Patients with chronic fatigue experience crippling exhaustion that is not resolved by sleep and rest.
A Norwegian study from 2021 showed that eight out of ten MS patients experience fatigue.
“Some patients describe the condition as the battery being completely empty. For others, chronic fatigue causes brain fog, and they’re unable to concentrate, may have difficulty staying attentive and feel like they’re thinking more slowly,” says Line Broch, a physician and one of the researchers behind the study.
Different genes – typically genes involved in our ancient system of innate immunity – play an important role both in their ability to trigger fatigue and how strong it becomes. It is actually possible to remove fatigue completely in mice by removing some of these genes, says [Dr. Roald] Omdal.
“Then the mice don’t succumb to fatigue no matter how sick they get,” he says.
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Omdal believes that precisely this deeply preserved biological feature contributes to causing fatigue in people with chronic diseases.
“At its core, fatigue is a beneficial mechanism that protects us when we’re injured or get an infection,” he says.
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Omdal believes that a lot of clues now point to chronic fatigue being due to this ancient protection mechanism in a number of diseases.
