Is Graded Exercise Right for CFS/ME Suffferers?

One doctor described Graded Exercise as like defining the illness as a fitness issue. Would you prescribe 10 sessions in the gym for a bowel cancer sufferer and hope that their symptoms improve?

In the UK if you are to visit your GP upon first diagnosis of CFS/ME, you wouldn’t be surprised to find that Graded Exercise is one of few treatments offered. There are studies to suggest that in a small number of people, graded exercise has improved the condition. One does have to ask the question, given how severe some of the symptoms can become, how a person severely affected needing a week or more in bed to rest would pay the price of even minor activity, could consider Graded Exercise of use.

My own personal experience was not a positive one. I lived 13 miles out of town, did not have regular access to a car (and was declined any help by the government for disability allowance) and referred to physiotherapy treatment at the hospital in town.

The therapist was warm and friendly and made me feel very comfortable with her experience with CFS/ME, and suggested that we try aqua therapy to begin with. I lasted 2 sessions of taking a 1 hour round trip by bus to the hospital, followed by 30 minute sessions of stretches and pulls within a small designed swimming pool.

I would come home so tired, that I’d say it set me back. Any journey, especially by bus put stress on my body and any further amount of activity I found I could just not cope with. I stopped soon after. Maybe I could have stuck it out, but even that early on I found I was moving backwards, not forwards.

One doctor described Graded Exercise as like defining the illness as a fitness issue. Would you prescribe 10 sessions in the gym for a bowel cancer sufferer and hope that their symptoms improve? Of course not, so why refer someone whose symptoms include negative response to any movement as being a regular treatment?

Of course there are people whose ME is at an advanced stage, with the illness close to remission who may find this useful but the answer is management of what your body is telling you it can manage. There has to be a better response by the NHS to the illness in its initial stages.