Bad air quality does indeed set my brain on fire (Long covid, MCAS). My doctor was gaslighting me about it just yesterday. Thank you Dr. Younger for being a voice of reason.
@@kimberlykramer334 Absolutely. Proper ventilation at home made a night and day difference in my MCAS symptoms. Now I can't stay a minute in a room with CO2 above 1000ppm.
Don't you love healthy people thinking toxins don't affect anyone unless it's a massive acute exposure? We are canaries in the coalmine, they should pay attention.
Hello from Taiwan, where we experience a lot of humidity and very bad air quality regularly from our neighbors in the big land next door. I've had many days when the air quality index hits 150+ and my body tells me before our Air Quality Index meter does. I purchased a Dyson Air Purifier for my room during the pandemic and it is working well. I'm shocked by the readings on it being consistent with what the index is telling me, and I'm shocked at what it pulls out of my bedroom. Yes we replace that filter once a year and we rely on it heavily. We liked our first purchase so much, we're saving for a second one for the front part of our home. Thanks so much for a great informative video!
as a migraineur i experience enormous swings in my me/cfs/fm symptoms w/storms moving thru Cent FL (also had this in middle TN, east TN). a migraine is usually the first sign of a flare (neuroinflammatory: brain fog, can’t find words, fatigue, pain) that comes with storms-and it comes *before* the storms hit. doesn’t matter if i’m spending time inside or outside. I often work out on the porch b/c it’s quieter than in the house. my sense is that when it comes to storms it’s not pollutants b/c that clears the air. we pray for rain when trees are pollenating (March-May). it feels more like it’s connected to barometric pressure. however, there is a separate issue with allergens whereby a long run w/o rain (March-May) will set off a flare associated w/sinus inflammation. just my n=1 subjective experience but i think pollutants and barometric pressure are both sufficient to set off a flare, and there is a diff in the character of the spring flares from allergens (flares last for wks) vs the flares associated with storms (flares last for days).
I’ve also experienced onset of symptoms a few hours prior to a cloud front moving in. Head pressure, brain fog, fatigue, sensation of fluid in ears, and sometimes nausea. When it’s a dramatic shift in weather, my symptoms are severe. I currently live in a valley where the clouds kind of trap the air (I think?). When there are low clouds, I have a fatigue day. When it’s sunny or high clouds, I feel good. I feel the difference before I open my blinds in the morning, before I know what the weather is doing. It’s definitely related to air pressure. I wish there was more research on this! There isn’t much to be found online. It would make sense that if there is brain inflammation with extra fluid in the brain, increased air pressure would worsen symptoms.
Again, I can't express my gratitude for all of the splendid science you are doing, Dr. Younger. Tangentially related: I got an Aranet4 a couple of weeks ago, and have been keeping it with me 24/7. I've discovered that CO2 regularly gets up around 1500 ppm in rooms in my house (like my home office, which is a small 2nd floor bedroom). I wonder if there is a relationship between CO2 levels and fatigue. Anyway, I'd gladly sign up for your study of microenviorments. I'd even buy the indoor air quality meter. Heck, maybe I should get one anyway. Budget ones seem to be iffy, though.
I hope the device is helpful! C02 can definitely cause fatigue. Levels of 2000ppm are known to cause fatigue and cognitive issues among the general population. If a room has no circulation, and a person converting oxygen to C02, then the C02 levels will (slowly) rise. There may be some TH-cam videos where cheaper devices are contrasted with research-quality devices, but I don't have a go-to trusted source for that topic. - Jarred Younger
@youngerlab I've had mild to moderate CFS for 34 years, and a covid infection in May 2022 made it so much worse, I'm highly motivated to try things like this.
This has been clear for me, I have a very hard time even just from the air inside the house when cooking on the stove, esp when something burns or grills. Puts me in immediate pain.
ME and CFS both have an inflammatory component, therefore air pollution affects them. This can be applied to every single health issue that has an inflammatory component.
