Category Archives: ME / Chronic fatigue syndrome

SBS’s Insight accused of betraying people living with chronic fatigue syndrome who appeared on program

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Broadcaster receives hundreds of negative comments including claims it presented a potentially harmful and unscientific narrative

People living with ME or chronic fatigue syndrome who appeared on SBS’s Insight program have accused the broadcaster of betraying them in the final cut, which presented what they claim is a potentially harmful and unscientific narrative and favoured a person who said she had “cured herself” by “listening to her body”.

The SBS ombudsman is investigating their individual complaints, as well as one from Emerge Australia, the national advocacy body for patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).

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Women with ME tend to have more symptoms than men, study suggests

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Study of chronic fatigue syndrome also finds women are more likely to develop worse symptoms over time

Women with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) tend to have more symptoms than men and are more likely to develop increasingly severe symptoms over time, according to initial results from a major study.

It is already known that women are at higher risk of CFS, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), and the latest study, called DecodeME, provides new insights into how their experience differs from men. The study found that women who have ME/CFS for more than 10 years are more likely to experience increasingly severe symptoms as they age.

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Why are women more prone to long Covid?

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While men over 50 tend to suffer the most acute symptoms of coronavirus, women who get long Covid outnumber men by as much as four to one

In June 2020, as the first reports of long Covid began to filter through the medical community, doctors attempting to grapple with this mysterious malaise began to notice an unusual trend. While acute cases of Covid-19 – particularly those hospitalised with the disease – tended to be mostly male and over 50, long Covid sufferers were, by contrast, both relatively young and overwhelmingly female.

Early reports of long Covid at a Paris hospital between May and July 2020 suggested that the average age was around 40, and women afflicted by the longer-term effects of Covid-19 outnumbered men by four to one.

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I was infected with coronavirus in March, six months on I’m still unwell

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Charlie Russell, 27, is one of an estimated 600,000 people with post-Covid illness, a condition that may give an insight into ME

It’s day 182 after being infected by Covid-19, and Charlie Russell is not doing the things that other 27-year-olds are doing.

He’s not running 5km three times a week like he used to. He’s not going to the pub. He’s not working. And he’s not getting better.

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