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I wonder if the characterisation of BPS approaches to ME as a deliberate attempt to avoid justified insurance and benefit payments is strengthened by appearing in a right wing forum, where normally you might expect little enthusiasm for disability related payments?

A friend’s daughter was diagnosed with ME following Covid in 2020, which impressed me that there were people willing to make that diagnosis relatively early on in the pandemic. However I suspect it will be very hit and miss with a very significant level of under diagnosis, especially as there...

I have just received an invite to provide DNA under the amended criteria. I assume I was not initially invited as I included one or more of IBS, B12 deficiency, Migraines or food intolerances under cooccurring conditions, though for me these issues all post date my ME onset and vary with my ME...

The UK Government has responded to this petition: So far the petition has 11,550 signatures, but to progress to the next stage and be debated in Parliament it needs to get to 100,000. Petitions are live for six months so it has less than a month to run.

I am not sure I can comment without breaching at least two forum rules. (Is this then also a breach of forum rules?)

If we don’t understand the condition, how can anyone say there is not a simple ‘medical model’ or say that ‘the complexity of illness’ has any relevance or meaning in this context.

I agree this is an excellent proposal in principle, but myself am unable cognitively to initiate/organise information/submissions and am unable to sustain any significant energy commitment for any project. If there were members in a position to lead a response I would be happy to offer moral...

My unreliable memory of how CBT was described when I was a psychology undergraduate some forty five years ago was that it was not based on any models of causation rather that it sought to change present behaviour without any assumptions about psychological aetiology. It was presented as an...

I agree, the bps approach to medicine in practice is anything but wholistic, it ignores the biological, even to the extent of some asserting paying any attention to biological aspects is actively harmful psychologically, it ignores the social unless it is to assert the patient’s illness is...

The study cited above: is not the PACE trial which was first published in 2011. Interesting that Sharpe should cite an earlier and smaller study.

A fascinating study, given a similar finding with shingles vaccination. Are we at the point that we can categorically say that the influenza vaccine directly protects against subsequent Alzheimer’s rather than there being something else in the behaviour of people who get vaccines that...

I don’t have any wish to waste time reading the actual paper, especially as I anticipate the experimental design(s) is such that meaningless positive results are guaranteed, however I wonder how it is possible to consider to address this anyway in such as cancer where fatigue will vary over the...

So far we have no evidence that this intervention approach has any impact on the condition or the symptoms other than a short term up lift in questionnaire scores, so it is likely that it has no real life benefits, certainly we have no evidence for any. Consequently it is hardly surprising there...

A great shame that there doesn’t seem to be consideration of the likely heterogeneity of Long Covid. For those whose breathlessness is the result of one off impairment arising during the acute infection the right form of exercise may be expected to help, but for those whose initial infection...

I think at present the biggest danger is ‘pacing up’. The unspoken model of rehabilitation is to establish a base line of reliable achievement for the problematic activity or for a sub component of that activity, then push against the limits, and as long as there seems to be improvement to keep...

There is the question of how the NICE guidelines apply in relation to Northern Ireland, NICE’s own website says that they only automatically apply to England and Wales, but looking at the Northern Ireland Department of Health website it seems that they are generally adopted in the province too...

“According to research, a phenomenon called central sensitisation is characteristic of ME, meaning that the spinal cord reacts in a hypersensitive way.” We don’t yet have any demonstration that ‘central sensitisation’ exists as a phenomenon, we have no evidence that it is relevant to ME or even...

A ‘no treatment’ control, misleadingly described as ‘care as usual’ is not a meaningful control. The analogy would be controlling a drug trial with ‘care as usual’ that is no placebo tablet designed to mimic the target drug without the active ingredient. A genuine control would require a...

I think the issue of various intolerances and ME deserves more research, not just alcohol. A big problem in researching this is that the most reliable investigation tool is to exclude the target foodstuff from your diet for a number of weeks then reintroduce in a challenge test. So it can take...

As always with David and Brian, a fascinating interview about this book on the Virology Blog.