This is something as patients we know to be true, but glad to see a researcher finally properly studying this subject. However, I disagree with your conclusion that the problem is mediated by inflammation. Inflammation is a protective mechanism, and the PM triggers pain because the PM in of itself is toxic. Additionally, this study on considers that pollution only exacerbates symptoms, rather than being at root cause, so there's a long way to go. Proper studies need to be done to assess mold exposure, VOC exposure, as well as nanoparticles (UFPs), particularly from matte white paint which can be the root cause for weakness and pain syndromes.
It would have to be pretty strong pollutants like the gas that caused gulf war illness. MECFS is triggered by infection. No serious evidence of mold contributing to it exists.
Great that your doing this! I hope you get more funding. Lots of variables that will be hard to account for. My thinking #1 would be if the participants live in a moldy house. Also just as with PEM effects might have a lag time. Just like getting out of a moldy house has a lag time. Part of the reason so many people don't recognize it as being the #1 most significant driver of their symptoms. I would like to see a simple study which did the expensive mold tests and than rated the correlation it has to people with cfs and their severity. I suspect a lot of people with CFS are in denial to the issue of mold for a lot of different reasons. Once they make the connection though it is always going to be a #1 concern for them from that point on. It took me two years of denial before I finally acknowledged to my self my house was making me sick. It's not easy to move and even if you do you might be jumping from one frying pan to another. Finding a house with air quality a moldie can tolerate is a very difficult prospect. I never did, and I tried close to a dozen different places and situations. why I live in a metal building where I have full control over water damaged and organic material and their emissions. And I while I am much much much better than I was in that moldie home of mine I am still far from being cured or living anywhere near to a normal level of health.
One more note many people with MCS are in my opinion very sensitized to mold also. So when you screen for participants you would want to ask them if they are sensitized to chemicals or mold and on a level of 1 to 10 how sensitive they are.
Mold spores are very problematic. "Black mold" spores cause many respiratory problems. And when I lived in Arizona, the Valley fever caused by spores was a great concern because it can mimic other diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. There are some reasonably priced home mold kits that could be included in a study. - Jarred Younger
Heat, & especially humidity, hugely affect me negatively. Thankfully, where I live on a farm in rural Australia our air quality is usually very good, although pollen & dust can be a problem sometimes, especially when windy, & smoke from bushfires when they occur nearby is obviously awful. The next place further south is Antarctica. Certain weather can definitely make me feel worse. 🇦🇺 How can I measure the air quality where I live? HUGE thanks for all that you do. It is very much appreciated. Had ME for 29 years, & deteriorated a lot over the last 8 years.
Just a note, HEPA is rated for the number of particles it captures equal to 0.3 um in diameter, but this is not the lower limit of its effective range. Wikipedia says it is actually even more effective at some smaller particle sizes. "filtration efficiency increasing for particle diameters both less than and greater than 0.3 μm"
Good point. I found it impossible to find convincing data on HEPA filters blocking influenza (for example) in real-world situations when I checked a few years ago, but the literature may be more substantial now because of SARS-CoV-2. I agree that most respiratory viruses should be blocked to a substantial degree, especially when taking into account the size of the droplets containing the viri. Thanks! - Jarred Younger
Bless you for your work. It seems to me that you are validating MCS Multiple Chemical Sensitivity as being real. I've heard you mention GWI which Alison Johnson equates to MCS. ME/CFS is in the same basket of chronic illnesses.
