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Excellent news! Hopefully there'll be more once it's being recruited through GPs, as some people aren't big users of social media, some may hesitate until they see that the study is being promoted via trusted NHS practitioners, and some may prefer to receive the information in their own...

No, at the same time. They're different drugs – paracetamol doesn't have the side-effects of potentially raising the risk of bleeding, gastric irritation, and aggravation of asthma. ETA: Of course, it's always best to check with your doctor first, and if it's a bit of an emergency (such as...

And if he really knew anything about ME – let alone grammatical logic – he'd understand that increasing a baseline is a contradiction in terms. People can't improve their fitness to any significant degree. It's literally part of the definition of ME.

When I was going through a phase of almost constant pain from frequent hip subluxations, my GP suggested I take paracetamol and ibuprofen together. It was a mixed type of pain, and the mix of different meds did help quite a bit. I don't know whether it might be indicated for your pain type...

I hope you'll consider anonymously tweeting some of your spectacular turns of phrase in the direction of Sir Simon Himself, @rvallee – if nothing else, it would really cheer up some of the ME folk who're reading his recantations open mouthed and incoherent! :laugh:

My thoughts exactly. Only with a different word at the end of the sentence.

Dr Pope's response is worrying, as we can't know whether or not Long Covid shares features with ME until the underlying processes have been elucidated. Doctors developing firm opinions without any solid evidence is the last thing patients need.

In the sense that I can't achieve clarity and direction in my thinking and writing, then definitely yes. It's due to fatigue. I was never good at brevity, but the more fatigued I am, the longer the paragraphs get. I often have to write a 500-word post in reply to something on here; then fathom...

It would certainly be useful to study responses to extracellular ATP in detail, if it's possible to do so. It sounds like a really interesting area of research – at least to those of us who don't know enough to understand it!

They can be, but usually aren't – so don't worry too much. They will remove them if they're causing problems. I've had large ones removed from my wrists, as there's a lot of important anatomy there; had they got too big, they could not only have interfered with movement, but also been...

Just seen that BBC File on 4 has a programme tonight at 8pm called The Long Road to Recovery. (I don't know whether it's based on the recent webinar with the same title.) It'll be available on BBC Sounds after broadcast.

The difficulty is going to be that some of the sequelae are difficult to treat, and that – for the specific symptoms that clearly indicate an ME response to the virus – we already know the best treatment. Learn how not to make it worse, and understand that most doctors' advice is likely to be...

Sleep initiation typically takes between two and five hours. I don't know what Z drugs are either, but I never take sleep meds anyway. The drugs I do need for sleep are painkillers. 80% of my pain occurs when lying down, and it's one of the reasons I have difficulty with sleep initiation (the...

Root canals are done because the pulp inside the tooth is infected, usually with bacteria. They're best done sooner rather than later, as it gives the best chance of saving the tooth and it's easier to get rid of the infection. I've had numerous ones. I think they're actually less unpleasant...

Interesting, we do have different problems with hips and shoulders. Hips sublux, in my case so often that I had a physio train up friends to shove them back in. They would never self-right, and if I left them 'out' I'd get sciatica because the muscles went into spasm. We seem to sublux less...

From the experience of my own family, I also wonder if the coincidence of two heritable tendencies can present as 'EDS'. In a generally hypermobile female group, where only a minority have problems with repeated subluxations from normal movements, it's noticeable that the joints involved are...

Healthcare systems built on profit-before-patients, and self-publicists?

Looks as if it'll start at 6 pm British Summer Time.

Should Science for ME also make a public position statement on this issue? If we agree that we are worried about recent developments (and I'm not assuming that everyone does agree, of course), then there might be an argument for it – especially as it's likely there will be a cohort of new...

I agree. These are extremely worrying developments. As for casting us as fruitcakes – well, we're used to that, and the number of doctors suffering from 'long' Covid has shifted the debate anyway (at least for now). This is what I actually began my post to say. 'Life-changing surgery' has an...