The Real Cause of ME/CFS, Fibromyalgia and MCS

Generally with these conditions, I call these conditions neuroimmune conditioned syndromes. Now, what do we mean by that? Neuro means in the nervous system and in the brain. That's a neuro. Neuroimmune means that there are aspects of the immune system or the defensive systems which are active conditions, means that the nervous system has learned to trigger these responses. And syndrome means that there's a whole collection of symptoms unique to each person. So neuroimmune condition syndromes nicks because they nick your energy. So that's a phrase I've created to describe all of these conditions because, as you're probably aware, categorizing someone as having ME CFS or fibromyalgia or mcs, it doesn't make sense because actually each of those conditions is an arbitrary diagnosis. And you'll get certain countries where they don't diagnose people as ME cfs, they diagnose them as having fibromyalgia. And another country, they hardly see anyone with fibro. And it's mainly ME cfs. So it all depends how you delineate the different sets of symptoms. Now, the reason I'm going to go through the hypothesis, or the reason it's important that you watch the video on the hypothesis, is because I want you to feel comfortable with it. Before we go into any of the retraining, I'd like us to feel that, yes, this hypothesis does apply to me. It does make sense, and I can feel that satisfaction so I can move forward with my brain retraining, understanding and acknowledging the hypothesis. Feeling the hypothesis actually going on in your body is very useful in recovery. So at the beginning of the condition, what a lot of people report is that they had a lot of stress, and it might be acute stress or a sudden increase in stress, or they had what we call chronic stress. They may have had a year or two years in the run up to getting the condition where they felt very, very stressed. And stress is something that we know lowers the immune system. Chronic stress has so many physical and mental effects, emotional effects on the body. So it lowers our immune system, it increases inflammation in the body, which means aspects of the immune system getting triggered. We know that the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system gets out of balance as well. So all of these things are happening in our bodies at the beginning of the condition. So that's one factor. And that often then gets combined with some kind of physical trigger. So in the case of me CFS, we tend to find that about 70 to 80% of people, they remember a trigger and it might be a virus or a bacterial infection or an inoculation or some kind of medication. They took some kind of physical stressor on the body. And in the case of fibromyalgia, it tends to be not always, but tends to be some kind of pain trigger. So they may have a localized pain issue in the knee or the neck that then generalizes to the whole body. Or they may have had a road accident or some kind of fall would trigger the fibro. In other cases, they may not remember a specific illness or a specific trigger. In the case of mcs, it tends to be exposure to a chemical or, you know, a mould, or living in an unhealthy environment or pollution for an extended period of time, which then triggers the chemical sensitivities. Same with electrical sensitivities where someone's been in an environment where they've been exposed to electrical field the same time as stress. And irritable bowel syndrome, we tend to find people have been had some kind of food poisoning as a trigger for their ibs. So in all of these different cases we've got stress, severe or acute stress, combined with a physical challenge, physical insult, as they use the word insult in medical language. And thirdly, we know that there are certain genetic factors which seem to increase the propensity to get the condition. And also there may be factors relating to our upbringing, our levels of stress in general backgrounds in trauma. Have we experienced more trauma in our lives in the past? They can also have an influence on our chances of developing this condition. And we certainly know there is objective evidence on fibromyalgia that those who've contracted fibro have a far higher propensity to have had trauma, childhood trauma, in their lives. So that's an interesting clue to what's going on in these types of conditions. So, so far so good. We've got the physical illness combined with the stress. And let's take the example of me, cfs, and this is really important to wrap our heads around this. What is the body's number one priority? Can we imagine? Why are we here? The brain's number one priority is survival. That matters above all else. And the reason we're here is because over depending what you believe, over thousands or millions of years of evolution, this nervous system has become refined and refined and refined and the immune system as well to deal with our environment so that we can pass on our genes. And so the body's and the brain's number one priority is survival. Now, when in the case of ME cfs, let's say we're experiencing some kind of virus, let's say the flu, if our immune system is lowered and not effective, then people actually die of flu every year. So the elderly, certain people with weak immune systems, they can actually die from flu. And so whilst we take flu or a virus as something that's inconvenient, actually it's life threatening as far as the bodies and the brain is concerned. And because of all that stress we were experiencing at the beginning of the condition or in the run up to the condition for a couple of years, the immune system's effectiveness is low. And so we're fighting off the virus, we're fighting off