Chronic Fatigue Unmasked

By G.E. Poesnecker

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0916285618
• ISBN13: 9780916285616
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Humanitarian Pub Co
• Length: 350 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.8" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Great Book!

I am currently reading this book and find it to fit me exactly. I have been ill for 2 years now with not exactly sure what. Everything in the book relates to me, my life, my history, my illness and it is written where anyone can understand. I would highly recommend it to someone who feels they may be suffering from CFS.

Stress is the monster in CFS

Today, understandings of the roots of CFS are coming thick andfast. The focus is now on what is making our bodies weak rather thanwhat is menacing them from outside. Yet outside menaces are not unimportant. Ten people may walk along a lane sprayed with paraquat. Two may feel unwell for a little while. Only one will go on to develop chronic illhealth of the CFS sort. Researchers are now looking at why that one person was unable to recover from the exposure to the toxic chemical. Dr Gerald Poesnecker, a Pennsylvania chiropractor and naturopath, looks at what makes our bodies weak. He argues strongly that it is the cumulative effects of many negative factors on the immune system - in particular, the hypothalamic-pituitary axis and the adrenal glands - that is bringing people to their knees. So far much of the CFS medical establishment would agree. But unlike the establishment, he is unequivocal in his argument that STRESS is the basic cause. He draws heavily on the work of the great Canadian physiologist, Hans Selye, who first outlined the theory of the biological reaction to stress. His arguments appeal to me, in that when I wrote my book on CFS (Overload: Beating M.E./CFS) in 1985/86, I too felt that Hans Selye's research fitted CFS like a glove. But at that time, it was politically correct to postulate some mystery virus or bacteria, and though I found no evidence for such, I had neither the moral courage nor the physiological understanding to follow up the stress processes. Dr Poesnecker has both courage and understanding. He has worked with over CFS patients over a period of about 40 years. But understanding the progression of the illness is one thing. It is another thing altogether to offer an answer as to a cure. He admits he does not have this, because every person is different; making CFS probably the most difficult of all illnesses to cure. Over and over again he makes the point that patients must educate themselves in every possible way about their illness, and that they are ultimately responsible for the outcome. "Only the CFS patient himself can obtain ultimate mastery of his condition. The physician must provide a certain segment of the treatment. His part is essential and vital, but by itself is not sufficient for the total correction of the ailment. Full recovery from CFS is possible only if the patient assumes his part of the responsibility. If he does not, all help will be slow, arduous and eventually incomplete." He describes the processes of CFS as creating an `Ominous Triad .. a condition of the neurohormonal system which can be produced in an hereditarily weakened structure by a multitude of possible stresses which, in turn, cause a variety of symptom patterns which can in themselves eventually become stresses, thus creating a self-perpetuating disease - one that is able to feed upon its own symptoms." Dr Poesnecker explains almost all of the underlying CFS problems in relation to underactivity of the adrena