By Jayne Barnard

Copyright © 2011 Jayne Barnard.  All Rights Reserved.

For reprint permission, please contact Jayne Barnard or Barbara at

http://www.cfs-info.com

Introduction:

We all know there's a shortage of energy available in ME/CFS, right? Dr's and researchers can't agree on whether it's because not enough is being made or because it's all being sucked away to fight 'stealth infections' or some other underlying problem,  but whatever. It's still an energy shortage.
 
Our bodies have to run a lot of systems with insufficient energy. Think of them like a power grid that covers several states. If we were, say, the Eastern USA, we would not be able to consistently supply full power to New York (brain), Washington DC (heart), and all the smaller cities up and down the Eastern Seaboard (feet in Texas and Florida, arms in Chicago and New Hampshire, etc. We'd either have blackouts in different regions a lot, or we'd have to manage the power supplies so that all areas got maximum power some of the time and minimum power most of the time. That’s a rolling brownout, and it’s a permanent state for people with ME/CFS.

Physical Manifestations of a Rolling Brownout:

That 'tired but wired' feeling we all get, where the more exhausted we are the more we can't sleep? That feeling is the power engineers in our brains running around flipping switches faster and faster, trying to avoid a full blackout by rotating available power to all the different regions in turn.  The power engineers try to save steps and make priority decisions such as to keep Buffalo's electric heaters running in a blizzard (keep us warm) instead of the lights on in Times Square (run our cognitive functions). Sometimes they shut off streetlights in Newark (arm & hand nerves) to keep the electrical system running on Amtrak (leg muscles & nerves).

Sometimes during a crisis they forget to turn Newark's streetlights back on.

Our weird mixture of seemingly random symptoms happen because some region of the body is not getting its 'fair share' of maximum power for a considerable time, either because there isn't enough power to go around (over-extended) or because it fell off the priority list and nobody put it back on.

Sometimes the body parts' power schedule has to be tweaked for power to go to clearing up a flu bug or other temporary crisis. The whole system has to be stripped of all but bare minimum energy to support that effort to avoid a blackout.

During the crisis, nobody is sending out maintenance crews to fix those gradually failing transmission lines, clogged culverts, broken-down garbage trucks, and other problems that any system in constant use develops. For us, that means poor detox ability, slow healing of skin damage and other less visible but potentially more dangerous system erosion such as fatty liver, peripheral neuropathy, mini-strokes or heart damage.

For emergency power during a rolling brownout, we often turn to emergency generators, supplements like D-ribose, sugar, caffeine & other stimulants. These substances can get you through the blizzard but can't fully take the place of the malfunctioning power plants and broken transmission lines. Sooner or later, the fuel runs out. If the main power grid can’t send more power soon, something is going to break, maybe beyond repair.

Be kind to your power plant engineers: don’t make them work overtime trying to meet impossible demands for constant energy.

Part 2: Looters, Squatters and Vandals

Taking the power grid metaphor a bit further…

In any neighbourhood where the power goes out, not only are the streetlights affected but also the traffic lights, burglar alarms, air conditioners, fridges, and so on. With ME/CFS those effects might translate to poor digestion, circulation or nerve conduction (snarled traffic); brain reaction signals (burglar alarms, smoke detectors) to adjust your balance or warn of burns or other sudden changes; air conditioner shut-down (poor body temperature adjustment); and fridge failure (food rots before it can be digested).

Then there are the threats from outside: Looters, Squatters and Vandals. These nasty folks are just waiting for the power to go down before they strike.

Looters: anything that robs a body part of the resources needed to keep the minimum functions working. Examples might include exposure to chemical scents ie fabric softeners, perfumes or cleaning materials, which use up the liver's energy and stores of detoxifying molecules when they can't be replenished easily (because the fridge is dead and the grocery truck is stuck somewhere in traffic) and then the liver can't do its other important job of regulating your blood sugar, putting extra stress on your endocrine system; noise pollution or visual stimulation that jacks up the adrenal system and causes overload in the brain processing centres, getting in the way of the efficient energy managers up there running around flipping switches.

Squatters: fungus (ie Candida), bad bacteria (especially in the gut) and viruses, all of which are usually in the body’s environment but never get to run wild until the power goes down. During a prolonged brownout,, they spread out into organs and cells where they shouldn’t be. There they lie low, sneaking out to steal energy from nearby body parts. They're an ongoing drain on the barely-running system. Occasionally a police patrol (immune cells) catches one in action and goes after it but there are many other squatters and the system simply hasn’t enough ‘police’ to go after all of them. This may be why some of us feel better on/after short doses of broad spectrum antibiotics: many individual, poorly organized squatters get taken down in a few days of sustained ‘police raids’, freeing up that energy to do other things until the squatters build up again.

Vandals: molecules of partly digested food (from leaky gut due to repeated digestive slowdowns) or partially detoxified chemicals (from liver overload) or free radicals (from cellular waste products trapped by lack of circulating 'garbage trucks'); all of these damage the cells, blood vessels, and organs, putting even more pressure on the limited energy supply to repair the damage.  Too bad we can’t paint our power boxes with pretty pictures to deter graffiti vandals.

Looters, squatters and vandals all hang around for ages, putting extra strain on a system that's already trying hard to keep up with demand. With luck and good pacing to manage your scarce energy, your body’s power engineers can route enough power to get the streetlights and traffic lights working. The cops can get after the looters, squatters and vandals, freeing up a bit more energy for tomorrow's operations and maybe even, from time to time, for something purely fun like a movie theatre.

Summary:

Rolling brownouts are why we often feel 'okay' when resting and sick as soon as we get up to move around. The power engineers can regulate the energy flow to keep the streetlights on in all neighbourhoods and occasionally reroute maximum power police or repair crews while our major muscles are at rest.  When the engineers also have to supply power to the large muscles needed to keep us standing up and walking around, our maintenance crews and policing suffer.  And, since muscles working burn up a lot of energy – why people exercise to lose weight – the fuel supplies to run the power plants get drawn down not only in those large muscles, but everywhere in the power grid, triggering a body-wide energy crisis, intensifying the brownouts and making a whole lot more work for all parts of the system.

So be nice to your body’s power engineers. Don’t call them names when they can’t get power to all body parts simultaneously. They’re doing the best they can with the limited resources available. And they’re all that stands between you and a system-wide blackout.