How Your Condition Started

1. Why these conditions start

Some people are more likely to develop conditions like ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, or long COVID because of certain background factors. These might include:

• Genetics (family history of similar conditions)
• Childhood adversity or trauma
• Highly sensitive nervous systems
• Long-term stress or burnout
• Environmental exposures

These don’t cause illness on their own – but they can make the brain and body more sensitive to stress, which sets the stage for illness if something tips the system too far.

Then comes a trigger.

For many people, symptoms begin after a specific event that overwhelms the nervous system. This can be:

• Emotional stress – like a breakup, loss, trauma, or burnout
• Physical stress – like a virus, surgery, injury, or toxic exposure

Examples of common triggers:

• ME/CFS often starts after a viral infection (like glandular fever)
• Fibromyalgia can follow an accident or chronic pain
• MCS or Mold Illness might begin after exposure to chemicals or mold
• IBS often follows food poisoning or gut-related stress
• Long COVID starts after a viral infection, but symptoms persist beyond the typical recovery window

In some cases, like Gulf War Syndrome, people experience a combination of physical and emotional stressors – like vaccines, chemical exposure, and combat stress – all at once.

Why this matters:

• Some people get sick suddenly. Others slowly wear down over time.
• Symptoms vary – but the underlying pattern in the brain and nervous system is often the same.

That’s why so many of these conditions overlap, and why similar tools can help people with different diagnoses recover.

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2. What happens in the brain

When you go through something stressful – like a virus, an injury, or emotional trauma – your brain works hard to protect you. That’s its job. But sometimes, this protective response becomes overactive and overly sensitive.

Two key parts of the brain play a role here:

• The amygdala – acts like an internal alarm system, always scanning for danger
• The insula – helps the brain read signals from inside your body (like pain, fatigue, or tension)

If the stress is intense or ongoing, these parts of the brain can get “stuck” in high alert. They start to overreact to normal body signals, interpreting them as threats – even when there’s no actual danger anymore.

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3. Chronic stimulation of the arousal system

Once the amygdala and insula become conditioned to stay in high alert, they continue to overstimulate the body’s stress systems – even when no real danger is present.

This constant activation affects multiple areas:

The HPA Axis (Stress Hormone System)

The brain keeps the hypothalamus and adrenal glands switched on, flooding the body with stress hormones like cortisol. Over time, this system wears down, making it harder for the body to handle stress or recover properly.

Brain Chemistry and Arousal

The amygdala continues to activate brain circuits, keeping the whole system stuck in a state of hyper-arousal. This can reduce important brain chemicals like serotonin and dopamine, which affects mood, motivation, and focus. It also disrupts calming mechanisms that would normally tell the brain and body it’s safe again.

Immune System Conditioning

The immune system may also become conditioned to overreact. This means it can start responding to everyday triggers as if they’re threats, causing chronic inflammation and neuroinflammation – a type of irritation in the brain itself.

Oxidative Stress and System-Wide Impact

The ongoing stress response can create oxidative stress – a form of internal wear and tear that affects cells throughout the body. The immune and hormone systems can become unbalanced, which affects everything from digestion to sleep to energy.

This non-stop “false alarm” leads to a wide range of symptoms. But importantly, many of the physical changes seen in the body are not the root cause – they’re the result of the brain being stuck in this overprotective state.

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4. Symptoms begin

Once the brain and body stay stuck in high alert, real symptoms start to appear.

This is because the constant stimulation begins to wear down or disrupt key systems in the body:

• Some systems become less responsive over time (called “down-regulation”)
• Others become exhausted, like the adrenal glands
• The stress response can raise nitric oxide levels, which may damage cells and reduce energy production (mitochondrial dysfunction)
• The immune system becomes unbalanced, allowing dormant viruses — like HHV-6 — to become active again and increase symptom load

These physical effects can make the illness feel even more complex and overwhelming.

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5. Secondary illness cycles

As this pattern continues, the body’s heightened sensitivity can lead to additional conditions. These are called secondary illness cycles, and they may include:

• Allergies or chemical sensitivities
• Disrupted sleep, especially a lack of restorative “delta” sleep
• Severe morning fatigue, even after a full night in bed
• Increased pain, particularly in conditions like fibromyalgia

These secondary issues don’t mean something new is “wrong” – they’re part of the same cycle of overstimulation. They show how far-reaching the impact of a hyper-alert brain can be.

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6. The brain detects symptoms

Once symptoms appear, the brain continues to notice and monitor them through areas like the sensory cortex, thalamus, and insula.

These regions are responsible for receiving signals from the body – pain, fatigue, discomfort – and deciding what they mean. But when the brain is already on high alert, it can start interpreting even normal signals as dangerous.

This misinterpretation keeps the nervous system in a reactive state, constantly scanning the body for signs of threat.

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7. The alarm is re-triggered and the cycle restarts

The amygdala plays a key role in this final loop. When it detects symptoms — especially if the insula has labeled them as dangerous — it sends signals to re-activate the stress response.

This sends the body right back into the same state of over-arousal described earlier (Step 4), restarting the cycle.

This explains why symptoms don’t just stay the same — they often flare up, feel unpredictable, and continue even when everything else seems “normal.”

Over time, this feedback loop becomes deeply ingrained, and healing requires gently retraining these patterns.

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