Thank you for this information. Very interesting stuff. I live in the UK near a major airport and I’d be interested in any future study on this. I hope you’re feeling better cos you still sound a bit snuffly to me 😊
I don't know how easy it is to monitor fragrances and similar compounds. I don‘t react to everything with an odor, but typical air freshener, cleaning supplies, shampoos etc. drive me up the wall. I've gotten really sick from two different floors (after ripping them out I got better) and once from paints used on radiators (when the heating was on they gave off a strong smell). And of course mold sets me off real fast…
That is an interesting point. Given the chemical sensitivities in ME/CFS, including fragrances, it would be interesting to see if the monitors are sensitive to those compounds. I don't know the size of most odorous or fragrant compounds. I think I'll test my monitors with fragrance sprayed in the air, on skin, and on fabric to see if they are detected. - Jarred Younger
This is interesting. Certainly I have long felt the relationships between weather, bad air, fatigue, and pain, but I have a history that includes allergies, multiple bouts of pneumonia, and a period of pretty severe asthma that hit me after multiple years picking up new instances of the aforementioned pneumonia. Happily, vaccines work, given reasonable efforts to avoid needless infection (something people seem to forget regarding Covid-19), so I have left pneumonia in my past. My sense was that my history and ongoing allergy issues make me very aware of my lung function, so I thought maybe I was placing too much weight on the contribution of air and weather to my fatigue (and, to a lesser extent, pain - my core, visceral pain is very specifically what it is, though my recent neuropathy seems more dependent on environmental conditions). As it turns out, at least from the preliminary result, I may have been noticing what is actually happening. We are trained by clinicians to mistrust, very often, our own senses of what drives our symptoms (and, in the case of pain, to doubt the validity of our symptoms - a yet-more-pernicious thing). Staying on an even keel while handling the illness, our thoughts and feelings about the illness(es), and the senses of what we should or should not be doing or thinking coming from friends, relatives, and healthcare professionals - each with different priorities and preconceptions - is not so easy, with the result that sick people (especially thoughtful ones willing to entertain different perspectives) will find themselves questioning observations healthy people would never have reason to doubt.
I am affected by bad air days. I check air quality all the time and stay inside with an air purifier when the AQI goes above 50. I finally only connected my symptoms to air quality after I went from moderate to mild me/CFS and after a time when I was feeling particularly good and then suddenly, I feel crummy and have low energy. So this is good to know if you are not well enough to separate out what is affecting you.
Great discourse Jarred! Thank you for sharing it even though I am posting on your last video. I have no doubt you will see in real time and quantifiable further results in your research. I wouldn’t doubt what my imaging would show with a different tracer or an endotoxin injection. I hear that you are looking into PSA and maybe EDS? I have each of these monsters and my body is starting to decompensate and since the pain throws my blood pressure even over the 300 range due to the pain, even taking more blood pressure medication many times doesn’t affect it. With the restrictions being so cut and dry on pain medication what I take is the limit that been imposed on all terminally ill patients ( rotten restrictions) and that and Humira have or had been my only lifeline. The green light helps my vision I believe and I am still taking supplements to try to calm my brain inflammation. In fact I go into seizures and have been and have lost a lot of my memory and abilities. Thank you for sharing your findings and your heart is in your work and I know that even my doctors appreciate it.😊
So many heat advisories this summer. Heat is a hard one for us to analyze in this study because most people probably already know if they have a problem with heat and they avoid it at all costs. I'm guessing that is why I didn't see a relationship between heat and ME/CFS severity. - Jarred Younger
And I'm the opposite, I do best in the summer with heat and humidity. I have days in the summer where I feel almost well. I hate fall and winter and mourn at the end of summer. I was on an me/CFS forum some years ago and a bunch of us weighed in as to whether heat or cold was better for them. For some, heat, for some, cold. Ever since then I've been dying to know why the drastic difference between the two groups.
Good question. We haven't run the weather/pollution analyses on healthy controls. The healthy individuals don't generally have much variance in their fatigue and pain from day to day, so it is hard for any statistical tests to be positive. But you're right it is wise to test the healthy individuals as well to make sure. We have daily data on about 30 healthy individuals and could pull the weather and pollution data for them to see if there are any effects. Thanks! - Jarred Younger
I think the paper should control for the temperature and other weather variables in the days preceding the symptom metric. A nice hot day might have people with ME/CFS getting outside and getting some steps or other activity, which might lead to fatigue in the following days. Maybe it'd be good to control for something like the hottest temperature in the three days preceding the symptom recording.
