ME,CFS:DIRE, THE RADIATION SICKNESS CONNECTION

by Helen Borel,RN,MFA,PhD

   There are several possible etiologies for ME, CFS:DIRE. Which or how many of these trigger this pathologic process have still not been definitively identified. Therefore, as I reported in my 1992
compendium on this subject, Living With and Recovering From CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME:
Debilitating Immunopathic Relapsing Encephalomyelitis, consider some similarities in the sufferings
of these patients to some of what occurs in Radiation Sickness.  The items in bold face point to
signs and symptoms similarly occurring in ME, CFS:DIRE.

   Radiation Sickness from Environmental Exposure or Radiation Therapy
   Radiation Sickness signs and symptoms include:
   ~ Nausea
   ~ Severe Vomitting
   ~ Anxiety
   ~ Disorientation
   ~ and, within hours of excess acute exposure, unconsciousness and death due to
      Central Nervous System Damage and Cerebral Edema

   The (above) fulminating course is referred to as The Central Nervous System Syndrome. 
During their ME, CFS:DIRE relapses, patients are experiencing a form of "CNS SYNDROME".

   Radiation Sickness at Lower Levels of Exposure may initially produce transient nausea 
and occasionally vomiting which rapidly abates followed by a 2-to-3-week period of relative
well-being.

   Unfortunately, after this calm period damage to the bone marrow and the entire immune
system begin to show their effects by repeated infections, which can be fatal without antibiotics
and petechiae (pinpoint bleeding spots visible on the skin). Treatment may work using bone marrow
transplantation or isolation in a sterile environment, until the bone marrow recovers and immune
function can be restored.

   Radiation Therapy can also produce unpleasant or hazardous effects including fatigue, 
nausea and vomiting, and loss of hair.  Reddening and blistering of the skin occurs rarely and can 
be alleviated with corticosteroids. 

   Note that these effects of radiation treatments are, by and large, responses to being poisoned
and immunocompromised thereby.  

   A similar vulnerability exists in ME, CFS:DIRE patients, who may initially be poisoned exogenously, then, paradoxically, are recurrently poisoned endogenously by their own
immune system cytokines during relapses. 

   The Radiation Sickness Connection is but one of many pathologic processes the ME, CFS:DIRE community can point to which, in some aspects, mirrors its patients' chronic, relapsing sufferings. Future blogs will report on other disease entities that share common signs and/or symptoms with ME, CFS:DIRE as well.

(c) Copyright 1992 to 2018 by Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.