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:D I'm fine with people spending their money on whatever treatments they like, so long as they don't delay effective medical treatment or harm themselves and end up costing the public system a whole lot more money, and make their family poor and sad. I'm not so keen on treatments with no...

Well, we don't know that from the abstract. Presumably these young people were shown some diagram wth circles, a few long words such as Central Nervous system sensitisation were wafted around and the young people were told to stop focusing on their symptoms, maybe take up a new hobby or...

Patients were more interested in the content than the lay people, even though the developers "explicitly stated that reading the content thoroughly was not necessary during the usability testing". It sounds as though some of the medical terms had speech marks put around them. It's hard to...

The sample: They aimed to get 12 patients who experience PPS but for whom the severity is not bad enough to qualify them for a diagnosis of persistent physical symptom disorder: They got 4 patients - Covid and all that, but it's still surprisingly low from 6 GPs given that people with...

Ugh. I was reviewing Precision Medicine lately - it is a nebulous term that can cover all sorts of things, like genetic screening, and also use of technology. It seems that useful medical innovations don't bother using the Precision Medicine branding, but the use of technology to create...

Yes, the fact that there is hardly any variation in the fibromyalgia cohort (everyone in the cohort has values for the eleven miRNAs that are close to zero) makes it very likely that that is an artefact of sampling error (treatment or storage). I'd be willing to bet on it. If that's right...

The way it is currently formulated, it is a bit of a mixture I think, of material from NICE and other material. Which could be fine if the other material works to explain a concept in line with the NICE intent. But it's a problem when it introduces completely new ideas, as I think has been...

Some minor typos: "as appropriate ) to find ways" "will be spending time in a nursing home" "any aspects of their care" I've read it all now. It is very good. The 4-page format with content on things like gastrointestinal disturbances, possible inability to chew and the need to be proactive...

The part I have read is very good, up to this: It is presented in italics, which is said to mean it is a comment. I don't recall anything like that being covered in the guideline. I would remove it, as it just adds confusion. It talks about CFS, rather than ME/CFS, without any previous...

Just re-reading the thread, I see that we didn't respond to this point. Ipquise, repeating my quote of the Cochrane review that it looks like you missed: There were 14 studies with a total of 1926 participants. So, not "some research on 40 people". I've highlighted the key finding.

I started noticing tinnitus at the onset of my ME/CFS symptoms. High blood pressure is mentioned as one cause of tinnitus e.g. here Mayo clinic info on tinnitus, among, of course, quite a number of other causes. I wonder if the high blood pressure spikes that I sometimes get when standing...

A reminder from the Moderation Team, that this is the question that was asked. Answers to this question generally won't fall foul of the 'no medical advice' rule. Here's part of the relevant rule

I agree. I'm actually surprised that the evidence suggests hypnotherapy is no better than no treatment at all for quitting smoking. I would have thought that the placebo effect associated with the whole 'going to a "professional" and engaging in a ritual' would have counted for something. It...

It's not that the studies are proof that hypnosis doesn't work; it's that there is no good evidence that hypnosis does work. As Trish has said, for a medical treatment, there should be evidence supporting a claim of efficacy. There just isn't that for hypnotherapy. Pointing to one small study...

I very much hope that a substantial number of S4ME members will be able to attend this meeting. Presumably there will be some more information in a later email about how to join the call. It's a great that the meeting will be open to the public. IACFS/ME has the potential to be an enormous...

Thanks to all posters for the very interesting discussion. I agree with @Midnattsol that the relatively small size of the ME/CFS sample, the potential inaccuracies in defining the illness severity for each person (as well as possibly quite a small range of severities) and the likely different...

Ha, I posted the evidence that hypnotherapy doesn't work for smoking cessation before catching up on the posts in the thread. I wondered recently why hypnosis seems to be credited with utility; I spent a bit of time looking into it, which is when I found the Cochrane study. So I was excited to...

If hypnotherapy was going to work for something, surely it would be for stopping smoking, where what is primarily needed is willpower to overcome the physical addiction to nicotine and entrenched behavioural patterns. There's a Cochrane review: Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation In summary...

Enormous irony in the tweet posted in reply to Garner: (Cartoon of a gameshow setting, the host says "I'm sorry, Jeannie, your answer was correct, but Kevin shouted his incorrect answer over yours, so he gets the points.) Sure, it's true that some "partisans" on both sides ignore facts and...

:D a failure of blinding, and a blinding failure (For those not familiar with all the meanings and nuances of the word 'blinding', as well as the scientific meaning where participants (and sometimes some of the researchers) aren't aware of which treatment a participant is receiving; blinding...