Yes that sounds like a good potential confound to manage. This analysis didn't examine any time-lagged effects. We have all the information to do those analyses. It just requires a more complex model with time-varying factors, but I'm comfortable running those. I agree that approach could give us better models. - Jarred Younger
@@youngerlab Thanks, glad you'll consider doing that. Any chance you plan to release the raw data, maybe on mapmecfs? I think that's a very valuable practice in case people come up with novel ways to analyze the data after publishing.
@@youngerlab oh also if there is an association between air quality and symptoms, I think there's a good chance that it will be stronger delayed by at least one day, maybe longer. Whether through some kind of PEM mechanism where it takes energy to deal with the particles, or just it taking some time for symptoms to outwardly appear after damage.
Is there any chance of testing high vitamin d3 and k2 plus the other co factors that Dr Eric berg says to take in his TH-cam videos, please 🙏 for M.E.CFS and insomnia
Could u give me the name of a dr at UAB that could treat my fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. I’m in Tuscaloosa and can travel to Bham for treatment but don’t have a name of dr that would treat me. Had this for 30 years but not much success with treatment. Thank u so much for your help.
Thanks for asking! I don't have anything set up special for the videos yet, but I do have a donation page via my academic institution. Anything given goes directly to my laboratory account. The link is: go.uab.edu/youngerlab - Jarred Younger
A personal purifier with true HEPA filters should handle it, as long as there isn't something else in the room that is constantly generating more pollutants. But just a good central air system with good filters should be able to handle the pollutants in most cases. - Jarred Younger
I think he knows that but I know we're sensitive to people thinking that. I thought when I saw the title of this video, okay but I have more symptoms from polluted air than fatigue.
Being in the countryside generally means you have a different air pollution, not you don't have air pollution. The pollution that you are exposed to is the invisible to the naked eye stuff. This is why we often confuse, no visible pollution, with no pollution or very good air quality. Ozone is the most common culprit for triggering health issues in rural areas amongst the population sensitive to poor air quality. What makes things even more complicated, is that ozone alone isn't really that bad, it's when the ozone is high and other pollutants interact with it, that's when things can get really bad. It's as though the interactions going on in the air, put the air in a state of oxidative stress, which has the effect of putting our cells in a state of oxidative stress, because our body just can't find the correct balance to regulate the oxidative process.
Thank you.As a patient, I have multiple HEPA air filters in my house and have also spent time in Hawaii and neither resolve my MECFS issues, so I hope you don’t spend too much effort on digging into this further- instead please look for cures. Thank you!
Thank you.As a patient, I have multiple HEPA air filters in my house and have also spent time in Hawaii and neither resolve my MECFS issues, so I hope you don’t spend too much effort on digging into this further- instead please look for cures. Thank you!
Bad air quality does indeed set my brain on fire (Long covid, MCAS). My doctor was gaslighting me about it just yesterday. Thank you Dr. Younger for being a voice of reason.
Pro-tip: every patient should own a Qingping Air monitor Lite. It's an affordable, life-saving portable CO2/air quality monitor.
@@SamuelxShaban I have MCAS too and I agree with you. It also irritates my gut.
@@kimberlykramer334 Absolutely. Proper ventilation at home made a night and day difference in my MCAS symptoms. Now I can't stay a minute in a room with CO2 above 1000ppm.
Don't you love healthy people thinking toxins don't affect anyone unless it's a massive acute exposure? We are canaries in the coalmine, they should pay attention.
Yep, and I just listened to a speech given by a research neurologist that air pollution is a known contributor to the development of dementia!
Hello from Taiwan, where we experience a lot of humidity and very bad air quality regularly from our neighbors in the big land next door. I've had many days when the air quality index hits 150+ and my body tells me before our Air Quality Index meter does. I purchased a Dyson Air Purifier for my room during the pandemic and it is working well. I'm shocked by the readings on it being consistent with what the index is telling me, and I'm shocked at what it pulls out of my bedroom. Yes we replace that filter once a year and we rely on it heavily. We liked our first purchase so much, we're saving for a second one for the front part of our home. Thanks so much for a great informative video!