the virus, but it doesn't seem to be being fought off effectively. And I'd like to use the analogy of a castle, so I want this to feel, it's very easy and light rather than a heavy medical hypothesis. Let's take the example of a castle and your conscious mind, the person who's listening and analyzing right now, you're the king or the queen of the castle, and your immune system is the navy and your nervous system is the army. And for whatever reason, the whole castle is stressed. Maybe there was a famine, maybe there was, you know, a previous war that had been fought. And it's the whole castle is exhausted. The army, the navy, they're all exhausted, Empire is exhausted. And suddenly a new virus comes over the hill. And the army and navy think, God, we are exhausted. But you know what? We have to fight off this invading army, otherwise our survival is under threat. So the army and the navy, the nervous system and the immune system go off to do whatever they need to do to fight off this invading virus. But because the army and navy are so exhausted, they really find it hard to fight off the invading army. Now eventually, over time, by bringing in all the resources from the entire kingdom, they eventually are able to fight off that invading army. They breathe a big sigh of relief. Thank God for that. We fought off that invading army, we've survived. But because that battle was so traumatic for the army and the navy, something has shifted. Something has changed in their makeup. They've become so paranoid that survival is under threat that anything that even vaguely mimics the original situation, they go into overdrive mode. So now the they're safe, there's no armies invading. But as soon as they see some people walking over the hill, it reminds them of when they first had that invasion. And suddenly the army and the navy go into full battle mode. They Use up all the resources of the castle and they start fighting off and fighting and fighting and using up all the body's resources when actually there was no threat. And on top of that, just feeling the weakness in the castle, the army and navy go on high alert all the time. They're always ready to fight and in fact, they're already sending off missiles into the distance just in case there's an invader coming over the hill. They become traumatized by the experience of war. And we know from a psychological perspective, people who go into war zones do experience trauma, because when your physical life is under threat because of another army or dangerous situation, the brain goes into overdrive mode. And then when a person comes back into normal life, if they hear a firework or they, let's say, hear a car backfiring, their whole nervous system gets ready for action if they hear a loud noise, because that survival instinct is still there. And it's good it's there because it's a protective instinct. It served them very well when they were in that war zone. And in the same way, this is a kind of physiological defensive response that protected us and saved us from danger when we were ill. So as horrible as this condition may feel, actually it's what saved us when that initial condition hit. But now it's left a legacy. And that legacy is the brain has learnt to overstimulate the nervous system and the immune system. The castle has learned to constantly keep the army and the navy in a battle mode, even though the war is over. And it's very interesting, you know, when would you think the last soldier was taken off duty? In the Second World War? When do you think that might be? Second World War ended in 1945. When do you think the last Japanese soldier was taken off duty? Late 40s, 50s, 60s, maybe? Believe it or not, it was 1984. But it's a very poignant picture, isn't it, that how traumatized someone can become to keep defending. And so it is with our body, it learns to over defend. And that is evolutionarily the right thing to do, to err on the side of caution. And in our situation, what happens is the brain becomes hypersensitive. So it becomes hypersensitive to anything that reminds it of when you first got ill. And that means the symptoms in the body. So every time we detect symptoms in the body, those messages go up to the brain and the brain says, oh, I knew we were in danger, I knew something was wrong. I can feel these symptoms in my body, right? I must over trigger the nervous system and the immune system, so then over triggers it, which then floods the body with excess neurotransmitters in the brain, stress hormones, and causes physical imbalances in our hormonal system. The immune system gets triggered, creating too much inflammation in the body and in the joints and also in the brain, because we know there's more inflammation in the brain as well. And then those symptoms double back into the brain again because the brain detects those symptoms and thinks, oh no, there's something wrong and retriggers those two systems again. And we know from recent research, which is backing up a lot of what we're saying, that researchers have noticed that in me cfs, the nervous system and the immune system seem to have got bound together. We know in neurology that neurons that fire together wire together. So because these are firing at the same time for so long, they start connecting. And so now any stress response that we have seems to trigger over inflammation in the body. So you might notice that let's say you're having a good period, but suddenly you get stressed. That seems to trigger a lot of symptoms coming back into your body, even though the stress that you experienced was relatively minor. So it shows that our systems are on a hair trigger that army and Navy are just waiting to over defend the system again.