by Majid Ali, M.D.
Chronic fatiguers are human canaries. This is the second core message of this book. It must be understood by those who suffer from chronic fatigue states, and those who care for them t, hat chronic fatiguers are different. Viral infections that common people can clear in days leave chronic fatiguers exhausted for weeks and months. Ordinary people do not even recognize when they are exposed to common environmental pollutants such as formaldehyde, organic solvents such as xylene and toluene, perfumes, paints and car exhaust fumes. Most chronic fatiguers are debilitated by such exposures. Most people breeze through sugar, insulin and adrenaline roller coasters without blinking an eye until degenerative and immune disorders make their appearance years later. Not so with chronic fatiguers. Even an occasional ice-cream cone can put them in bed for hours. Most people are not aware of foods that cause adverse bowel responses and allergic reactions. Not so with chronic fatiguers. Minor indiscretions exact major tolls from them. A large number of common people go about their business with aluminum, mercury or lead overload, never knowing how these toxic metals are poisoning their life span enzymes. Not so with chronic fatiguers. Their immune and molecular dynamics cannot sustain such burdens. We all recognize what stress is and how it injures us — at least theoretically. Stress has altogether different dimensions for chronic fatiguers. Most people intellectualize about anger at dinner tables. Not so with chronic fatiguers. Anger is a constant companion for chronic fatiguers — except for those few who find new spiritual dimensions through windows of suffering opened by chronic fatigue.
Chronic fatiguers are different. The critical element for chronic fatiguers is not what microbes and toxins do; rather, it is how their molecular defenses fail to cope with such injury. For the human canaries, the soil (molecular and immune defenses) is more important than the seed (the virulence of microbes and toxicity of chemicals).