as a migraineur i experience enormous swings in my me/cfs/fm symptoms w/storms moving thru Cent FL (also had this in middle TN, east TN). a migraine is usually the first sign of a flare (neuroinflammatory: brain fog, can’t find words, fatigue, pain) that comes with storms-and it comes *before* the storms hit. doesn’t matter if i’m spending time inside or outside. I often work out on the porch b/c it’s quieter than in the house.
my sense is that when it comes to storms it’s not pollutants b/c that clears the air. we pray for rain when trees are pollenating (March-May). it feels more like it’s connected to barometric pressure.
however, there is a separate issue with allergens whereby a long run w/o rain (March-May) will set off a flare associated w/sinus inflammation. just my n=1 subjective experience but i think pollutants and barometric pressure are both sufficient to set off a flare, and there is a diff in the character of the spring flares from allergens (flares last for wks) vs the flares associated with storms (flares last for days).
Does your fybromyalgiae feal like migraines in the muscles are you hypermobile
I’ve also experienced onset of symptoms a few hours prior to a cloud front moving in. Head pressure, brain fog, fatigue, sensation of fluid in ears, and sometimes nausea. When it’s a dramatic shift in weather, my symptoms are severe.
I currently live in a valley where the clouds kind of trap the air (I think?). When there are low clouds, I have a fatigue day. When it’s sunny or high clouds, I feel good. I feel the difference before I open my blinds in the morning, before I know what the weather is doing. It’s definitely related to air pressure.
I wish there was more research on this! There isn’t much to be found online. It would make sense that if there is brain inflammation with extra fluid in the brain, increased air pressure would worsen symptoms.
Jarred thank you for engaging in this import research to help alleviate or lessen people's suffering. 🙏
Again, I can't express my gratitude for all of the splendid science you are doing, Dr. Younger. Tangentially related: I got an Aranet4 a couple of weeks ago, and have been keeping it with me 24/7. I've discovered that CO2 regularly gets up around 1500 ppm in rooms in my house (like my home office, which is a small 2nd floor bedroom). I wonder if there is a relationship between CO2 levels and fatigue. Anyway, I'd gladly sign up for your study of microenviorments. I'd even buy the indoor air quality meter. Heck, maybe I should get one anyway. Budget ones seem to be iffy, though.
I hope the device is helpful! C02 can definitely cause fatigue. Levels of 2000ppm are known to cause fatigue and cognitive issues among the general population. If a room has no circulation, and a person converting oxygen to C02, then the C02 levels will (slowly) rise. There may be some TH-cam videos where cheaper devices are contrasted with research-quality devices, but I don't have a go-to trusted source for that topic. - Jarred Younger
@youngerlab I've had mild to moderate CFS for 34 years, and a covid infection in May 2022 made it so much worse, I'm highly motivated to try things like this.
This has been clear for me, I have a very hard time even just from the air inside the house when cooking on the stove, esp when something burns or grills. Puts me in immediate pain.
Makes sense. Candles and fireplaces can be problematic as well. - Jarred Younger
That's probably why sanatoriums were popular.
So basically Boulder, CO, the Grand Canyon, and Florida
ME and CFS both have an inflammatory component, therefore air pollution affects them.
This can be applied to every single health issue that has an inflammatory component.
This is something as patients we know to be true, but glad to see a researcher finally properly studying this subject. However, I disagree with your conclusion that the problem is mediated by inflammation. Inflammation is a protective mechanism, and the PM triggers pain because the PM in of itself is toxic. Additionally, this study on considers that pollution only exacerbates symptoms, rather than being at root cause, so there's a long way to go. Proper studies need to be done to assess mold exposure, VOC exposure, as well as nanoparticles (UFPs), particularly from matte white paint which can be the root cause for weakness and pain syndromes.
Of course air pollution only exacerbates these conditions .
Pharmaceutical drugs cause them .
@@sneakypressSeems that might take longer for them to admit to. Although many doctors have come forward about statins and the serious side effects.
It would have to be pretty strong pollutants like the gas that caused gulf war illness. MECFS is triggered by infection. No serious evidence of mold contributing to it exists.
