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This year I was able to shop and prepare for Christmas all on my own. Last year I could barely drag myself through it and could not wait for my children to go back home.

This year not only were my children here for nine days of celebration, but also our son brought home his new girlfriend for the whole time, too. We had a ball and I didn't miss a thing. I started a new job on January 4. Rolling out of bed and battling traffic was tough, but I love the work and the people exposure. It is not many hours a day, and I have to rest a day in between, but I am out and about and loving it.
-Gretchen P., South Carolina

No single organ provides power to the entire human body. The beauty of decentralization is that every individual cell is involved in servicing its own requirements. This makes it impossible to shut down the body's entire energy supply at one time until death occurs. Even when many cells are damaged, remnant mitochondria within the injured system remain productive. They grind out extra ATP as best they can.

If only wounded, mitochondria will greatly slow their activity in order to survive. This reflects the body's prime directive: survival. Such slowing down allows the structure to remain viable, but leaves the body without surpluses. We've now arrived at the bottom line: Chronic illness leaves the body with enough energy for basic functions only, with none to spare for the luxury of extra activities.

If you've been patient enough to stick with us through this technical description, you probably have a better understanding of what causes fatigue. Biologic energy has a real chemical basis. It's not just some mysterious vapor that can't be measured. ATP energy is generated within actual factories in mitochondria.

You may not have the same production capacity as some people. Believe it or not, there are probably some even less endowed than you. View this spread as a spectrum of possibilities.

At one end are those energetic souls that need very little rest and bounce around everywhere doing more than ten others. There are also humans who barely hang on-appearing drugged, droopy-lidded, mustering every last ounce of energy just to sneeze. While we were not all equally gifted in the gene pool, whatever energy assets we once possessed can be recovered. If you picked up this book and have read this far, you must suffer at least a modicum of energy deprivation. You're probably looking for an answer. Maybe you now understand more about why you're currently running on empty. If no one else has been able to help you, keep reading!

In this book, we'll explore some of the possibilities for your energy depletion. We can state right now that it certainly isn't due to lack of fuel. Fuel must be reaching the energy rotors of the mitochondria or you'd be dead. So we know that your fatigue is due to a shortage of ATP. If you don't have an acute or terminal illness, some chronic culprit is responsible for this theft. Fibromyalgia is one reason why you may be tired, but this disease also has many nasty collaborators.

We'll identify some of those common and major offenders in the ensuing chapters, and we'll tell you ways you can help to avoid them.

Copyright © 2003 by The St. Amand Trust and Claudia Craig Marek, M.A.

Tags: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia

About the Author

R. PAUL ST. AMAND, M.D., is a graduate of Tufts University School of Medicine. He has been on the teaching staff at the Los Angeles Harbor/UCLA Hospital, Department of Endocrinology for over forty-three years. He is currently an assistant clinical professor at the UCLA School of Medicine. Dr. St. Amand discovered guaifenesins use as a treatment for fibromyalgia, and his work is cited wherever the substance is mentioned.

About the Author

CLAUDIA CRAIG MAREK, M.A., is a medical researcher tutored, trained, and taught on the job as Dr. St. Amand's assistant. She has co-written medical papers with Dr. St. Amand and has counseled fibromyalgia patients on the use of guaifenesin for the past seven years. She, too, is a former fibromyalgia patient, and is a leading patient advocate.