One thing that I have found very helpful is Ambien. My doctor put me on it in June and now I generally sleep 8-9 hours a night and seldom need a daytime nap. I do need to lie down for half an hour, but I don’t need to nap. Now I actually have some energy from when I wake up in the morning until lunch time. I don’t experience any side effects from the Ambien, not one, much less any of those horror stories you hear about. But the increased sleep it has not helped me increase the amount of exercise I do or the number of hours I work. I usually go to bed early and read until I am ready to sleep.

Just responded to your other comment on another post http://chronicallyme.wordpress.com/2007/07/28/my-big-list-of-cfs-symptoms/#comment-699

Following on from that and your question here …

I am reminded about theories that fatigue and muscle problems are caused by problems with mitochondria. The theory (research?) says that Q10 and L-Carnitine help with this. As does D-Ribose.

Dr Myhill says that this malfunction in the cells aso causes problems with the heart (and brain and gastric problems) which made me think maybe it might be something of interest to you.

I take the plain L-Carnitine 500mg daily but I wonder if I should double that dose sometimes as I haven’t seen a dramatic effect. I’ve not known the difference with acetyle-l-carnitine so not tried that one. Interesting it has a different effect for you.

I took 200mg of Q10 for 4 months but stopped a couple of weeks ago. Mainly a budget consideration! Started kind of following treatment plan of Dr Jacob Teitelbaum which recommended 200mg of Q10 for 4-9 months and trying to see if I still need to take it or not. Tricky to know.

Anyway you might find some interesting reading about mitochondria function.

Try Dr Myhill for a start (dig around and there’s more there) http://drmyhill.co.uk/article.cfm?id=429 and I’m pretty sure I have seen a lot of articles on http://www.immunesupport.com

Also try looking at Dr Marshall and Dr Byron Hyde maybe.