As a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome sufferer for over 10 years, I was for a long time desperate for answers and support to find a path to recovery. As is so often the case, those answers and support were scant at best from traditional healthcare providers, hell, securing a diagnosis was itself a significant challenge.

Raelan is the author of ‘Finding Freedom: Escaping from the Prison of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’ (a publication I refer to in my own book ‘On a Scale from 1 to 10’) and the first person in over seven years of confusion, discomfort and suffering to shine a light on what could be afflicting me.

I begin to describe how I learned to manage my condition and find the path to recovery, let me first apologise in advance because I have start by being very blunt - there is no quick fix!

The final layer of the condition evolution onion is so fundamental that when I first learned of this it shook me to the core – literally!

Within every cell in our body we have tiny power houses called ‘mitochondria’. Depending on the cell and location in the body, there are vast numbers of these necessary alien organisms e.g. the cells in the liver have tens of thousands of mitochondria.

In my previous post I explained that the CFS/ME sufferer is usually in a persistent state of ‘fight or flight’, even though most like me in the early days would argue that I don’t actually feel stressed - sure, I am concerned that I don’t feel very well and my anxiety has increased because none of the medical professionals I have consulted seem to know why?

When our minds perceive a threat, the sympathetic nervous system takes over, instantly putting our body into high alert and adrenaline is pumped to all key parts of the body. Our heart beats faster, our senses become super focused and our short duration muscles are primed for action – ready to ‘fight’ or take ‘flight’ to a safer place. The reaction is instinctive, in-built in the DNA passed down from our prime-evil ancestors as a necessary survival skill.

Let’s start with the name. For most I guess ‘Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’ would seem to be fairly descriptive, sufferers feel tired most of the time. Oh, if only it was a simple as that, the solution would also be simple, improve your quality of sleep and hey presto!