General Illness Management

While there is no cure for ME or Long-COVID, there are things that can be done to regain some sense of control over the illness, help to stabilize symptoms, and generally improve your quality of life.

Energy Management (Pacing)

Vigilant energy management, including Pacing and rest, is the proven way to best stabilize, manage and (often) improve your overall illness.

The key to Pacing is understanding your energy envelope, triggers for symptoms and PEM (defined here) and what helps make you feel and function better.

Many of the hints around successful pacing include adapting your activities to decrease their likelihood of triggering specific symptoms.

See detailed instructions on Pacing here

Measuring and Tracking Symptoms and Patterns

Some people understand intuitively what works and what doesn’t for themselves.

For other people, paper tracking tools help.

See our Tracking Toolkit here.

For some, using tools and apps to measure and track specific patterns or biometrics is the best approach.

See information on biometrics, devices and apps here.

Symptom Management

Don’t forget that you can treat individual symptoms such as sleep issues, pain, orthostatic issues, nausea, fatigue and brain fog. Be sure to have your doctor verify that your symptoms are not part of some other medical issue (like sleep apnea or thyroid issues). Then work with your doctor to find medicines, treatments and practices that can help.

A future module of this email series will be covering medicines and treatments in more detail, and also see here.

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