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If researchers and academics post their opinions on social media, they're looking for a response. The option of not posting their opinions is available to them every second of every day. All users have a responsibility to report and call out hate speech and threats of harm, but other than...

PS: If you're able to do some work, @Shadrach Loom, make sure you stress the impact of having to do unnecessary walking on your capacity to work. Ditto if you have caring responsibilities.

It's usually questions about what your mobility is like: whether or not you can stand, how far you can walk, etc. The thing with ME is to stress the consequences of standing and walking, as well as the distance you can actually cover. For instance, some patients might be able to walk half a...

Indeed, but it doesn't even need to involve addressing the symptoms. Modify the self-report, full stop. The BPS method involves persuading patients to change their attitude to—in other words, lie about—their symptoms. There is no actual treatment.

I had it for about eight months once. It was on-and-off, starting with six weeks of having to stay in bed and needing a commode next to the bed because I couldn't get to the toilet, then calming down a bit, then fluctuating between mild and hideous. Then I got it again less than a year later...

That's a really interesting read—hope he's able to follow it up.

If your balance is completely off too, it could be labyrinthitis. It's often caused by a virus, and it can hang around for an absurdly long time. It's different to positional vertigo, as it involves more falling over, can be triggered by any movement (or none at all), and often worsens with air...

I refer m'lud to Brian Hughes's excellent exposition of eminence-based medicine: https://thesciencebit.net/2018/11/03/the-triumph-of-eminence-based-medicine/ :grumpy:

The name change is much less inclusive of the patient perspective, isn't it? At least the old version allowed for collaboration between clinicians and patients, even if that never actually happened in practice. The clinicians might argue that they need a professional domain, but ME is a very...

I think there's a similar rule that any newspaper headline containing the word 'baffled' signifies that the doctors / archaeologists / physicists / etc are not and have never been baffled about any aspect of the story.

Or just adopt a loud, hacking cough...

I'm not sure whether many doctors or researchers have been willing to say this, have they? I can't remember seeing it anywhere (but then I have got a memory like a sieve). It's long been thought to be true, of course, especially among patients who experienced a long-term worsening after...

Yes, definitely. Not so much with friends, but I seem to be one of the very few wearing a mask in shops or at the leisure centre (the staff no longer wear them at all). I took some stuff to the food bank yesterday and everybody was fully masked up, but that's the first place I've seen it for...

I've had my first experience of next-day weakness today, after doing hours of spring cleaning yesterday. It wasn't as strenuous as activities like digging the garden or swimming, but cleaning the oven and all the cupboards inside and out involved a lot of working on my knees and then having to...

No, I don't think I have any particular insurance cover. I did used to go shopping in my chair when I was working, but I never damaged or crashed into anything. I collided with a couple of people in town, but only because they literally ran into me! If I had to do something more hazardous like...

My late mum had something like this at the caravan—we had to leave her scooter there all winter, minus its battery pack, as neither of us had an accessible vehicle at the time to bring it home: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303951674045 Her shed was coloured, so it looked a bit more attractive...

I use this company: https://www.eta.co.uk/mobility-scooter-insurance/ My chairs are actually insured for replacement on my house contents policy, as ETA's offer wouldn't cover the £7.5k replacement value of one of them. I just have their rescue policy in case I get stranded somewhere. I've...

I tend to use the word capacity in formal contexts, as it seems to help with the problem that it's not describing something quite as straightforward as energy, power, or endurance. Whatever term we use needs to allow for the fact that it can mean different things in different bodies, at...

I do hope they explain that someone noticed they were trying to assemble a squirrel, using the instruction manual for a lobster.

I'm in the early stages of questioning whether ME is my only, or main, diagnosis. A couple of weeks ago I started potassium supplements (long story). They relieve almost all my muscle pain and a lot of my fatigue, and I no longer go all weak and staggery an hour or two after swimming or eating...