According to the national Center for Disease Control, it is estimated that 500,000 people living in the United Sates suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome. It has also been proposed that chronic fatigue syndrome may be caused by an immunologic dysfunction.

The CDC conducted a four-city study and identified that 98 percent of the subjects were Caucasian, 85 percent were female with an average age for onset being 30. More than 80 percent had advanced education and one-third were from upper income families. However, there is more evidence that chronic fatigue syndrome affects all racial and ethnic groups and both sexes.

Seattle and San Francisco were among the cities studied. In Seattle, 59 percent of CFS patients were women and 83 percent were Caucasian which is an underrepresentation since more than 90 percent of the patients in the study were white. In San Francisco, the study found that CFS was most prevalent among women, among people with an annual household income of $40,000 and among the black population. It was least common among Asians and whites.

According to the CDC, the actual percentage of people who recover is unknown. In fact, even the definition of what is considered recovery is a subject of debate. Some people recover to the point where they can resume a normal life and work schedule but experience the occasional symptoms, some recover completely and some get progressively worse. Approximately 50 percent of patients reported “recovery” and most recovered within the first five years after the onset of the illness. Doctors usually diagnose CFS when a patient has experienced severe fatigue which cannot be cured by sufficient bed rest accompanied with flulike symptoms, generalized pain and memory problems over a six-month period.

Hermosa Beach resident Shannon Flammer, author of “Conquering Chronic Fatigue: Taking Back Your Life,” was one of those statistics after being diagnosed with the illness in May 2001. She fully recovered from CFS in 15 months through a seven-step process based on an alternative health-care treatment plan she writes about extensively in her book.

Flammer, originally from Northern California, migrated to Hermosa Beach from the East Coast as the vice president of sales and marketing with an Internet company based in New York City. Flammer worked between six and seven days a week, 17 and 20 hours a day, launching the firm’s West Coast office.

After three years, Flammer left the company to start her own company. A week following her departure, she collapsed with stomach pains while working out in the gym. Flammer thought she had caught the flu that seemed to never go away. She was sick for two months while doctors ran every kind of test on her for a diagnosis to no avail.

“I was diagnosed with Candida and chronic fatigue syndrome, and was completely debilitated at the time. The tests showed nothing and one doctor even said it was in my head,” she said. “I could not stand for longer than nine minutes. Taking a shower exhausted a full day’s worth of energy. I couldn’t work or take a walk. I spent six weeks in bed while my doctors gave me test after test with no results. Finally I found a doctor who could diagnose me.”

Once she knew what she was up against, Flammer became immersed in learning about her two conditions through research and application. She healed herself within 15 months from a disease that usually takes between three to five years, according to the CDC.

As a career woman, Flammer saved about $50,000 that she used while she recovered from her condition. As her illness wore on, Flammer began to run out of money, and decided to put all of her belongings in storage and leave her home. She embarked on an adventure that took her from Los Angeles to central parts of California to Telluride, Colo. During this time, she researched and wrote the book.

“I spent six weeks writing the book at a friend’s ranch in San Luis Obispo,” said Flammer. “Everywhere I went I saw the word Telluride whether it was on T-shirts, coffee mugs or on signs. I talked to a friend who told me he had just bought a place there so I spent August and September finishing the book. I woke up at 6 a.m. and wrote until 2 p.m. It just poured out of me.”

While in Colorado, Flammer studied alternative health care and became an accredited practitioner. She now operates her own private practice.

Aside from immediately changing her diet, Flammer needed to figure why she was suffering from this condition through self-psychoanalysis.

“I had to address why I had this illness in the first place. I needed to look at my emotional foundation, and try and understand what got me to this point,” said Flammer. “As a child I would constantly seek approval from my parents, and as an adult I was a ‘Type-A’ overachiever who was very driven and never slowed down for anything. I had to really look deep into myself and figure out how I viewed life. These kinds of thought patterns and behavior are a part of the subconscious and people aren’t even aware of it. Typically, people with CFS wear the weight of the world on their shoulders, have a hard time saying ‘no’ and they like to please everyone.”

In her book, Flammer cites that more than 80 million people have Candida and another 1 million suffer from CFS, according to the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Association of America.

“By this estimate that means 1 million to 3 million Americans have Candida, but attribute their symptoms to something else,” contended Flammer. “Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum in his book, ‘From Fatigued to Fantastic!,’ maintains between 6 million to 12 million people in both America and Canada alone suffer from some form of CFS. It is also estimated that 90 percent of the world’s population may have some form of Candida in their lifetime due to lifestyles, diet and medication.”

