Search results

This is not talked about enough. I used to carry money so I could go and have a cup of tea till I could work out how to get home. I couldn't get dressed because I could not remember how. At least, I did not forget as such, it was like a word on the tip of your tongue; it was there but just out...

Way back in the 90s when Wessely and mates shoved aside the biomedical researchers and doctors while renaming ME and equating it with fatigue I naively believed that it could all be sorted once we had evidence for a biomedical cause. It became apparent that there was never going to be enough...

ME is a very difficult disease to sort into types. It is not linear mild to moderate to severe in the way of other diseases or discrete episodes. It is always present with mild ME being better distinguished from severe ME by how close together the severe episodes are. There may be a variation in...

The current concept of FND has no basis in reality. Stone admires the 19th century neurologists and psychologists who gave us hysteria which he believes he has put on a sound, modern footing. The research papers are all confirmatory and full of "maybe" perhaps" "possibly" and other such words...

There were many epidemics documented round the world, often named after the place like Akeyuri disease. There was a conference and it was decided to call it Benign (because it was not lethal, not because it was mild) Myalgic Encephalomyelitis which had been used in the UK. When there was an...

I get annoyed when researchers and others start by referencing that there is a high level of psychological problems in ME. The research which shows that was very dubious and that was stated at the time. There is the problem with the questionnaires. In the 90s, a group of patients showed that...

Only the very severe are consistently bed ridden and the majority of people with ME are not that deconditioned. I was very fit for the first twenty odd years I was ill. As long as I was able to rest ans break tasks into small pieces I managed all my own housework, shopping and child care. When...

This does not surprise me. On social media there are no clues to someone's race, gender or even where in the world they come from unless they choose to give that information but there is no difference in their disease. Their experiences with medical authorities is another story though.

The latest onslaught of FND began with a paper by Michael Sharpe and Jon Stone in 2008 which was full of caveats on diagnosing it. Since then FND has taken over more and more of medicine until now they claim a "functional overlay" to many (all!) diseases with clear diagnostic tests. Stone is...

There is another significant factor that is easy to overlook. I have a medical book from the late thirties and it has large sections on convalescence and good nursing as infections are seen as the most important part of disease. Once there were antibiotics and vaccines it looked as if...

Variability over hours, days, weeks and so on was one of the cardinal symptoms of ME alongside exercise intolerance. It helped distinguish ME from other diseases.

The increase in heart rate when you have done too much is because your heart is trying to overcome the fact you have used up your aerobic respiration output and are now relying on emergency anaerobic respiration for more ATP. In a healthy person this will be because of running for a bus or...

Unrefreshing sleep is a good example to use. I can vaguely remember, almost fifty years ago, feeling annoyed when the alarm went but I would not describe myself as having unrefreshing sleep since then. I have disturbed sleep, I wake up feeling rotten some mornings, I have vivid, coloured dreams...

I have read articles about this on the Workwell website which might explain this better. There are various ways to work out a rough approximation of your anaerobic threshold if you are using a heart rate monitor. The goal is to keep your HR under your threshold rate especially for prolonged...

Since the CODES trial showed there were no reductions in number of seizures after treatment and a psychogenic diagnosis will make getting care and benefits much more difficult, I fail to see any advantage to being diagnosed with this.

ME's PESE is often delayed by 3 days. I was often bedridden 3 days after doing something I had thought was within my capabilities and feeling fine till then. Yet I would not be diagnosed as having ME by this questionnaire. Why does Jason miss the mark about ME so often? Is he still caught up in...

Further reading has shown that some pharmacists in Scotland and Wales have already trained to prescribe common drugs including antibiotics. The scheme is apparently working well as pharmacists are very aware of the problems of overprescribing and antibiotic resistance. In fact, someone said that...

I am sorry, but every time I read the title of this paper I get the giggles. "Fatigue as the unconscious refusal of the demands of late capitalism" Did no one get fatigued during early or middle capitalism? What is capitalism demanding of me? Is my unconscious holding a banner and chanting? No...

They might have changed it now but that phrase was thanks to our BPS overlords. The way I would describe it is that we do not have broken structures but the power to make them work is not there. Nowadays, people can understand having a perfectly good phone with a broken battery. I did not get...

Vaccines prime the immune system so that when it comes in contact with the virus it can begin fighting it much sooner. Things like diptheria were deadly because the infection killed you before the immune system got its act together. That's it. if your immune system acts faster covid is less...