New Hope for Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia Sufferers

There are numerous theories with regard to the causes of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, many of which may be indeed touching on the truth or at least touching on an aggravator or contributor to these afflictions. Diseases in general have been growing in epidemic proportion over at least the past 20 years, especially in the United States, where our increasingly toxic environment and lifestyles have drifted further and further away from what is natural in the name of progress, technology, and profit. Chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia are no exception, the two often being experienced together, and possibly symptoms of the same disease. Many agree that having one or both of these conditions reflects a compromised immune system, but whether this has resulted from viruses or chemicals or heredity or DNA mutations or other causes is much debated. As in the question of the chicken or the egg, I think the answer lies in what came first, at least in terms of triggering the disease.

We all have unique genetic weaknesses and tendencies, but usually a disease that we may be predisposed to will not surface unless an external environmental factor triggers it. Viruses lay dormant in all of us, as do many bacteria. The body's immune system keeps them in check unless the body is damaged and becomes weak and imbalanced to the point that viruses and bacteria grow out of control and flourish, causing disease. But what external "triggering" factors came first to weaken the immune system to allow such a systemic breakdown to occur?

The answer most likely lies in how increasingly toxic and contaminated our bodies are becoming. This cumulative toxic overload is the result of the growing number of harmful chemicals we're exposed to in our everyday life -- over 10,000 in food processing and preservation alone. We eat chemically-processed foods that contain preservatives, pesticides, dyes, hormones, bleaching agents, neurotoxic artificial sweeteners, steroids, and antibiotics, drink hundreds of chemicals in our tap water, breathe in fumes from factories, are bombarded with radiation from numerous and growing sources, and chemicals are outgassed in our homes from our Teflon-coated pans to our stain-resistant carpets. We are surrounded with plastics, paints, solvents, cleaners, medications, and many other toxic chemicals, and when you mix them all together in our bodies with our own natural chemistry, as in a chemistry lab, the results can be unpredictable and potentially explosive. In addition, antibiotics that destroy good bacteria along with the bad have been dangerously overprescribed, contributing to weakened immune systems, and expensive unnatural synthetic drugs are being dispensed in record numbers that do not cure but only suppress symptoms, while causing a plethora of harmful side effects to the tune of billions of dollars for the pharmaceutical industry.

Recent studies have shown that antibiotics and chemicals can permeate cell walls and destroy, damage, or mutate mitochondria, which most claim cannot be regenerated. What are mitochondria? In short, they are the powerhouses of our bodies. They assimilate food and produce critical nutrients, but their primary function is to manufacture adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a vital component of life. ATP is believed to provide 90-95% of all cellular energy and has been found to act as a neurotransmitter extracellularly. Also, an enormous amount of ATP is required by our energy-hungry muscles. Unfortunately, the brain does not store ATP, ATP cannot be shared between organ systems, its supply is very limited, and the demand for it by the body is very high. Therefore, ATP must be constantly synthesized to provide a continuous supply of energy or an ATP-imbalance occurs, which may lead to neuronal cell deaths, chronic fatigue from lack of energy, nutritional deficiencies, and muscle weakness and pain as in fibromyalgia, among many other symptoms. ATP imbalance or poor regulation can be very dangerous