Fascinating! I would be interested in being in the study. I relocated. No wonder why I have been struggling more than before.
Great that your doing this! I hope you get more funding. Lots of variables that will be hard to account for. My thinking #1 would be if the participants live in a moldy house. Also just as with PEM effects might have a lag time. Just like getting out of a moldy house has a lag time. Part of the reason so many people don't recognize it as being the #1 most significant driver of their symptoms. I would like to see a simple study which did the expensive mold tests and than rated the correlation it has to people with cfs and their severity. I suspect a lot of people with CFS are in denial to the issue of mold for a lot of different reasons. Once they make the connection though it is always going to be a #1 concern for them from that point on. It took me two years of denial before I finally acknowledged to my self my house was making me sick. It's not easy to move and even if you do you might be jumping from one frying pan to another. Finding a house with air quality a moldie can tolerate is a very difficult prospect. I never did, and I tried close to a dozen different places and situations. why I live in a metal building where I have full control over water damaged and organic material and their emissions. And I while I am much much much better than I was in that moldie home of mine I am still far from being cured or living anywhere near to a normal level of health.
One more note many people with MCS are in my opinion very sensitized to mold also. So when you screen for participants you would want to ask them if they are sensitized to chemicals or mold and on a level of 1 to 10 how sensitive they are.
Mold spores are very problematic. "Black mold" spores cause many respiratory problems. And when I lived in Arizona, the Valley fever caused by spores was a great concern because it can mimic other diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. There are some reasonably priced home mold kits that could be included in a study. - Jarred Younger
Heat, & especially humidity, hugely affect me negatively. Thankfully, where I live on a farm in rural Australia our air quality is usually very good, although pollen & dust can be a problem sometimes, especially when windy, & smoke from bushfires when they occur nearby is obviously awful. The next place further south is Antarctica. Certain weather can definitely make me feel worse. 🇦🇺 How can I measure the air quality where I live? HUGE thanks for all that you do. It is very much appreciated. Had ME for 29 years, & deteriorated a lot over the last 8 years.
Just a note, HEPA is rated for the number of particles it captures equal to 0.3 um in diameter, but this is not the lower limit of its effective range. Wikipedia says it is actually even more effective at some smaller particle sizes.
"filtration efficiency increasing for particle diameters both less than and greater than 0.3 μm"
Good point. I found it impossible to find convincing data on HEPA filters blocking influenza (for example) in real-world situations when I checked a few years ago, but the literature may be more substantial now because of SARS-CoV-2. I agree that most respiratory viruses should be blocked to a substantial degree, especially when taking into account the size of the droplets containing the viri. Thanks! - Jarred Younger
Dear Dr.Younger, I have been living in Vienna for 5 years, where air quality is great. Exactly here I got long COVID with CFS.
Very good video Dr . Younger .
We have really enjoyed your last few videos .
And , the other atmospheric variables , are also very important .
Bless you for your work. It seems to me that you are validating MCS Multiple Chemical Sensitivity as being real. I've heard you mention GWI which Alison Johnson equates to MCS. ME/CFS is in the same basket of chronic illnesses.
Thank you for this information. Very interesting stuff. I live in the UK near a major airport and I’d be interested in any future study on this. I hope you’re feeling better cos you still sound a bit snuffly to me 😊
Ha yes you got me. - Jarred Younger
I don't know how easy it is to monitor fragrances and similar compounds.
I don‘t react to everything with an odor, but typical air freshener, cleaning supplies, shampoos etc. drive me up the wall.
I've gotten really sick from two different floors (after ripping them out I got better) and once from paints used on radiators (when the heating was on they gave off a strong smell).
