Acute onset of ME/CFS caused by brain injury

Having been trained as a forensic physician, Dr. Hyde put his curiosity to work asking the questions “why?” and “what is behind ME?” He believes that the acute onset of ME/CFS is caused by an injury to the brain and it can be seen as a diffuse encephalopathy.

Unfortunately, Dr. Hyde thinks most neurologists miss this diagnosis because it does not show up with traditional neurological testing. He said that is due to the fact that the symptoms reside in the vascular system.

Diffuse encephalopathy, however, does show up on SPECT, PET (with the proper software) and BEAM scans (electronic computer-driven EEG), but a physician has to have enough knowledge of the tests to order them.

From a forensic point of view, Dr. Hyde suggested another simple test: carotid and transcranial doppler. This test looks at blood flow through the main arteries going into the brain and was developed at Haborview Hospital in Seattle, WA.

If all these tests show a blood diffusion problem in the brain, physicians and insurance companies cannot argue that there isn’t a problem. This is called forensic triangulation (based on an engineering principle).

A stroke patient can exhibit similar symptoms to the ME/CFS patient in the area of aphasia (word finding difficulty and speech difficulty) and dysphasia. Dr. Hyde does not see much difference between stroke and ME/CFS patients with regard to diffuse brain injury.