Living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Take care of your body.
Sam keeps your symptoms, resting heart rate, HRV and sleep in one place. You take the history to your next appointment.
Step by step: what ME/CFS is, what happens after exertion and how it shows up day to day.
ME/CFS
ME/CFS is a serious, long-term illness that affects many body systems. Everyday activity drops well below what was possible before, with fatigue that rest does little to relieve.
A human figure, seen from the front at an angle. The view moves slowly towards the upper body. Nothing is highlighted.
After exertion
The hallmark is post-exertional malaise: after physical, mental or emotional effort, symptoms get worse. The worsening typically comes 12 to 48 hours later and can last days or even weeks. Thinking and concentration are often affected.
Head / Whole body
The whole figure, seen from the front. A faint violet tint covers the whole body and slowly swells and fades; a stronger violet area sits on the head. Nothing flashes.
Day to day
Symptoms can change unpredictably over a day, a week or longer. Sleep is often unrefreshing, and standing or sitting upright can bring on symptoms such as dizziness that ease when lying down. The cause is not yet known.
Worth discussing with your doctor.
The view pulls back a little and turns slightly. The faint violet tint over the whole body keeps slowly swelling and fading, and the stronger area on the head stays.
Own simplified illustration based on the sources above.
The picture shows a reference body without organs. The violet area on the head stands for thinking and concentration; the faint violet tint over the whole body stands for symptoms that affect many body systems and everyday activity. Neither shows a cause or a measurement. The tint slowly swells and fades because symptoms fluctuate; the tempo is an example, not a measured rhythm. Unrefreshing sleep and symptoms when upright are described in the text, not painted. Adult male reference model; figure and timeline are not to scale.
What Sam keeps for you
For people living with ME/CFS who want a record for appointments with their doctor. Sam is not a medical device. It keeps what you and your wearable already produce and puts it in one place.
Your Apple Watch, Oura, Whoop or Garmin already records them, and you add what you log. Sam reads them from Apple Health and shows you how they shift against your personal baseline.
Check in on most days, and once a month it becomes a PDF for your appointment.
Fatigue, and how you feel in the days after effort, are outside what a smartwatch can record. Sam keeps your own account.
Sam reads the data your wearable already writes to Apple Health and compares it to your personal baseline - understandable, not a wall of numbers.
Activity, sleep and resting heart rate from Apple Health sit next to your own average. For a pacing conversation, you have your weeks at hand.
Ask Sam: "What's changed this week?" You get plain sentences instead of graphs.
The free monthly report puts your weeks into a PDF, for doctor's appointments, applications or your own memory.
Sam is a wellness companion, not a medical device. The app does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any illness and does not replace medical advice. Consult a qualified healthcare professional for medical decisions.
Sam shows your values next to your entries. What they mean is something to talk through with your doctor.
You ask a question, Sam answers with your own numbers. For example:
The monthly report sums up your weeks - for appointments, applications, or simply your own record.
Monthly Report - June
Your Health Overview
Sleep
Health status
Example values. Your report is based on your own data.
Further reading: what wearable data can show about everyday life with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) - and where its limits are.
ME/CFS and Long COVID overlap significantly but are separate diagnoses. Understand what distinguishes them, why ME/CFS predates COVID-19 by decades, and how post-exertional crashes affect your day-to-day.
A minimal setup guide for Apple Watch (or any wearable) when you have ME/CFS. What data matters, how to configure it with minimal effort, and how to prepare a report for your next specialist appointment.
Roughly 90 percent of people with ME/CFS in Germany remain undiagnosed. Learn what the Canadian Consensus Criteria actually require for diagnosis, and how wearable trends can support the conversation with your doctor.
Most people with ME/CFS have trouble with circulation when they stand up. Understand orthostatic intolerance, how to perform a simple standing heart rate test, and what wearables can actually tell you.
Almost none. Sam reads your Apple Health data automatically. Once a week it asks how your past seven days went, and on some days how you feel today. Anything else you log is up to you.
Sam is a symptom diary and does not replace medical care. You log your symptom days and crashes yourself, and Sam attaches the resting heart rate, HRV, sleep and activity it already reads from Apple Health so each entry carries the days around it. What those patterns mean, and every clinical decision, stays between you and your care team.
Research on this is still ongoing, and they are not a proven tool for planning activity. Sam records resting heart rate and HRV against your own baseline, next to the symptoms you log. How much weight they get in your pacing is for you and your care team to decide.
No. An Apple Watch can't detect or diagnose ME/CFS - that requires a structured medical evaluation against clinical criteria, such as the Canadian Consensus Criteria. Sam records resting heart rate, HRV and sleep from Apple Health against your own baseline, as a starting point for a conversation with your doctor.
No. Post-exertional malaise (PEM), often called a 'crash', cannot be reliably foreseen by any app. Sam records resting heart rate, HRV and activity against your baseline; whether and when exertion leads to a crash is something you learn from your own experience.
Yes. You log a crash in the symptom diary as a sick or 'a bit off' day with its symptoms. Next to it Sam shows resting heart rate, HRV, sleep and activity from Apple Health, and the monthly report counts your symptom and sick days for your doctor's appointment.
Download Sam for free, connect Apple Health, and see what your data says about everyday life with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) - compared to your own baseline.
Sam is a wellness companion, not a medical device. Sam does not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any illness and does not replace medical advice. For health questions or concerns, always consult a qualified medical professional.