Just about everyone knows the feeling of fatigue—and knows it all too well. But for some people (and four times as many women as men), extreme exhaustion stems from a much larger medical issue. A poorly understood condition, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a complicated disorder characterized by persistent, debilitating exhaustion that gets in the way of day-to-day events. The condition is also known as systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID) or myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). Chronic fatigue syndrome is often abbreviated as ME/CFS. Daily life becomes difficult, if not impossible. Patients can become sensitive to simple activities like going to work or even walking up the stairs, and it can take days to recover from these small amounts of exertion. Estimates of the number of people in the United States burdened range from less than one million to 2.5 million. For around 25 percent of cases, symptoms are so severe that victims remain bedridden or house-bound, and suicide risk is elevated. For a long time, physicians dismissed symptoms as being psychological, but the scientific community’s understanding of the condition has greatly advanced. The cause of ME/CFS is unknown, but there are many theories—ranging from viral infections to psychological stress. If you’ve […]