Readit NewsFWIW, I have a similar athletic history & am about 9 years into chronic fatigue syndrome. Mine’s likely post viral, but I can also remember a 24 hour race where I finished not feeling like myself anymore. I’ve had extreme exercise intolerance and all of the typical CFS symptoms. I’ve been to dozens of doctors and several top institutions with no answers yet.
3 years into it, I was diagnosed with mild sleep apnea — even though I’m not overweight.
I’m finally feeling somewhat better after eliminating all caffeine (I only had 1 8oz cup every morning), plus 4 months off of any exercise, work, and as much stress as possible. Some of my mysterious and long-lasting symptoms, such as various food intolerances & dizziness, suddenly resolved.
I stopped drinking alcohol a long while ago too, thinking even my occasional drinking could impact my sleep and recovery.
I still experience post-exertional malaise if I go above zone 2, but I can now tolerate zone 2 workouts without the typical crashes that would occur 24-48 hours after exercise and would last for days.
I’ll likely be on a nice e-bike soon, so that I can keep my heart rate more stable and low over hilly terrain.
I don't think that level of dismissal is fair or respectful unless you accompany it with a relevant criticism of the research itself.
The linked article and others have convinced me that CFS can be caused by viruses.
There's one important and tricky question: is a viral infection necessary to trigger CFS in humans (such as long COVID or in this linked article), or is an extremely stressful series of events (which could include the physical stress of a severe viral infection) sufficient?
Giving a certain interpretation of their comment, I think the physician could be stating that they've seen patients with CFS that has been triggered by stressful events alone. I think this can coexist with the linked research if CFS can be triggered by stress OR a virus.
When chronic stress is mentioned as a factor, that should not be interpreted as being a psychological predisposition ("it is all in their head"). Instead, it is a predisposition on a cellular level.
The brain regions involved in central sensitization are tightly linked with those involved in chronic stress. Animal models of chronic stress lead to central sensitization of pain, as do animal models of chronic illness. Chronic stress causes an immense amount of remodeling in the brain and the rest of the body.
Proving or disproving that CFS can be triggered by chronic stress alone is difficult because CFS is a diagnosis of exclusion. Diagnosis can take a long time. We humans are always getting viruses and occasionally enduring stressful life events, so it is difficult to untangle the two.
If we look at my personal history, my diagnosis took several years (above average for CFS patients). I can point to 3 stressful life events and 2 viral illnesses that might have preceded CFS onset. The cause for my CFS remains a mystery.
Without a mechanism and diagnostic test for CFS, I think this question will remain unanswered.
I think it is contentious to say that CFS is an endpoint of central sensitization. It might be, but it also might be related to mitochondrial dysfunction or another mechanism-- too soon to tell, in my opinion. Central sensitization is certainly a component, but I do not think it is proven to be the only component. I should say that I'm extremely biased towards believing in central sensitization as the cause of many things because that was the primary focus of my research.
Again, without a mechanism and a diagnostic test for CFS, much is murky. Viral infection can at least be a cause. I think we're far away from having a tidy answer like the story of H. pylori and ulcers though.
Dead Comment
Like if I learn a song and then for whatever reason I have to change what key it's in, all I gotta do is start playing a couple steps higher and lower and then I'm good. But if I had thought in absolute terms, I would be screwed.
Am I off base here? I just play for fun I don't know.
My friend's brother has absolute pitch. I've played 10 note chords for him & he can pick out every note and also tell me if each note is in tune, sharp, or flat.
He is a high school band director. I can imagine that this is a very useful skill for his job.
Since even the vast majority of musicians employ relative pitch, entire choruses can move together off of the original key, for good reasons and bad, but those with perfect pitch will (sometimes stubbornly) maintain the original key, even when doing so is counterproductive to the performance.
Lead singer in the ensemble is a little under the weather and can’t hit the high notes? Normally, you’d consider starting the piece down a step or two, and get on with the show without much trouble. But if you have members with perfect pitch, that may not be an option without some significant rehearsal to familiarize them.
This also translates to musical appreciation – I know people who can’t stand when a singer covers a song in a modified key, saying it sounds “wrong” and “terrible” compared to the original. For the vast majority of the audience, the key doesn’t matter terribly much, but for those with perfect pitch, the key is a significant attribute of the original piece, and it’s just as major as changing the words might be.
In other contexts, perfect pitch can be very handy, but it’s not always quite as “perfect” as it’s sometimes portrayed.
I had always assumed they could still intuitively match pitch and just had an extra information overlay.
Do these people you know who dislike transposed covers also dislike genres of music with dissonant elements, such as certain types of jazz or microtonal music?
A good fanless build with a i3-14100T is more expensive and 40-50% slower on Geekbench. An i5 is a bit closer. Some 2024 Ryzen CPUs can match or exceed its multicore performance, but these are also more expensive and much less energy efficient. Pricewise, things start favoring PCs if you need more RAM, as Mac upgrades are costly.
One can potentially use Nix on a Mac Mini to keep similar development environments to those used in Linux, but AFAIK some packages are not supported on ARM. Any experiences using Nix and nix-darwin as a daily driver?
For my music studio I’ve enjoyed the M1 mini since it is totally silent and am eager to read some noise tests on the new M4 mini.