THURSDAY, Aug. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Imagine suffering from a chronic illness that challenges you every single day. You have aches and pains, difficulty getting around and sometimes suffer from surprising decreases in energy. You take fistfuls of medication for relief and endure countless medical procedures to keep the illness from progressing.

The illness might be physical, such as diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome or arthritis. Or it might be emotional or psychological, such as anxiety or depression.

Either way, might your life be better if you stopped hoping to cure your condition and simply accepted things as they are?

"Sometimes knowing the adversity you face is permanent makes it easier to face that adversity," said Dr. Peter A. Ubel, a professor of medicine and psychology at the University of Michigan and director of the university's Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine.

Ubel co-authored a study that found that people who'd had a colostomy -- surgery that creates an opening in the abdomen for stool to drain from the body -- but could have the procedure reversed in the future experienced no improvement in life satisfaction over time. But, people who had irreversible colostomies reported increased satisfaction with their quality of life.

It's not a conclusion that's been universally embraced, however. Dr. Ann Berger, chief of pain and palliative care at the U.S. National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., said she believes the finding from the colostomy study only scrapes the surface of what a patient needs to undergo to experience healing from a chronic illness.

"Acceptance is only a very small part of ultimately developing a sense of wholeness in healing from a chronic illness," Berger said.

The study involved 71 colostomy patients, including 30 people with permanent procedures and 41 with reversible procedures. They were all quizzed about their quality of life one week after their release from the hospital and again one month and six months later.

Even though both groups of people had the same disability, those who knew their condition was permanent adapted better to their situation over time, Ubel found.

He believes a couple of factors are probably at work here. First, people who hope for a cure that may never come will grow frustrated over time when there is no improvement in their situation.

"Happiness is not just a matter of circumstances, but also how circumstances compare to your experiences," Ubel said. "If you continue to hold out hope that things will get better, you will feel more frustrated."

Also, Ubel explained, people holding out hope will experience a great deal of "Weltschmerz," a German expression referring to the pain people feel when comparing how life is to how life should be.

"If I'm hoping for something better, then I continually compare my current lot in life to what it could be, and the contrast hurts," Ubel said. "People who have a temporary condition think, 'Why do I have to live with this? I want to be better.' People with a permanent condition think, 'Things aren't perfect, but these are the cards I've been dealt.'"

Berger, on the other hand, thinks people should view the findings from the colostomy patients' experiences "with a grain of salt," in part because the results stem from a small group of study participants.

But in addition, a range of life factors can affect how people deal with a chronic illness, including their psychological state before the illness, their social networks and support systems, and their sense of spirituality, Berger said, and none of those factors were considered in the study.

"A lot of it has to do with people's sense of: 'I have a place and worth in the world. I'm safe and taken care of. I have plans and expectations for my life. I have control over things in my life. I have some kind of secure inner peace,'" she said. "These are things that go on in someone's inner psyche and help in the healing process."

If people have support and a sense of spirituality, she said, they may not be cured but they can be healed. "You need to look at curing versus healing," Berger said. "Cure is cure of an illness. Healing is a feeling of wholeness of an individual."

And the notion of "giving up hope" is flawed, she said.

"I don't think that you necessarily give up hope," Berger said. "When you are chronically ill, you may hope for other things. Hope just changes so that rather than hoping for a cure, you hope to get to somebody's wedding or you hope to see the sunset the following day. You don't hope for the same things as hoping for a cure. That's not losing hope. It's very different, and they can still feel healed."

More information

To learn about coping with chronic illness, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

MONDAY, Aug. 23 (HealthDay News) -- Another study has found evidence that a mouse virus may play a role in chronic fatigue syndrome, a poorly understood disorder that causes incapacitating exhaustion and malaise.

Using blood samples collected in the mid-1990s from chronic fatigue sufferers from the New England area, researchers found evidence of gene sequences for murine leukemia virus (MLV)-related virus in the blood of 32 of 37 patients, or 86.5 percent.

Evidence of the virus was detected in only three of 44 healthy controls, or 6.8 percent of people who did not have chronic fatigue syndrome, the researchers noted.

The team also did genetic testing on fresh blood samples from eight of the chronic fatigue patients and found evidence of MLV in seven of them.

