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Epidemic neurasthenia was used in the US. In the UK the "benign" part was added because it did not lead to death and paralysis the way that polio did. It is an example of the way medicine uses words to mean something specific when the term means something else to the public. Also things change...

One of the problems we have with BPSers is that they are "lumpers" as opposed to "splitters". With their MUS and FND they include as many diseases as they can get away with and claim is as a single pathology. I firmly believe that you can only understand pathologies if you look for differences...

Autism is defined as deficits in social interaction, social communication and social imagination ME is a disease where there is an abnormal reaction to exercise which leads to PEM and a prolonged recovery. Both share symptoms, especially overload, but in the same way that sharing fatigue with...

When they tried to get the CCC accepted in Scotland it didn't happen because GPs and neurologists would not accept it. Was it a coincidence that GPs were represented by her and neurologists by MS? And nobody mentioned any conflict of interest.

There now exists plenty of evidence that something is going wrong with exertion in ME even if it has not been pinned down.

I have been thinking about what I said on another thread, that finding a cure or a treatment would lead to more activity. That is the tragedy of the way we have been treated. If dear old Simon had engaged with a patient (even one!) he would have known that we all want to be up and doing. He...

Maybe they will show that death is just a belief, a belief that you have died.

The value of these papers is that they show the BPS ideas are based on sand in the same way that a close look at Freud shows the shaky foundations of psychoanalysis. It is important to step back and see if we are just a blinkered group who reinforce each other's beliefs but things like this...

The bitter irony is that a treatment which cured or just managed ME would lead to more activity as a direct effect. We are all desperate to do more; it is feeling ill and PEM which stops us, take that away and we could shower, shop, cook, walk the 30 minutes a day they want of us.

I had physio for my shoulder recently and he was very interested in my ME and encouraged me to only do the movements he recommended within the bounds of my ME. I was pleasantly surprised.

Aberdeen has a higher than average background radiation because many of the buildings are built of granite. I have never heard that there has been a higher rate of CFS there.

All this "outsourcing" is worrying - and maybe eyeopening. In short the BPS people have devised a vague treatment based on very little observation, never mind evidence which consists of telling the patient to increase exercise. It only works if it is done by an accredited therapist and if it...

They seem to be using CFS as the symptom chronic fatigue and chronic pain where others have spoken about fibromyalgia. They have downgraded diseases into symptoms. ME is a disease which has fatigue as part of its presentation in the same way as many other neurological diseases. When CFS was...

Very early on in the CFS/BPS debacle (before I had internet) an American patient who had been a researcher (well educated anyway) looked at the various questionnaires used. She found that those using fatigue, headaches, and things like that gave very high scores of depression in people with CFS...

3 "mays" in one sentence. I may be abducted by aliens then they may give me the secret of nuclear fusion and then I may save the planet. Equally true statements.

Yes, the patients made a dramatic improvement but then gradually stopped responding. That matches a few things I have read about. When I first took metformin for diabetes I was better than I had been for 20 years but then back to where I was. very interesting.

Sarah94 and Simbindi it must be awful to have ME as well as autism. I wish ME was distinguished from chronic fatigue, things would be so much easier When we were 21 my husband took bad flu but was forced back to work after a few days. He developed a post viral chronic fatigue which would...

The narratives of BPS are easily understood and use a sort of shorthand by feeding into prejudices. That is why they are so easily accepted. Too lazy to work yet wanting handouts by trying to make out that their fatigue is an illness yet I am expected to give them some of the money I earned by...

Recently, I came across the idea of autism fatigue on the autism websites. It makes complete sense as the idea is that dealing with overwhelming input and struggling to deal with the neurotypical world takes so much effort it leads to exhaustion. This is not a controversial idea. The same...

Right, misread that, oops.