And of course mold sets me off real fast…
That is an interesting point. Given the chemical sensitivities in ME/CFS, including fragrances, it would be interesting to see if the monitors are sensitive to those compounds. I don't know the size of most odorous or fragrant compounds. I think I'll test my monitors with fragrance sprayed in the air, on skin, and on fabric to see if they are detected. - Jarred Younger
This is interesting. Certainly I have long felt the relationships between weather, bad air, fatigue, and pain, but I have a history that includes allergies, multiple bouts of pneumonia, and a period of pretty severe asthma that hit me after multiple years picking up new instances of the aforementioned pneumonia. Happily, vaccines work, given reasonable efforts to avoid needless infection (something people seem to forget regarding Covid-19), so I have left pneumonia in my past. My sense was that my history and ongoing allergy issues make me very aware of my lung function, so I thought maybe I was placing too much weight on the contribution of air and weather to my fatigue (and, to a lesser extent, pain - my core, visceral pain is very specifically what it is, though my recent neuropathy seems more dependent on environmental conditions). As it turns out, at least from the preliminary result, I may have been noticing what is actually happening.
We are trained by clinicians to mistrust, very often, our own senses of what drives our symptoms (and, in the case of pain, to doubt the validity of our symptoms - a yet-more-pernicious thing). Staying on an even keel while handling the illness, our thoughts and feelings about the illness(es), and the senses of what we should or should not be doing or thinking coming from friends, relatives, and healthcare professionals - each with different priorities and preconceptions - is not so easy, with the result that sick people (especially thoughtful ones willing to entertain different perspectives) will find themselves questioning observations healthy people would never have reason to doubt.
Very informative...thanks
I would be willing to monitor my air in Edgewater Florida.
I just did two hours self massage & Reiki. The air quality was good yesterday hot thou. Thank you Jarred
Excellent start, thank you!
Huh...I guess I definitely have to move out then
I am affected by bad air days. I check air quality all the time and stay inside with an air purifier when the AQI goes above 50. I finally only connected my symptoms to air quality after I went from moderate to mild me/CFS and after a time when I was feeling particularly good and then suddenly, I feel crummy and have low energy. So this is good to know if you are not well enough to separate out what is affecting you.
Today was one of the worst air quality in my location and I have to use facemask outside and use air purifier at home.
I'm in Cemtral Texas and Volunteer ~!!!
Interesting!
Great discourse Jarred! Thank you for sharing it even though I am posting on your last video. I have no doubt you will see in real time and quantifiable further results in your research. I wouldn’t doubt what my imaging would show with a different tracer or an endotoxin injection. I hear that you are looking into PSA and maybe EDS? I have each of these monsters and my body is starting to decompensate and since the pain throws my blood pressure even over the 300 range due to the pain, even taking more blood pressure medication many times doesn’t affect it. With the restrictions being so cut and dry on pain medication what I take is the limit that been imposed on all terminally ill patients ( rotten restrictions) and that and Humira have or had been my only lifeline. The green light helps my vision I believe and I am still taking supplements to try to calm my brain inflammation. In fact I go into seizures and have been and have lost a lot of my memory and abilities. Thank you for sharing your findings and your heart is in your work and I know that even my doctors appreciate it.😊
Head advisory here in Northern Illinois today and tomorrow. The heat makes me soooo sick. I’m sure the air isn’t great today either.
So many heat advisories this summer. Heat is a hard one for us to analyze in this study because most people probably already know if they have a problem with heat and they avoid it at all costs. I'm guessing that is why I didn't see a relationship between heat and ME/CFS severity. - Jarred Younger
It's dreadful. Hot, stagnant air esp with high humidity is difficult to function through.
And I'm the opposite, I do best in the summer with heat and humidity. I have days in the summer where I feel almost well. I hate fall and winter and mourn at the end of summer. I was on an me/CFS forum some years ago and a bunch of us weighed in as to whether heat or cold was better for them. For some, heat, for some, cold. Ever since then I've been dying to know why the drastic difference between the two groups.
Was the control group not affected by particulate matter in terms of fatigue and pain?
Good question. We haven't run the weather/pollution analyses on healthy controls. The healthy individuals don't generally have much variance in their fatigue and pain from day to day, so it is hard for any statistical tests to be positive. But you're right it is wise to test the healthy individuals as well to make sure. We have daily data on about 30 healthy individuals and could pull the weather and pollution data for them to see if there are any effects. Thanks! - Jarred Younger
I think the paper should control for the temperature and other weather variables in the days preceding the symptom metric. A nice hot day might have people with ME/CFS getting outside and getting some steps or other activity, which might lead to fatigue in the following days. Maybe it'd be good to control for something like the hottest temperature in the three days preceding the symptom recording.
