For people with ME/CFS, and the people who love them
You're not imagining it. And you're not alone.
ME/CFS is a real, physical illness. This site brings together what's known, what helps, and the research and trials happening around the world right now. Everything is written plainly and is honest about how strong the evidence is.
Where would you like to start?
What ME/CFS is, the symptoms, and why "just rest more" or "push through" doesn't work.
Start here → I want to feel less awfulPacing, the most widely shared advice, plus sleep, dizziness and tracking.
Living with ME/CFS → I want to join a trialStudies recruiting now in Australia and around the world, with who to contact.
Find a trial → I'm a carer or familyHow to actually help, and the well-meant things that make it worse.
For family & carers →What is ME/CFS?
Myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a long-term illness that affects the body's energy production, immune system and nervous system. It is not "being tired", and it is not psychological.
Its defining feature is post-exertional malaise (PEM). When someone does more than their body can handle that day, they crash, often a day or two later, and it can last days, weeks or longer. Exertion includes thinking, talking and emotional stress, not just exercise.
Routine blood tests usually come back normal, which is why so many people have been dismissed. Research in the last few years has found measurable differences in the brain, blood flow, muscles, immune cells and genes.
The single most important message
Stay inside your energy limits. Rest is treatment, not laziness.
Pushing past your limits is the most reliable way to get worse. Rigid graded exercise programmes, once standard advice, are no longer recommended: the evidence they help is weak, and many patients report being made worse. Set your activity for your bad days, not your good ones.
The picture in numbers
Figures from Australia's NHMRC, the US Institute of Medicine's 2015 report and a 2020 meta-analysis of prevalence studies. See How it affects people.
Research, right now
2026 has been a year of hard lessons and real leads. Every randomised trial presented for the first time at the Berlin conference in May missed its main goal. But in several of those trials, some patients clearly responded. Researchers are now picking patients by biomarker, so the right treatment can be tested on the right people.
- Brain waste clearance: Griffith University showed for the first time that ME/CFS impairs the brain's overnight "clean-up" system, which is linked to brain fog.
- Genes: DecodeME found eight genetic signals, mainly in the immune and nervous systems.
- Promising leads: low-dose rapamycin, bezisterim in PEM-heavy patients, and B-cell and plasma-cell therapies in autoimmune subgroups.
Trials recruiting now
Filter by country and type. Every listing includes who to contact.
Explore everything
Understand
What ME/CFS is, what causes it and what it does to the body
Living with it
Pacing, standing up, sleep, tracking and help for families
Treatment
Tests to ask for, supplements, medications and what to avoid
Research
Trials you can join, conferences and the latest results
Support
Where to get care, words explained and our sources
How to read this site
ME/CFS attracts a lot of hope, and a lot of hype. So that you can judge each claim for yourself, we label it with the kind of evidence behind it:
- RCT Randomised, placebo-controlled trial. The strongest kind.
- Controlled Has a comparison group, but isn't fully randomised or blinded.
- Open-label No placebo group. Everyone knows what they're getting.
- Observational Watches patients without assigning a treatment.
- Lab study Cells in a dish. Not proof that it helps people.
- Adjacent field Evidence from Long COVID, POTS or fibromyalgia, not ME/CFS directly.
- Hypothesis A proposed idea that hasn't been tested yet.
Why this matters: in fatigue illnesses, 20–40% of people (sometimes more) feel better on a sugar pill. A treatment "helping 80% of people" in a study with no placebo group can mean very little.