Dag 396 Groeihormoon

Kinderfeestje bij de zus. Ze is niet van het sociale type en we zien elkaar niet vaak. Oma komt me halen en gewapend met een cadeautje melden we ons aan. Het is een vrolijke boel, een beetje druk naar mijn maatstaven. Zus vindt het prima als ik na een tijdje op haar zetel ga liggen met een dekentje om me heen.


Een tante knijpt even in mijn magere arm en vraagt oprecht of ik nog wel eet. Een familie-erfstuk van 85 jaar kwebbelt vrolijk over haar diabetes en haar hondje. Ze ziet er schitterend uit met haar golvend haar en twinkelende oogjes. Charmant en elegant. Zo wil ik ook oud worden.


Info:

Dr Cheney:

And the question is, what people are usually yellow [improving], and what people are usually green [not improving]? And the answer is, teenagers are usually improving. As I look back over my charts and ask the question of how teenagers fare with this disease, I'll tell you, they get as sick as adults. They can be homebound for five years. They can be really sick, and I've even seen them die. But when I ask the question, "Well, how many never really made it out of this disease?" I can only think of two out of maybe 20. So it seems that 90% of teenagers, once they get to Phase III, seem to recover.

However, if you go to 40 and older, the numbers are almost the opposite of that. Only 10% truly recover, unless they get well within the first couple of years. If they stay ill for very long--meaning maybe five years or longer--then it's rare to see them recover. They can be stable; they can get through the first two phases pretty well, but they still have a functional impairment. People between 20 and 40 are kind of a mixed group. They're better than the people over 40, but they're not as good as the kids under 20, and they tend to resemble the adults over 40 a little more than the kids under 20.

I've puzzled over this for years, wondering why the kids do so well, and the adults do so poorly. I think the difference may be growth hormone. …

The controlling factor may actually be growth hormone, and a ten-year-old has ten times more growth hormone than even a 30-year-old does.

And again since CFIDS affects the growth hormone dynamic, the only CFIDS patients who might have enough growth hormone left to recover completely turn out to be teenagers and children.