by William Collinge, PhD
January 11, 2009
Author of Recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A guide
to Self-Empowerment, and Partners in Healing: Simple Ways to Offer Support, Comfort, and Care to a Loved One Facing Illness, released in December 2008.*
The experts agree that lifestyle change is the foundation
for recovery from CFS. According to Paul Cheney, MD, this is
"easily the most important and often the least emphasized"
part of treatment.
CFS is a cyclical disease. One important aspect of lifestyle
change is how you manage your cycles. You can be "doing
everything right," and you'll still have cycles, often for
no apparent reason. You can, however, learn to reduce their severity,
and even use them to your advantage. Here's how.
On the "Good Days"
Waking up to one of those precious "good days" is
like finding an unexpected $100 in your pocket. What do you do
with this extra money? The temptation might be to go out and
spend it all. You may want to "make up for lost time"
and do everything you've been deprived of: go shopping, go for
a long walk, do the laundry, clean the windows, go to a movie,
wash the car, shampoo the carpet, and finish those three or four
other projects... knowing that this is a rare opportunity to
"get a lot done." And then, of course, you crash.
There is an alternative way to work your cycles. You can actually
use the good day to help build momentum toward healing. Think
of the good day as a form of "capital" that can be
invested in your healing process–rather than being spent
or squandered.
I call this "the fifty percent solution," and it
goes as follows: When you awaken to a good day, make an assessment
of how much you feel you can do. For example, you might make
a list often things you feel capable of doing and want to do
today.
Now, instead of spending all your newfound capital, you would
do half the things on your list, and then stop. For the next
day or two, you observe your body's responses.
If you crash, your assessment is adjusted downward on your
next good day. If you feel fine, you may want to repeat this
process, each time doing just half of what you feel capable of
doing. As your confidence grows, your appraisal of how much you
can do may increase, but you still do just half.
"The essence of the fifty percent solution is that
you spend half your energy and invest the other half."
What to do with the other half of your energy? This is the
key. It takes some self discipline, but here is where you have
a chance to do something clever.
The essence of the fifty percent solution is that you spend
half your energy and invest the other half. What is not spent
outwardly is used inwardly to support your body's self-repair
mechanisms. Thus, even though you don't feel you need to, you
take extra time to rest.
The rest that you get on a good day is of a higher quality than that on a bad day.
By gaining extra "unneeded" rest on a good day, you are investing in
a savings program that collects interest.
Your body's self-repair mechanisms are what will eventually
lead to your recovery. By giving them the benefit of this extra
good quality rest, you build momentum toward a higher baseline
of functioning.
As you move further toward recovery, your assessment of your
available energy will gradually rise. By managing your energy
conservatively on your good days, eventually your periods of
remission can lengthen, and the severity of your relapses can
gradually diminish.
Let your wealth grow. Don't spend every penny you find in
your pocket. The fifty percent solution has served as a useful
guideline for many former PWC's in promoting recovery.
___
William Collinge, PhD, is a consultant, author, speaker and researcher in the field of integrative health care. He has served as a scientific review panelist for the National Institutes of Health in Mind/body medicine and complementary therapies.
* This article is excerpted from the book Recovering From Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Guide to Self-Empowerment. The chapters of this book and other helpful articles are available for download free of charge from Dr. Collinge's website www.healthy.net/collinge/writings.html Note also that Dr. Collinge will soon be launching Phase II of his Fibromyalgia Wellness Project - an NIH-funded study to develop helpful web-based self-help programs for people with FM.
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