Sleep in chronic fatigue syndrome

Most people feel overly tired at some time or another, and in 10% of people who see their general practitioner, fatigue presents as the principle symptom. However, 1%-2% of the population experience severely disabling and ongoing fatigue. It is this significant minority of patients enduring profound and unexplained fatigue that has been the topic of debate for the past 30 years. Naming the illness has been a topic of controversy dating back to the early 1980s, when patients were considered to be having a reaction to stressors from modern society, otherwise labelled as “yuppie flu.” Conflicting arguments advocating for an organic cause of the illness advanced a series of names to reflect this, such as post-viral fatigue syndrome and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).