Does BFS / CFS Affect People Randomly?

Does BFS / CFS affect people randomly? The answer to this question is surprisingly yes and no, in my opinion. If we divide people suffering from chronic BFS / CFS into two groups: Those people who have BFS / CFS induced, triggered, and or exacerbated symptoms from stress and those people who have BFS / CFS induced, triggered, and or exacerbated by some other reason (Vaccine, Prescription Drugs, Spine or Neck Injury, History, Exposure to Chemicals, Illness, Excessive Exercise etc.) we can have two answers. We will call the first group “Stress Induced” and the second group “Other Induced” respectively. To answer the question, Stress Induced is not random and Other Induced is random.

Obviously people inflicted with chronic BFS / CFS symptoms from a neck injury, vaccine, prescription drug, exposure to chemicals, and an illness all seem to be random events that could happen to anyone. Hence, understanding the root causes of these types of induced BFS / CFS is not an easy undertaking. In fact, it may be outright impossible. One thing that is clear from my study on BFS / CFS, people inflicted with these types of BFS / CFS may see their symptoms increase over time and finding remedies to mitigate symptoms much more difficult.

The key group of people to evaluate and understand is the Stress Induced group, because their infliction with BFS / CFS is not random, hence there must be something linking these individuals – they must have something in common, a common thread. That common thread is personality type. I have done a brief survey of some of the survey participants in my study and found that over 90% would classify themselves as a Type A personality. And a majority of them would say they are extreme Type A personalities. And it should come as no surprise Type A personalities endure much more stress than Type B personalities.

Here is a breakdown of BFS / CFS trigger statistics taken on 710 survey respondents (560 after outliers are removed):

Vaccine: 8.8%

Chemical Exposure: 4.7%

Prescription Drugs: 20.0%

Spine or Neck Injury: 9.8%

Illness: 28.8%

Excessive Exercise: 25.4%

History: 21.1%

Other: 20.8% (Something other than what is listed in the survey triggered the symptoms)

Stress / Anxiety: 70.5%

Stress / Anxiety exacerbate symptoms: 89.6%

People that have Stress / Anxiety induced and exacerbated symptoms: 66.4%

A few things can be obtained from these statistics. First, Stress / Anxiety induced BFS / CFS is the most common type and secondly, these induced BFS / CFS percentages add to more than 100% (209.8%) because people can choose more than 1 thing that induced symptoms. Hence, on average, people select about 2 triggers. The results also note that 66.4% of the survey participants have stress induced BFS / CFS and also have their symptoms exacerbated by stress. We also may be able to conclude that people with more than one trigger including stress should be classified as random and is not predictable BFS / CFS type (ie. stress and illness). Only 17.4% (a little more than 1 in 6) have stress as their only trigger. I would theorize their BFS / CFS symptoms are predictable and tied directly to their personality type. Especially the 15.5% of the people who claim their symptoms were triggered solely by stress and stress exacerbates symptoms.

In conclusion, it is a reasonable hypothesis to theorize that there is a common thread between many BFS / CFS sufferers and that is personality type. About 1 in 6 people in my survey have stress as their only trigger and say stress exacerbates symptoms. Over 90% of the people surveyed say they suffer from Type A personality. And nearly 3 quarters of them classify their personality type as A+ or A squared or A cubed. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that many of these strong A type personalities may solely contribute to about 1 in 6 of the total cases of BFS / CFS. I personally, have a super strong type A personality, but I also believe there could be more triggers to my BFS / CFS. So, I may not belong in this category, but we may seek further help to see if we can control that Type A personality. For me, I have tried most everything and nothing seems to calm my brain activity. Unfortunately, one thing that may help are drugs that inebriate us and that is no good.

I came up with this hypothesis because I converse with dozens of people with BFS / CFS who reach out to me. I started to realize that most of these individuals sound a lot like me: successful, driven, responsible, accountable and so forth. These are all great traits that I wish more people had. However, our personalities can be killing us, making us less healthy because of all the stress we put on ourselves. In fact, if we are so stressed out it places our entire nervous system out of whack; that is serious. And it deserves some needed attention from the individuals and the medical community.