Boylan, Kelly A, Dworetzky, Barbara A, Baslet, Gaston et al. · Epilepsy & behavior reports · 2024 · DOI
This review examines how exercise and physical activity might help people with functional neurological disorder (FND), a condition that causes neurological symptoms without a clear structural brain abnormality. The authors note that FND often occurs alongside other conditions like ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, and POTS, and they suggest that problems with the autonomic nervous system (which controls automatic body functions) may underlie these conditions. By looking at research on exercise in related disorders, they explore how physical activity might help regulate the nervous system and reduce symptoms.
This work addresses an important gap by exploring the potential role of physical activity in FND—a condition that frequently overlaps with ME/CFS. Understanding how autonomic dysfunction links these conditions and how exercise might regulate the nervous system is relevant to ME/CFS patients seeking evidence-based activity recommendations, particularly given the risk of post-exertional malaise in ME/CFS populations.
This narrative review does not present new experimental data or prove causation; it synthesizes existing literature and proposes a theoretical framework. It does not establish whether exercise is safe or effective specifically in ME/CFS or FND populations, nor does it clarify whether autonomic dysregulation is truly the primary mechanism linking these disorders. The findings remain hypothesis-generating rather than definitive.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
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