Post-exertional malaise (PEM) in ME/CFS

Fact Sheet 2: Post-exertional malaise (PEM)

Fact Sheet 2: Post-exertional malaise (PEM) Published May 2025 Link to pdf: PEM_Factsheet.pdf Link to pdf of French translation: Malaise_post_effort-S4ME-Feuille_information.pdf Discussion...

Patient-reported treatment outcomes in ME/CFS and long COVID

Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and long COVID are persistent multisystem illnesses affecting many patients. With no known effective FDA-approved treatments for either condition, patient-reported outcomes of treatments may prove helpful in identifying management strategies that can improve patient care and generate new avenues for research. Here, we present the results of an ME/CFS and long COVID treatment survey with responses from 3,925 patients. We assess the experiences of these patients with more than 150 treatments in conjunction with their demographics, symptoms, and comorbidities. Treatments with the greatest perceived benefits are identified. Patients with each condition who participated in the study shared similar symptom profiles, including all the core symptoms of ME/CFS, e.g., 89.7% of ME/CFS and 79.4% of long COVID reported postexertional malaise (PEM). Furthermore, treatment responses between these two patient groups were significantly correlated (R 2 = 0.68). Patient subgroups, characterized by distinct symptom profiles and comorbidities, exhibited increased responses to specific treatments, e.g., a POTS-dominant cluster benefiting from autonomic modulators and a cognitive-dysfunction cluster from CNS stimulants. This study underscores the symptomatic and therapeutic similarities between ME/CFS and long COVID and highlights the commonalities and nuanced complexities of infection-associated chronic diseases and related conditions. While this study does not provide recommendations for specific therapies, in the absence of approved treatments, insights from patient-reported experiences provide urgently needed real-world evidence for developing targeted patient care therapies and future clinical trials.

Opinion | There’s a Good Reason You Can’t Concentrate

Just as we changed our thinking around physical fitness, we need to change our attitude toward cognitive fitness.

Philosophy Officer on Instagram: "I AM SO EMOTIONALLY MATURE I have massive problems with this term. Most people would say it means something along the lines of: the ability to understand, process, regulate or communicate emotions in a healthy way. Now the issue is that all of the terms you use to explain it leave so much room for interpretation the definition becomes almost vacuous. To understand an emotion means to know what caused it? To know the impact it has on you physiologically? To understand how it affects your cognition? To know how it affects others? Same goes with the term healthy, get far enough into a discussion on what it means to be healthy and people will start to disagree. Mental health? Physical? Communal? Spiritual? What’s more is that this term is thrown around in place of simple personality traits or individual quirks. Because someone is more emotional are they now less mature because they have an objectively more difficult time regulating them? Is the person with a dark sense of humour immature because he can’t hold in a laugh when everyone else finds the situation morbid or cruel? I think, to a great extent, it’s a bit of a shield or barrier of a term that absolves ourselves from taking responsibility for our behaviours. At the end of the day we know ourselves best, or at least better than most people. This means we best understand our emotions, how we regulate them, how we control them etc. We have this epistemic bias towards ourselves, since we simply know more about ourselves therefore we will often reason that others have less. Sorry I couldn’t polish off my ideas more I gotta run bye friends"

102K likes, 186 comments - the_philofficer on July 6, 2026: "I AM SO EMOTIONALLY MATURE I have massive problems with this term. Most people would say it means something along the lines of: the ability to understand, process, regulate or communicate emotions in a healthy way. Now the issue is that all of the terms you use to explain it leave so much room for interpretation the definition becomes almost vacuous. To understand an emotion means to know what caused it? To know the impact it has on you physiologically? To understand how it affects your cognition? To know how it affects others? Same goes with the term healthy, get far enough into a discussion on what it means to be healthy and people will start to disagree. Mental health? Physical? Communal? Spiritual? What’s more is that this term is thrown around in place of simple personality traits or individual quirks. Because someone is more emotional are they now less mature because they have an objectively more difficult time regulating them? Is the person with a dark sense of humour immature because he can’t hold in a laugh when everyone else finds the situation morbid or cruel? I think, to a great extent, it’s a bit of a shield or barrier of a term that absolves ourselves from taking responsibility for our behaviours. At the end of the day we know ourselves best, or at least better than most people. This means we best understand our emotions, how we regulate them, how we control them etc. We have this epistemic bias towards ourselves, since we simply know more about ourselves therefore we will often reason that others have less. Sorry I couldn’t polish off my ideas more I gotta run bye friends".

10 Essential Pilates Exercises for Beginners • BASI™ Pilates

Pilates is more than just physical movement, but as Joseph Pilates famously said, “Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness.” And I have to agree. When my body doesn’t feel great, my mind and spirit have a tendency to be distracted, whether it’s from pain, discomfort, or generally feeling stressed.

Four Months Later, My Head Is Quiet - Ewan’s Blog

I didn’t realise how much of my baseline was illness until parts of it disappeared.

Loss of an ideal

From phenomena to pathology.

Effects of Stroop task duration on subsequent cognitive and physical performance

The strength model of self-control purports to explain why brief cognitive response inhibition tasks impair subsequent isometric handgrip endurance. A…

Hot Allostatic Load

Build the shittiest thing possible. Build out of trash because all i have is trash. Trash materials, trash bodies, trash brain syndrome. Build in the gaps between storms of chronic pain. Build insi…

ADHD and giftedness: a neurocognitive consideration of twice exceptionality

Current models of cognition and behavioral diagnosis emphasize categorical classification over continuous considerations of function and promote the "differential diagnosis" of various conditions according to observational criteria. However, an overemphasis on a purely behavioral, categorical approach to understanding human function fails to address the comorbidity of different disorders and does not include a consideration of overlapping levels of function, from "pathological" through "normal," to "gifted" or exceptional. The frequent co-occurrence of "gifted" and "pathological" function is thus difficult to understand from a corticocentric and purely behavioral and observational point of view. This article reviews "giftedness" in relation to the diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, coexistence of which is termed "twice exceptional." It additionally considers problems in assessing these functions using current neuropsychological tests and methodologies that are presumably based upon a corticocentric model of cognition.

Burnout Phase Transition - meri's missives

Modelling chronic stress effects on my mental health and the end of monopolies

Managing intrusive thoughts | Lifeline

Dealing with overwhelming and distressing thoughts can be difficult, but knowing how to handle them can make a big difference to how you feel. Learn why you might be experiencing intrusive thoughts and strategies that can help you manage them.

Amy Deng on Twitter / X

I’m an AI researcher turned brain tumor patient, and recently I used the models to crack my mystery fatigue faster than my PCP could. I believe everyone can do the same with their own symptoms. Here’s how: pic.twitter.com/0jhbPvEi7V— Amy Deng (@amydeng_) June 16, 2026

Degeneracy is a Symptom

On Conspicuous Despair, the Ponzi stage of being alive, and why your grandparents are wrong about you.

True resilience is not about bouncing back | Psyche Ideas

I hate talk of resilience: it places an expectation on people to return to how they were. That’s not how real recovery works

How the hypercuriosity of ADHD may have helped humans thrive | Aeon Essays

ADHD isn’t merely a dysfunction. It’s best understood as an impulsive motivational drive for novel information