What Doctors Are Finally Starting To Understand About Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

This article provides an overview of Ann Cavanagh Cramer’s 8 year journey of an unexplained illness to diagnosis and management and the emerging changes in the medical community as the findings of global research studies become available.

Cavanagh Kramer’s experience highlights a shift in understanding the ways CFS affects the body and how to treat it. Historically, many doctors considered CFS a psychosomatic disorder that required psychological (not medical) intervention. But recent research by Jose Montoya, MD, professor of infectious diseases and geographic medicine at Stanford University Medical Center and others has compelled the medical community to take the condition much more seriously.

This year the Institute of Medicine issued a report calling CFS a “serious, chronic, complex and systemic disease” that is “real” and not to be dismissed. It also clearly defined the hallmarks of the illness and renamed it systemic exertion intolerance disease. It’s a mouthful, but many experts call it a step in the right direction.