each other. 

That means that unlike an “auto-immune” disease in which the body is attacking itself, this is a disease in which the nervous system and the immune system are acting disproportionately, and have lost a sense of balance to sustain homeostasis. The other systems, such as cellular, neuro-endocrine, metabolism, and central nervous system, also help to main homeostasis, and because all of these systems work together in a beautifully, highly intelligent, almost inconceivably perfect way, what impacts one for the positive, impacts the other. This also means, what triggers/strains one, will trigger/strain the other.

(Note: when I was attending, they were doing tests on rats to try to find a “homeostasis reset” button and then see if it could then be implemented into humans, but no luck thus far.)

What I was taught at the institute, is that because homeostasis has been lost, and the stress response and rest/digest response are both not working properly, we must work as we can to normalize the stress response, so the body can find balance.

All the other systems however, will continue to trigger each other, and can in it of themselves, trigger the stress response. This is why brain retraining as a stand alone approach cannot work for everyone; because if you have high blood pressure, diabetes, thyroid issues, all of which remain unresolved, or even mold, heavy metals or other burdens on the nervous system, those will trigger it bottom to top, which has a cascading impact back down onto the systems. That is the nature of the illness; which is after all, bi-directional.

Likewise if you have deep trauma, PTSD etc, the same ideas apply as having mold or thyroid issues; how trauma is stuck and stored in the body and the way it impacts the body is also something that has a bi-directional impact on MECFS.

Whatever we do, we must try to help the body return to homeostasis. The reason why mind-body appraoches can be so powerful is because of the way the limbic system, where we process signals of danger or safety and make sense of them with emotion, plays into our stress response.

A stress response that through conditioning and through crashes, has become more highly sensitive, resulting in a greater imbalance in the way it's triggered, and also greater physiological distress, CAN be reshaped through neuroplasticity and returned to normal. This reshaping has a very real impact on our body's ability to find balance and heal, as the rest/digest and fight/flight responses return to normal.

I believe the body is ALWAYS trying to return to homeostasis, and so much of what I did in recovery was about getting out of its way, while letting it do what it was trying to do. All my efforts, even pharmaceutical intervention, were in an attempt to nudge it back to balance. It was as if it had amnesia, and lost its way and I just kept reminding it of who it was and how it functions. And every system that I supported, would eventually trigger every other system less and less. 

So much of what I had to do was working with all triggers; environmental, emotional, physiological and psychological. That means that brain retraining and somatics were not the entire puzzle for me; but a piece of what I call “the four pillars” of recovery.

Recovery for many, myself included requires a multi-faceted approach.

However, the reason we work with the ANS the most, is because, without dealing with our stress response, all the other systems which can be so greatly impacted by holistic methods and functional medicine (like the $15,000 I spent on HBOT and ozone therapy which truly helped), will get shot to hell if we have a huge stress trigger again.

Likewise, if we ONLY do "brain-retraining," and this serves us to gaslight ourselves into ignoring the body's very real limits, we will stress our physiology, causing negative upwards changes onto the brain and the ANS, and as a result, create more dis-ease in both.