ME/CFS: A Rosetta Stone

This page needs to be updated – take everything with a grain of salt.

As always, this page is work in progress and currently just a scratch pad – and not very up to date.

What's in a name? ME/CFS is a disease of many names. Why? It is difficult. Read the book Osler's Web by Hillary Johnson and you will start to understand. Some names are simply more accepted than "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome"...

On this page, I will try to list all contemporary synonyms of ME/CFS (there will be another page with historic names for ME/CFS) and all conditions that might turn out to be ME/CFS in disguise.

Names from the Medical "Mainstream"

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME)

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)

Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS)

Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FM or FMS)

Post-Viral Fatigue Syndrome (PVFS)

Gulf War Syndrome (GWS) / Gulf War Illness (GWI)


"Alternative" Names


Treatment Resistant Lyme / Chronic Lyme


Adrenal Fatigue
Adrenal Exhaustion
There is an actual condition called Adrenal Insufficiency (e.g. Addison's Disease or Cushing's Syndrome). The cause is a genetic defect that results in the adrenal glands not working as they should. "Adrenal Fatigue" should not be mixed up with that and is probably a name used by a few clinicians to describe an illness that might actually be ME/CFS.


"Hypothyroidism"
There is an actual disease called Hypothyroidism (And there is an disease called Thyroid Hormone Resistance). I've put Hypothyroidism in quotes, because it used by some when the diagnostic values are somewhere on the border to Hypothyroidism and the disease might actually be ME/CFS and not Hypothyroidism. Again some names are more accepted than others...

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