Fatigue syndrome exercise therapy loses NICE recommendation

A controversial exercise technique used to manage chronic fatigue syndrome is no longer being recommended by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice).

The decision to stop recommending graded exercise therapy (GET) – which involves incremental increases in physical activity to gradually build up tolerance – represents a crucial win for patient advocates who have long said the practice causes more harm than good.

Patient groups have argued that the use of exercise therapy suggests that those with chronic fatigue syndrome (also known as ME) have no underlying physical problem but are suffering symptoms due to inactivity.

“We have been so widely dismissed and had our suffering at the hands of this condition constantly diminished by the inappropriate and damaging guidance/notion that we can simply exercise or think our way out of a physical illness none of us asked for nor deserve,” said ME patient Glen Buchanan.

Chronic fatigue syndrome is thought to affect about 250,000 people in the UK and has been estimated to cost the economy billions of pounds annually. One in four are so severely affected they are unable to leave the house and, frequently, even their bed.

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Source: The Guardian, 10 November 2020