Chronic fatigue syndrome is a mysterious disorder that affects a fairly significant part of the population. Fatigue that occurs after any exertion or effort and does not go away even after rest was explained by doctors as accumulated stress. However, the new data surprised the researchers.
It turned out that the causes of the syndrome are not at all in stress or psychological problems. It’s all about the state of our body. Recently, scientists are finding more and more evidence that the intestinal microflora has a great influence on our health, including mental health. Recent studies have shown that a change in the composition of the intestinal microflora may be one of the causes of disorders such as autism or depression.
Those suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome often complain of discomfort in the stomach and intestines, and digestive problems. Many disorders are provoked by inflammatory processes in the body, which, in turn, can develop due to changes in the microflora.
Biologists from Cornell University decided to test whether there is a link between chronic fatigue and a violation of the intestinal microflora.
The researchers studied the content of various bacteria in the intestines of 48 patients suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and 39 healthy volunteers.1. It turned out that in the intestines of those suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, beneficial bacteria are much less than normal, and there are especially few bacteria that help the body fight inflammatory processes.
The bacterial balance is disturbed for various reasons — due to taking antibiotics or other medications, from improper diet and lifestyle, due to smoking, alcohol. You can normalize the microflora with the help of special preparations, bifidobacteria, diet.
It is possible to treat chronic fatigue syndrome with the help of a special diet.
Women suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome more often than men, and it usually develops in adulthood. Unfortunately, there is still no reliable way to diagnose or treat this disease.
Many doctors consider the disease not a physiological, but a mental disorder and do not treat it as a «serious» or «real» illness. A new study refutes such theories. “We found a biological disorder that further proves that chronic fatigue syndrome is not just a mental disorder,” said study author Professor Maureen Hanson, a molecular biologist and geneticist.
“In the future, we will be able to use the method of analyzing the composition of the microflora to diagnose not only this syndrome, but also other diseases,” adds co-author of the study, microbiologist Ludovic Giloteaux (Ludovic Giloteaux). “And when we better understand the processes taking place in the intestines, then perhaps we will be able to find new ways of treatment, for example, special diets or so-called probiotics that contribute to the normalization of the intestinal microflora.”
1 L. Giloteaux et al. «Reduced diversity and altered composition of the gut microbiome in individuals with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome», Microbiome, June 2016.
It is possible to treat chronic fatigue syndrome with the help of a special diet.