My teammate and doctor friend, Nate, sent me links to a pair of articles by USA Triathlon Olympic coach, Gale Bernhardt. She's recently done some research on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in elite athletes and published her findings on Active.com. You can check them out here — Part 1 and Part 2.
Part 1 gives a fairly comprehensive overview of the condition as it relates to athletes. She provides a very good definition and outlines some of the many causes and symptoms. A great intro if you're trying to learn about CFS.
Part 2 reveals some specific experiences as told by four national and/or Olympic level cyclists and triathletes. Though each subject had his or her own experience with the syndrome, Ms. Berhardt wraps up the article with what she found to be similar across all cases. She states:
- Escalating success in sport. Every one of the athletes was at the top of their respective sports when struck with the disease.
- Pressure to win or succeed. This includes internal
pressure, sponsor pressure, media pressure and pressure to make Olympic
teams. The less obvious pressure came from the whispers of fellow
athletes. There was a perception (or reality) that other athletes were
talking about their bad performances and they were "washed up."
- Excessively high training volume
- Excessively high intensity training
- Excessive travel and race schedule
- Viral or bacterial illnesses
- Physical injuries
- Low-nutrient diet
- Low-calorie diet
- Emotional stress due to family issues or a relationship with a significant-other
- Emotional stress due to school, work or other obligations
- Not listening to signals that the body needed to rest and recover.
This included high resting heart rates and the inability to achieve
heart rates and training paces that were otherwise achievable.
Previously, In my research to discover what's going on with my health, I came up with many of the same findings as the author. In fact, if I look back at where I was when I got sick, many of these numbers have my name on them. Numbers 1, 6, 10, 11 and 12 pretty much described my life at the time. While I was never anywhere near being an elite athlete, I was far, far healthier and more accomplished in my efforts than I had ever been in my life. I was also under a huge load of stress as my wife and I were moving and she was going away for a month-long job in LA. I was also doing a poor job at listening to my body. Though I had started to back off a few weeks before getting sick, I played recklessly and flipped between easy days and super hard days without thinking. Never a good idea.
So even though I've got this Lyme diagnosis, I'm still very keen on the idea that CFS is part of my problem. I think it all goes hand-in-hand. I'm not sure when I was bitten by the tick, but, according to my IGeneX results, it was sometime within 12 months of the test. In my mind, there's a good chance that my training and stress loads combined to open a hole in my immune system to allow the bacteria to take hold. However, on the flip side of this, I believe that my level of fitness has been what's kept me from getting debilitatingly sick with Lyme.
Anyway, if you're an athlete, regardless of your Lyme status, I'd urge you to read the articles and keep the potential triggers in mind. Be mindful of the line we walk between strength and injury, health and illness. Overdoing it can easily tip the balance in a bad way.
