You have suffered from various complaints/symptoms for years but without a clear diagnosis. You may have been sent home saying you just had to live with it. Many patients with dormant unexplained symptoms this happens to.

And maybe you also haven’t lived completely responsibly, had too much stress, didn’t always pay much attention to your diet and slept too little, or not qualitatively. Or did you suddenly get sick after a virus, or after an unconscious infection. The same pattern of symptoms is likely to arise from a variety of causes. It can occur acutely after an infection, trauma or pregnancy, as well as gradually.

These types of chronic complaints are also often intertwined. Those with fibromyalgia often also have CFS. Those with bowel disease often also struggle with a mild form of fibromyalgia or CFS.

Roughly speaking, we can divide these misunderstood complaints into 6 groups:

1. CSV

CFS the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS or CVS) is the most well-known. Symptoms generally include feelings of extreme fatigue that do not pass or hardly pass with rest or sleep. Not to be confused with adrenal exhaustion or burnout. A dysfunction of the hypothalamus explains many of the symptoms of CFS/FM. The hypothalamus is a small regulatory organ in the brain that has the following functions:

• Control of the hormonal system
• Regulation of sleep
• Temperature control
• Regulation of the autonomic = involuntary nervous system (important in regulating heart rhythm, bowel contractions and fight or flight responses)

2. Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia does resemble CFS but often these people can still function despite more muscle-focused symptoms than CFS patients. Fibromyalgia ( FM) occurs precisely in young or middle age, more in women than in men,it is a disorder of soft tissue pain, muscle stiffness, relentless fatigue, disturbed sleep, hormonal disturbances, and cognitive “slowing down”,( cotton wool in head) often associated with a variety of additional unexplained symptoms, and gives particular limitation of activities in daily life. Fibromyalgia was often dismissed by the medical community as a mental disorder with no underlying medical cause due to the lack of objective medical findings such as laboratory tests and medical imaging procedures such as a scan or MRI.

Fibromyalgia is often associated with other pain syndromes, mood disorders or anxiety disorders. What is clear is that a stress-related cause is partly behind it. In these disorders, stress produces changes in the hormone cortisol, with associated consequences. Moreover, fibromyalgia often merges into other diseases characterized by chronic, systemic inflammation such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosis and chronic hepatitis C infection.

3. Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.

Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative Colitis are both inflammatory bowel diseases. Certainly Crohn’s, a chronic intestinal inflammation, is often misdiagnosed or dismissed as spastic bowel. The inflammation primarily involves the mucous membranes of the gastrointestinal tract. Usually the small and/or large intestine are affected. Inflammation of the intestine in Crohn’s disease and also in Ulcerative Colitis have an erratic course. It can range from rapid spread to other bowel areas (acute phase) to a relatively calm picture .Symptoms in the acute phase are excruciating abdominal pain, abdominal cramps, bubbling bowel diarrhea and extreme fatigue. Yet if we eliminate triggers and modify diet, this condition too can improve very well.

4. Irritable bowel syndrome

Irritable bowel syndrome is also a chronic bowel disorder that causes abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation or both. With spastic bowels, you are usually sent home. However, I myself do not believe that there is no cause to this image. Usually you just eat things you can’t stand, so nutrition is the focus here.

However, don’t make the mistake of experimenting with what foods to leave out! That often only makes things worse. You then eat too little variety, get deficiencies, but worse, you can end up in a picture we call a leaky gut. Or called increased permeability of the intestines with all its consequences. Besides food intolerances, we often see here a SIBO ( overgrowth in the small intestine) or fungus like Candida as a causative agent. Symptoms may include; fatigue, abdominal pain, bloating, a strong craving for sweets, stiff muscles, a light head, allergies, skin rashes and fungus in your mouth and or vagina.

