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Horrible.

These treatments were recommended because a group of British psychiatrists promoted them and produced research that appeared to confirm their efficacy. This started in 1989, well before the Fukuda criteria were created.

I looked at one of the questionnaires they used, the SCL-90-R which gives scores in categories such as "somatisation", "anxiety", "obsessive-compulsive" and so on. If you report symptoms such as headache, weakness, restlessness, dizziness, decreased sexual desire, chest pain, etc this counts...

This seems relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

Re. the Wessely quote above. Typical for the BPS people, they do not understand human behaviour: the way patients behave is simply a reaction to the circumstances, which are unusual and therefore patient behaviour will also be unusual. Other illnesses don't meet such neglect and condescending...

Jason did poor work criticizing the IOM criteria. He used vague definitions of PEM and then finds that lots of other illnesses have PEM too. I am not sure asking patients about fatigue after exercise or activities tells us much about PEM. That said, we don't have a good questionnaire to...

At first I believed I was ill, but then was told it was a personality problem, and so I tried to believe that instead (I was just an innocent child), and it only made me feel bad about myself and made me sicker as I continuously tried to resume the old activity levels. I fervently believed I...

Science journals are really good at saying all the right things, but not nearly as good at actually implementing them.

It clearly illustrates that students are taught a logical fallacy: "If the problem cannot be identified, it means that it's some variant of psychogenic illness." This is the polite version of what I wanted to say. The original version included the term mass delusion.

Speaking of prejudices. Their illness model is simply a rephrasing of the usual prejudices patients face: laziness becomes deconditioning, and hypochondria becomes unhelpful illness beliefs.

I'm a bit disappointed that this thread has not yet yielded any grand theories on how all these skin problems tie into ME. :D I'm joking. Skin problems are fairly common aren't they?

Googling for that led me to this image on Wikipedia which is pretty close. I just didn't have a many blisters, and they were not raised much if at all. So seen from the side, the blisters in the picture look different, but seen from top they look identical.

@TiredSam I had the exact same thing for years. Hardened flat vesicles just under the skin, filled with liquid. Not painful. Mainly on fingers and a few on the palm of the hand as well. Mine were less dark though.

A good chunk of these chronic preventable diseases is due to economic inequality. People would eat healthier, do more sports if they had the time and money and lived not too far from nature. Further research is not particularly needed. Just a willingness to address inequality.

The vagueness of the plan suggests that the concrete reality of it will be upsetting.

This study concludes that gluten content in wheat doesn't seem to have increased. Can an Increase in Celiac Disease Be Attributed to an Increase in the Gluten Content of Wheat as a Consequence of Wheat Breeding? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3573730/

It's another anomaly that doesn't pass the common sense test. Standard medical care of for ME/CFS is useless, and such marked regression to the mean seems unlikely and is inconsistent with other measurements, yet 40% of were supposedly PEM free (it was no PEM at all, right?).

Do you know how they assessed severity of PEM? What questions were asked, how was PEM defined?

Self reported PEM decreased more in the CBT and GET arms, as assessed by questionnaire. This doesn't show that CBT/GET reduce PEM because of the subjective unblinded trial design. I am also curious how they defined PEM.

I think the recovery claims are for depression and/or anxiety only.