Yes that sounds like a good potential confound to manage. This analysis didn't examine any time-lagged effects. We have all the information to do those analyses. It just requires a more complex model with time-varying factors, but I'm comfortable running those. I agree that approach could give us better models. - Jarred Younger
@@youngerlab Thanks, glad you'll consider doing that. Any chance you plan to release the raw data, maybe on mapmecfs? I think that's a very valuable practice in case people come up with novel ways to analyze the data after publishing.
@@youngerlab oh also if there is an association between air quality and symptoms, I think there's a good chance that it will be stronger delayed by at least one day, maybe longer. Whether through some kind of PEM mechanism where it takes energy to deal with the particles, or just it taking some time for symptoms to outwardly appear after damage.
Is there any chance of testing high vitamin d3 and k2 plus the other co factors that Dr Eric berg says to take in his TH-cam videos, please 🙏 for M.E.CFS and insomnia
I’m on high doses of both, & it’s made no difference to how I feel, & my sleep is still a huge problem.
@Jacqz-k9l how high. Did you do exactly what dr berg says in his videos?
@@Jacqz-k9lsame here. Just hoping they have some other benefits unrelated to me/cfs.
Could u give me the name of a dr at UAB that could treat my fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. I’m in Tuscaloosa and can travel to Bham for treatment but don’t have a name of dr that would treat me. Had this for 30 years but not much success with treatment. Thank u so much for your help.
I would
Love to be in that 1000 tested. Air quality has use difference in me. I can always tell when air is over 80.
Do you accept donations to support your research?
Thanks for asking! I don't have anything set up special for the videos yet, but I do have a donation page via my academic institution. Anything given goes directly to my laboratory account. The link is: go.uab.edu/youngerlab - Jarred Younger
Why is the air quality in Montana area so poor?
Forest fires is my guess. It has been a very dry summer. - Jarred Younger
@@youngerlab duh :) makes sense
Yup
Yessur yessur yessur thank you
12:40 findings
I’ve seen little personal air filters. Are those affective at all? I can’t imagine putting a small air cleaner on your desk would be helpful.
A personal purifier with true HEPA filters should handle it, as long as there isn't something else in the room that is constantly generating more pollutants. But just a good central air system with good filters should be able to handle the pollutants in most cases. - Jarred Younger
putting a small air cleaner on a desk, especially close to plastic computer equipment, has been very helpful to me
You need to assess PEM as well dr. MECFS is not really fatigue. Fatigue is too mild a word.
I think he knows that but I know we're sensitive to people thinking that. I thought when I saw the title of this video, okay but I have more symptoms from polluted air than fatigue.
We'll ime on a smallholding in the country still have fybromyalgia cfs
Being in the countryside generally means you have a different air pollution, not you don't have air pollution. The pollution that you are exposed to is the invisible to the naked eye stuff. This is why we often confuse, no visible pollution, with no pollution or very good air quality.
Ozone is the most common culprit for triggering health issues in rural areas amongst the population sensitive to poor air quality.
What makes things even more complicated, is that ozone alone isn't really that bad, it's when the ozone is high and other pollutants interact with it, that's when things can get really bad. It's as though the interactions going on in the air, put the air in a state of oxidative stress, which has the effect of putting our cells in a state of oxidative stress, because our body just can't find the correct balance to regulate the oxidative process.
Thank you.As a patient, I have multiple HEPA air filters in my house and have also spent time in Hawaii and neither resolve my MECFS issues, so I hope you don’t spend too much effort on digging into this further- instead please look for cures. Thank you!
Thank you.As a patient, I have multiple HEPA air filters in my house and have also spent time in Hawaii and neither resolve my MECFS issues, so I hope you don’t spend too much effort on digging into this further- instead please look for cures. Thank you!