5. Hypoglycaemia

Hypoglycaemia are Blood sugar fluctuations Here there are extreme fluctuations of blood sugar and hormones (a.k.a. insulin and adrenaline). Blood sugar is maintained by a number of hormones. The organs involved include. the pancreas, the adrenal gland and the liver.Hypoglycaemia involves an excessive release of insulin by the pancreas in response to a high intake of sugars from the diet.
Insulin regulates the body’s use of sugar.

The result of the increase in insulin is a sharp drop in blood sugar. This extreme drop must then be met by a response from the adrenal gland. In hypoglycaemia syndrome, we see that the pancreas and adrenal gland become overactive at first due to constant stimulation but eventually become exhausted.Cause and effect of low sugar are very difficult to distinguish. Stress is a consequence of low blood sugar but is certainly also the cause of it. Those who find themselves in a situation of low blood sugar are in a vicious cycle.

Numerous symptoms can occur, but you don’t have to have them all, I’ll list a few such as: fatigue, dizziness, weakness, difficulty concentrating, hunger pangs, perspiration, palpitations, trembling, blurred or double vision and from excessive emotional reactions to collapses/fainting spells.

6. Zoonoses and Sapronoses

Humans and animals and their environments can transmit many infectious diseases to each other. Some of the infectious diseases of animals are contagious to humans. A zoonosis is an infectious disease that can pass from a vertebrate animal to humans. The word zoonosis comes from the Greek word zoon (animal) and nosos (disease). Known carriers that can transmit diseases to humans are the guinea pigs, goats, dogs, cats, horses, rats, cattle, pigs and bats. For example, the goat at the petting zoo can cause Colibaccilosis, Q fever, Scabies, Salmonellosis or Toxoplasmosis, the cat Chlamydiosis or Trichinellosis and the horse Dermatophytosis. Animals that are carriers of a disease do not necessarily get sick themselves. For example, chickens often carry Campylobacter or Salmonella without symptoms of disease, and ticks can cause Lyme disease.

Research at Complimed

Unknown complaints are not readily detected. First, because it often takes a long time for patients to go to the doctor themselves. They minimize the symptoms for themselves ‘I’ll stay home for a weekend. then I’ll feel better.’ Or .’That’s just the price of an engaging life.’ Second, they often get the same advice from their family doctor. For most patients, it takes a few months before a diagnosis is made.

Making the correct diagnosis is not easy in patients with chronic conditions. In CFS, fibromyalgia and hypoglycemia, nothing in the body indicates disease. The only way to arrive at that diagnosis, as a practitioner, is to immerse yourself well in the patient through focused questioning. Employing the appropriate tests can provide further conclusive information. These are tests that are not done by the average family doctor because they are highly specialized and done by laboratories that specialize in them.

We are talking about intestinal flora tests, saliva tests, urine tests and also blood tests such as the ImuPro. Lyme is a separate chapter which is poorly tested through the general practitioner. Especially if the infection has been around longer. Nevertheless, there is a very good laboratory in the Netherlands that has excellent tests. So you don’t have to go to Germany, just to Weert.

What are the implications?

You can’t tell from people with dormant disease that they are sick. At most, they look a little more tired, but otherwise it does not show that they are sick. “All the better for them,” you might think, but that reasoning does not always hold true. Those who are sick must look sick to be taken seriously. Someone who has to cancel appointments over and over again because he or she is “too tired” will simply not be invited after a while. Friends drop out one by one, colleagues wonder, annoyed, why you need so much sick leave, problems arise in the family because you are suddenly able to do much less than before.
Patients often end up in isolation that can lead to depression in extreme cases.

It is important that the patient’s environment shows understanding and does not dismiss the symptoms as comedy or lack of attention. Women with stressful jobs, busy social lives and children are more prone to this type of chronic condition. Of course, susceptibility to does not always have to do with circumstances. Your character also determines how stress-resistant you are. You don’t have to have a busy job and children to have symptoms. It may well be that you are naturally very perfectionist and get overtired more quickly than anyone else. But above all, don’t leave it at that. Still, try to find the cause and work on that. Many of my chronic patients feel much better after targeted treatment.