Even if it isn't the lifestyle of stopping at a donut/coffee shop every morning and using public restrooms all day and sitting in a car all day to get out and walk 20 YARDS (hardly ever 20 feet), too much coffee and all that....
....even if it isn't the physically bad part of that lifestyle, the pioneer who walks in service all day and eats right and doesn't drink much besides water will still get this "illness" you speak of.
I remember one who said she had "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome." She read it in the Awake and she decided she had it.
Gathering information not from Awake could be a real eye-opener to people like her. She probably really has CFS, but not because it is a feeling of exhaustion that the other JW's cannot say that she has. CFS is persistent fatigue unrelated to exertion and not substantially relieved by rest. Some common symptoms are cognitive difficulties, severe mental and physical exhaustion. Pioneers have to engage their cognitive skills all day if they actually speak to people. They have to have their cognitive dissonance in high gear. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance)They are defending a ridiculous doctrine and dismissing all their personal independent thoughts that conflict with it all the time. Also, I am sure that the imminence of the last seconds of the last days is wearing on them, wondering when it will finally arrive.
Most pioneers are "sisters" so they have to accept that they are secondary members to the low hour brothers and they have to wear napkins on their heads when the "brothers" don't show up at field circus meetups, further fueling their exhaustion with defending the beliefs.
