Tagged With "chronic fatigue"

By Kevin Sherin, American College of Preventive Medicine, May 7, 2020 There is a growing dialog about COVID-19 and its impacts on childhood adversity (ACEs), chronic stress, and mental health across the lifespan. The fear and social isolation associated with COVID-19 commonly exacerbates existing chronic stresses. Reports are surfacing of increased mental health problems, anxiety, partner violence, depression, suicidality, child abuse, opioid use disorder, other substance abuse, drug...

I was a family doctor when the first symptoms of what would turn out to become a disabling chronic illness first began to arise. I didn't know about ACEs back then and even if I had, I would have thought my score was zero and that ACEs didn't apply to me. What I've learned in the 20 years since then is that my ACE score is actually a two, which increases the chances of ever being hospitalized for an autoimmune disease by 70%.

This splinter story is an APOE metaphor, a term I have coined as "adverse pre-onset experiences" aka APOEs. This builds on the term for our knowledge that ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) influence risk for chronic illness. This is about how chronic illness starts for many of us within weeks or months of a stressful or traumatic event. And how we think, very normally, that this particular event is the cause...