The study, published in the Aug. 23-27 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted by researchers from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

About one million people in the United States have chronic fatigue syndrome, according to the Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS) Association of America. Symptoms include debilitating exhaustion that lasts for months and is not alleviated by sleep and often made worse by physical activity.

People with chronic fatigue can also experience joint aches and muscle pain, headaches, enlarged lymph nodes and sore throat. At the same time, many have to battle with the disbelief (from some quarters) that CFS is a "real" disease.

The saga of MLV-related viruses and chronic fatigue syndrome began last October, when a different team of researchers reported in the journal Science that they had found a mouse virus called xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV, in the blood of 68 of 101 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, but in only eight of 218 healthy patients.

Previously, the same team had reported that they found the virus in some prostate cancer patients.

After decades of confusion about the illness, finally, it seemed, researchers were honing in on a biological cause for the mysterious condition, said Kim McCleary, president and CEO of the CFIDS Association of America.

Yet four subsequent teams of researchers failed to find a similar link, leaving patients even more confused. So, the new findings are an important confirmation that an MLV-related virus may indeed play a role, McCleary said.

"This study is certainly vindication for the disbelief that has been so pervasive over the past 20 years," McCleary said. "But as so often happens with science, every answer begs more questions."

Experts don't know if the presence of MLV-related virus gene sequences reflect an underlying immune disorder, if the virus alters the immune system and allows in other viruses, or if it's the virus itself that is making people sick, McCleary said.

Also unexplained is why some healthy people have MLV-related virus in their blood but don't fall ill, said Dr. Celia Witten, director of the Office of Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapies at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

And the current findings differ from the previous research in one important respect. While the findings reported in Science identified xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) in the blood of those with chronic fatigue, the current study did not did find XMRV.

Instead, researchers found gene sequences for polytropic mouse endogenous retroviruses, which are in the same family of retroviruses but is not identical to XMRV, explained lead study author Dr. Shyh-Ching Lo, director of the Tissue Safety Laboratory Program at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

A retrovirus is a specific kind of virus that can integrate itself into the host genome. Researchers don't know how it's transmitted.

"Our study very much supports the earlier findings that MLV-related viruses are found in the chronic fatigue syndrome patients, although the virus sequence we identified is not the same as XMRV and is a much more heterogenous group," Lo said.

XMRV is a newly identified form of the MLV-related virus that has been shown to infect human cells but not mouse cells, Witten said, while polytropic MLV-related virus can infect both human cells and mouse cells.

"Difference in sequences can cause difference in the virus' function and pathology," Witten said. "But exactly how pathogenic they are in people, how they cause infection or even whether they can all remains to be seen."

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on chronic fatigue.

FRIDAY, Aug. 20 (HealthDay News) -- Folks have been taught to slather on sunscreen, slip on a shirt and clap a hat on their heads to protect their skin from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays.

That's all good. But not adding a pair of good sunglasses to the ensemble still leaves people at risk, eye doctors say.

Ultraviolet, or UV, rays can cause significant damage to unprotected eyes, resulting in a number of illnesses and disorders that can rob people of their sight.

"People are more aware of skin cancer. There's more awareness of exposing your skin to the sun," said Dr. J. Alberto Martinez, a practicing ophthalmologist in Bethesda, Md., and a clinical professor of ophthalmology at Georgetown University Medical School. "But at the same time, the eyes suffer dramatically from ultraviolet exposure. UV exposure is a public health problem, and, as an ophthalmologist, I see the continuous, serious problems that are caused by UV."

Both short- and long-term exposure to UV rays can cause vision problems and eye damage, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Air and Radiation.

People exposed to bright sunlight for even short periods can develop a "sunburn of the eye" in the form of either photokeratitis or photoconjunctivitis.

Photokeratitis is an inflammation of the cornea, the transparent front part of the eye that covers the iris, pupil and lens, according to the World Health Organization. "The sun can cause superficial cells on the front of the cornea to become damaged and die off," said Dr. Lee Duffner, an ophthalmologist in Hollywood, Fla. Photoconjunctivitis is a similar inflammation that affects the conjunctiva, the membrane lining the inside of the eyelids and the eye socket. Both conditions can be very painful, but people tend to recover quickly from them with no long-term damage to their vision.

