Not necessarily hypochondria (Score 2, Informative)

I'm a geek, and my wife has CFS/MCS (yes, CFS, MCS, Fibromyalgia, and Gulf War Syndrome seem to be related). Believe me, it's not about controlling other people. If anything, it's about trying to avoid having other people control/deteriorate your life/health. And it isn't any fun -- it's a very isolating disease. There's a nice summary of a photo essay that discusses some of the lengths people go to. How many other people would move to the middle of nowhere, sacrificing home, hobbies, job, life savings, friends, and family just to stay alive? Especially when just about everyone else around, even complete strangers like slashdotters :|, says you're a hypochondriac?

CFS is not very well understood, but the CDC does have some criteria that can be used to diagnose CFS.

There is some recent research (International Journal of Epidemiology, 2004 Jul 15) that indicates that at least some folks with MCS may have a genetic predisposition -- certain genes help regulate how the body inactivates toxins, and a correlation was detected between folks with MCS and those with certain PON* and NAT* genotypes (or whatever -- I'm a geek, not a geneticist!). That gives a good explanation why some folks' bodies just can't deal with what the rest of us shrug off.

One explanation for the effect this has that you can find on the web is that with CFS, the immune system is hyperactive, so when you get exposed to something like a very fragrant shampoo :), your body kicks in, and it's like you have the flu -- lethargy, muscle and body pain, etc. If I'm remembering right, it's similar to how allergies work -- your body starts producing histamines to counter what it sees as an invader, but overdoes it, causing congestion/sneezing/headaches/etc., and causing some great financial results for the makers of Allegra, Sudafed, etc.

My wife got a skin rash last weekend from some fragrance-laced (saturated!) water that got spilled on a restroom countertop -- that's not hypochondria! And my toddler son gets hives (little red bumps on his skin) if he eats wheat products. (We've carefully done numerous experiments to prove, to my engineering satisfaction, that wheat is the key. This isn't a one-time occurrence, but a proven pattern.) I don't know of anyone who can use their brain, consciously or unconsciously, to make these kinds of physical manifestations occur.

So while I can't speak about whether your relatives are nuts :), I can say that there are at least some folks who aren't nuts, and there are at least some folks (but not very many) in the medical community that are working on helping these folks.

BTW, the Seabiscuit book author has CFS as well -- if she's a hypochondriac, she's managed to fool quite a lot of people.