Diagnosed CFS-helpful tips?

I’ve been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

I’ve found eating 3-4 servings of fresh fruit helps me recover from the fatigue. I have to eat the fruit for about 3-5 days but I recover from burnout as opposed to eating a low fruit diet which will leave me exhausted for weeks.

I’ve checked the research literature, it seems a significant number of CFS patients suffer from mitochondrial damage (aerobic energy production) which cripples energy production based on burning glucose and fats. Since most carbohydrates breakdown into glucose the majority of my dietary calories are stymied by the mitochondrial damage.

Fruit however contains fructose which is burned by the pentose phosphate pathway (anaerobic energy production). You can tell you’re anaerobic if you have sore muscles (due to lactic acid buildup) after exertion.

Ever since I’ve added fruit to my diet I feel I’ve been building endurance. It takes longer periods of activity to burn myself out. Also avoiding complete burn out was helpful. Every time I burned myself out, it took much longer to recover. Like about six months. There is some research that strongly suggests this effect is caused by oxidative stress. Your body revs everything up in response to exercise but the mitochondria are unable to reach full speed. This means oxygen is building up in your cells. If the levels are high enough your body concludes there is something deeply wrong with the cell and triggers apoptosis (cell death). There is no standard medical test that can determine if this is actually what happens but my experience is consistent with the research.

What have you found is helpful?

Update: due to grocery shopping malfunction, I just carbo-loaded 3 servings of fruit which I never do because I stick to recommendations for diabetes. First the first time that I can remember in 12 years of CFS my morning brain fog cleared up about 15 minutes after I ate. Normally this takes about 3 hours assuming it clears up at all. This feels like I’m definitely on the right track (at least for my version of CFS).

Update, I got slammed with an accident using public transit. I ended up dragging my luggage while wandering around lost looking for the detour trains. What should have been a one hour ride turned into four hours of connections. Normally I would have been wiped out for weeks but instead I was mildly tired the next day. I haven’t done anything different except eating more fruit.

Next: Healing is an energy intensive process. I hypothesize CFS is slow healing because of an energy shortage. Healing also occurs primarily at night during sleep. Therefore, assuming you find fruit is helpful, it is probably important to carbo-load fructose sometime before bed.

Healing is by definition, the replacement of bio molecules that are damaged or missing. For protein replacement, you need to eat 30 grams of protein in one sitting in addition to the fructose to provide energy to fuel this process. One sitting is 2-3 hours. 30 grams of protein is 5 large eggs, 5 oz of skinless boneless, defatted chicken, about 8 oz of steak. Once you initiate protein synthesis, it will continue for vaguely 24-48 hours. Nutritionists will advise you do this 3x per day to optimize healing. But I have never been able to eat this much protein in one day. Also, check out protein supplements because I can’t even cook enough food to fulfill this advice.

You will need a high nutrition diet for everything else. But the protein is the tough barrier.

Carbo-loading fruit at night will absolutely wreak havoc with my diabetes. I am gong to search for pure fructose sources.

I think the moral of this story is just keep trying stuff cuz weird as it may sound, if it does no harm then you have nothing to lose.