Long-term UV exposure can do cumulative eye damage over time, causing more insidious and dangerous threats to a person's vision, including:

• Pterygium. An abnormal growth of the conjunctiva caused by sun damage that can become so large it grows over and obstructs the cornea, partially blocking vision. Surgery may be required to restore vision. "The bad ones have a tendency to come back, even after they're removed surgically," Duffner said. "They're a real nuisance."
• Cataracts. These involve clouding of the eye's lens. Ultraviolet rays are believed to play a part in the process.
• Macular degeneration. UV rays that penetrate deep into the eyeball are believed to do damage to the retina, the sheet of nerves along the back wall of the eye that perceive light. The macula, at the center of the retina, is responsible for perception of fine details and a person's central field of vision. "Chesapeake Bay sailors who wear sunglasses and a hat have a much lower incidence of cataracts and macular degeneration than those who don't," Martinez said, citing research.
• Cancer. People can develop skin cancer of the eyes as a result of UV damage, according to the WHO. The eye tends to develop melanoma, while the eyelids usually are inflicted with basal cell carcinoma. In both cases, surgery may be necessary.

Of course, such damage doesn't occur just in the summer, or even just when you're standing in sunshine. Bright reflected sunlight from sidewalks, aluminum, snow and other surfaces can cause UV damage just as easily as direct sunlight. In fact, one of the more well-known forms of photokeratitis is snow blindness, which occurs when skiers and climbers are exposed to high levels of UV radiation from light reflected off snow.

So how to protect yourself? Sunglasses. It's that simple, the experts say. A wide-brimmed hat wouldn't hurt, but sunglasses are key.

The sunglasses should be rated to absorb 99 to 100 percent of both UV-A and UV-B radiation. Read the labels. And keep in mind that how much you pay may not guarantee protection.

"It's not really price-related," Duffner said. "I've seen very expensive sunglasses that are not good ultraviolet absorbers, and I've seen cheap sunglasses that were great ultraviolet absorbers."

Also, toss fashion sense out the window, the eye experts say. Small, stylish sunglasses will allow UV radiation to reach the eyes. "If possible, buy wrap-around sunglasses," Duffner said. "With a standard pair of glasses, a fair amount of sunlight still strikes the eye from the side."

The worst forms of UV-related eye disease come from accumulated damage, making it important to start protecting kids' eyes so they will have a better chance of maintaining their vision in their old age.

The bulk of exposure occurs in the first 18 years of life," Martinez said. "The more sun damage you have, the more sensitive you are to later exposure. The trick is to try to get kids to wear sunglasses. It's difficult, but you must try."

More information

Prevent Blindness American has more on protecting eyes from the sun  .

For more on UV damage to the eyes  , read one woman's story.

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 18 (HealthDay News) -- Stress caused by social situations, such as giving a speech or going to a job interview, can affect some people's immune system in ways that harm their health, researchers have found.

The study included 124 volunteers who were purposely put into awkward social situations. Those who exhibited greater neural sensitivity to social rejection also had greater increases in inflammatory activity when exposed to social stress.

"It turns out there are important differences in how people interpret and respond to social situations," lead author George Slavich, a postdoctoral fellow at the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a UCLA news release.

"For example," he explained, "we sometimes see giving a speech in front of an audience as a welcomed challenge; other times, it's threatening and distressing. In this study, we sought to examine the neural bases for these differences in response and to understand how these differences relate to biological processes that can affect human health and well-being."

The findings provide "further evidence of how closely our mind and body are connected. We have known for a long time that social stress can 'get under the skin' to increase risk for disease, but it's been unclear exactly how these effects occur. To our knowledge, this study is the first to identify the neurocognitive pathways that might be involved in inflammatory responses to acute social stress," Slavich said.

Increases in inflammatory activity are part of the immune system's natural response to potentially harmful situations, but "frequent or chronic activation of the system may increase the risk for a variety of disorders, including asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease and even depression," Slavich added.

The study was released online Aug. 2 in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

More information

The American Psychological Association outlines the different types of stress  .