Candida is a yeast fungus or digestive mold in the digestive tract of the body. The Candida cells feed off sugar, dairy, wheat, mold, processed foods, carbohydrates or starches of any kind, along with other yeast. Candida is normal yeast, but it can wreak havoc on the immune system when it is in a state of overgrowth. The toxic waste it produces ultimately weakens the immune systems and the body’s organs.

“Some doctors of Western medicine and almost all doctors of Eastern medicine attribute the alarming increase of Candida to the overuse of antibiotics,” said Flammer. “Antibiotics kill the beneficial flora or ‘good’ bacteria in the digestive tract. This ‘good’ bacteria keeps the ‘bad’ bacteria from multiplying. When this good bacteria is killed, our bodies lose the first line of defense against Candida.”

Some symptoms of an overgrowth of Candida range from everything from mood swings and depression to asthma, fatigue and headaches to joint and muscle pain, halitosis and insomnia.

The change in Flammer’s diet to starve the Candida required her to give up everything from caffeine, alcohol and wheat to flour and sugar for the first three months of her recovery as a way to completely detoxify the body. She also visited a sauna a few times a week to cleanse a major organ of the body, the skin, and participated in various organ-cleansing procedures.

“Many who have recovered eventually find a preference toward a healthier diet,” said Flammer. “As your health improves, you may find that you want to avoid the empty foods (sugar, breads, caffeine) altogether. You can avoid most carbohydrates entirely if you eat plenty of vegetables. Every once in a while you will have that craving for pasta or bread, but not as often as you would think.”

Aside from emotional cleansing and a new diet, Flammer also recommends anyone with these conditions supplement their diet with herbal medicine and vitamins to maintain a strong immune system and a well-nourished body. Flammer cites in her book that an estimated 80 percent of the world’s population routinely uses some form of herbal medicine, according to “The Body Ecology Diet” by Donna Gates and Linda Schatz.

“Although not as popular in the United States, studies have concluded the use of herbal medicine in America is clearly rising,” said Flammer. “One well-known study found that herbal medicine usage in the United States increased by 500 percent between 1990 and 1997.”

Once Flammer changed her diet, she also identified her various food allergies, which according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, affect as many as 40 million to 50 million people in the United States. Some studies estimate as high as 60 million to 80 million Americans suffer from food and environmental allergies, and it is the sixth leading cause of chronic illness in this country.

“A food allergy is an immune system response to a food that the body mistakenly believes is harmful,” said Flammer. “Once the immune system decides that a particular food is harmful, it creates specific antibodies to the food.”

According to the book “The Body Ecology Diet,” Flammer cites that food allergies are known to cause many illnesses including asthma, arthritis, Attention Deficit Disorder, diabetes, ear infections, migraines, skin rashes and hypoglycemia.

Flammer identified her allergies and then healed them through the process of kinesiology, which was used in conjunction with Nambrudripad’s Allergy Elimination Technique and Jaffe-Mellor Technique. Both are considered alternative therapies and use kinesiology to compare the strength and weakness of any muscle in the body in the presence or absence of an allergy in the system.

In another step in her recovery, Flammer eliminated her environmental toxins. She cleaned her house and switched to using organic cleansing products. According to her research, Flammer claims more than 70,000 synthetic chemicals are used in commercial production with an estimated 1,000 new chemicals being introduced each year.

“In 1999 alone, the EPA estimates in its Toxic Release Inventory National Report that 1.9 billion pounds of chemical were dumped into our nation’s water systems,” said Flammer. “In that same year, 2.4 billion pounds of chemicals were released into the atmosphere with a total chemical attack on the environment estimated at 5.7 billion pounds.”

In another important step, Flammer learned to achieve a new state of spirituality that she said can be achieved through activities such as yoga, meditation, prayer, exercise, dancing and music.

“I realized while lying on my back with CFS that not having a daily connection with my soul had cost me my health,” said Flammer. “Following my diagnosis, I began to explore a daily practice of mediation, positive affirmation and yoga.”

Within 24 hours of publishing the Internet book, Flammer received feedback from a woman living in South Africa who had purchased and read the book. The woman’s name was Caryn Reece and she had been suffering from CFS for six months.

“I’ve spent so much time experimenting to get where I am, I wish I’d found this book six months earlier,” wrote Reece. “I’m so excited about your book, it’s the first time I’ve found exactly what I’ve been searching for. It explains everything so practically and takes life beyond this illness which is something I haven’t found anywhere else yet.”

Flammer is now helping people all over Los Angeles recover from CFS as a public speaker and through her private practice. She has spoken about her experiences on the NBC program “The Other Half,” San Francisco’s Channel 5 news and at the Los Angeles Yoga Expo.

For more information on Flammer and her book, visit www.healchronicfatigue.com.