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Interesting to read this in conjunction with the other thread about how doctors need more self-compassion because it's so stressful for them having to deal with patients who have unexplained symptoms.

but ?

Great idea, to help patients understand how they can train their nervous system through the wonders of neuroplasticity to affect how the balls in the lotto machines will fall - the healing power of mind-balls interaction.

I feel quite livid that money is being spent on this let's-all-pretend-we're-doing-science!! stuff while in the real world real people are having their lives ruined by a disease that has absolutely and precisely nothing to do with one's willingness to press or not press a damn button.

So there's a big overlap, with the lower bound only 0.1 of a point apart and the upper bound 0.8 of a point apart, and most participants in both groups falling in the shared area. But it's being sold as a group difference that allows researchers to hypothesize about the behavioural preferences...

Or perhaps it suggests that people who are ill may have particular pressures influencing their choices in lab-based tasks that have no relevance to their real-world activities, compared to how healthy people might approach the same task under the experimenter's eye. (edited to add: I would be...

i.e. the LC patients' interoception was accurate, which will be annoying for those at the NIH who want LC to be an 'interoceptive disorder'.

It might be an accessible income stream for some people who haven't actually recovered to the point where they could go back to their previous jobs.

Also the idea that the patient will feel better and recover if you confidently "reassure" them by telling them any old explanation for their symptoms, whereas telling them the non-reassuring truth that you don't know the cause will scare them and make them stay ill.

Stuart Murdoch on Craig Charles' show on 6 Music this afternoon. If you find the show on BBC Sounds, the interview starts about an hour in. Early on in the interview they talk about him running a marathon at 18 and running 10K road races, until he 'got chronic fatigue [sic]... maybe I burnt...

One of those resources which seems as if whoever wrote it didn't bother to read what they were writing. Don't focus too much on your symptoms - but also you should complete daily and weekly planners minutely analysing your activities, symptoms, "feelings, behaviours and beliefs". Be optimistic...

Is there much discussion of how the illness could develop in someone who didn't have any of the "predisposing" factors? (Obviously it's moot in BPS practice, because the factors are so broad and common that anybody who ever becomes ill can have at least one assigned to their case history.)

This, and perhaps to address the elephant in the consulting room by including some information for HCPs who still take the psychological view of ME (because that's what they were taught years ago and they've never had occasion to update their knowledge). In as few bullet points as possible: how...

Advice on applying for disability benefits, blue badge, work accommodations etc. How to convey the extent of your limitations with a fluctuating condition in language that a benefits assessor or HR person will understand.

Perhaps because of the unspoken feeling that if a disease isn't real, it's unimportant if the research into it isn't real either - no one's going to make a big name for themselves by pointing out that it's pretend science when the people pretending to do the science already know it's pretend and...

A lot of good stuff in this paper, I think. Especially this paragraph: and I like that they seem to be aware that strategies to counteract cognitive overexertion through pacing, planning, prioritising etc aren't risk-free because they can themselves cause cognitive overexertion.

The Irish Times has a plug for the Perrin technique today. Paywalled, archive link here (hope it works)...

The funny thing is, out of context, "fatigue may arise from a mismatch between what someone thinks they can achieve and what their bodies perform” sounds like it means "people with ME think they can do more than their bodies are actually capable of performing and that's why they're always so tired."

The utter dishonesty of giving ill and exhausted people questionnaires with items like 'I keep wondering why I can't concentrate' and 'I keep thinking that I won't be able to do my job if I can't snap out of this' and then declaring that their answers reflect psychological maladaptations rather...

A cynical person might suspect that this study's primary objective was to provide something to prop up a grant application.