2016 Psychology Today article discusses overcoming CFS through dealing with stressful situations from past.

BeautifulDay

BeautifulDay

Established Member (Voting Rights)
How do we educate all the doctors who believe ME/CFS is psychosomatic?

In this Psychology Today article from 2016 "Explaining the Unexplainable: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome", Howard Schubiner M.D. states that:
"It is my opinion, and the opinion of a group of physicians and mental health professionals, that there is a reason for this suffering; and that there is an effective treatment option. When there is no clear medical reason for chronic fatigue, whether you call it chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) or systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID), it is likely that the symptoms are actually caused by the brain and that this is a reversible process rather than a structural disease of the body or of the brain. Most people (and most doctors) don’t really understand how this can happen, but our brains have tremendous power and can produce exactly this combination of symptoms. There is a tremendous inability to see or understand this point of view but before you get upset with me and stop reading, let me explain."

Here is how this doctor treated one patient with ME/CFS:
"It took several years for Michael to figure out that his fatigue and pain were not caused by a prolonged infection or by a physical disease process. When he fully embraced the idea that it was his brain and yet not his fault, he was able to face the symptoms and work through them. This is obviously not easy work. It takes courage, commitment, and strength. Michael also began to face some of the stressful situations that had occurred in his life and addressed them as best as he could. And this approach worked for Michael."

He concludes with:
"Research on the function of the brain shows that the brain definitely has the ability to create real, physical symptoms. As this knowledge disseminates, there will be more people who recover from chronic fatigue and other associated chronic symptoms that have defied accurate diagnosis and effective treatment."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...ng-the-unexplainable-chronic-fatigue-syndrome
 
The conversion theory of physical symptoms is obviously a strongly held belief by many clinicians, psychologists and psychiatrists, but has anyone ever demonstrated scientifically that it ever occurs?

Also its advocates don't seem to come up with a predictive theory as to why it would result in distinct but systematically grouped sets of symptoms. If conversion based disorders are real entities it is reasonable to ask why for some people it results in ME for others IBS for yet others POTS etc, and also to ask why it failed to predict the physiological bases of such as MS or ulcers that were previously believed to be conversion symptoms?

Also any theory needs to explain the symptom patterns found in distinct syndromes; most proponents though claiming psychological conditions are 'real' do not accept that the symptoms of a conversion disorder are 'real' rather they are seen as irrelevant to understanding or managing the condition.

[Schubiner asserts there is proof but only links to theoretical discussions and opinion pieces, at best post hoc justifications based on others observations rather than experimental testing of predictive hypotheses.]
 
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And yet, many of my patients, like Michael, have been able to recover. These recoveries are not always so rapid. Some people take months or even a year or two to recover, yet the key point I am making is this: There is a clear reason for the fatigue and other symptoms and there is a path to getting better.
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Where are the data? What percentage of your patients recovered? Did you do a clinical trial with a strong methodology that backs up your claims?
 
Well it's right there in the title isnt it.... 'Explaining the unexplainable' - the usual arrogance that you see in the medical profession which thinks anything which has not yet been fully be explained, simply cannot be explained, because all there is to know is already known. Really? why are text books revised then?

Exhaustive searches for an underlying cause
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:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl: we wish!

There is a tremendous inability to see or understand this point of view but before you get upset with me and stop reading, let me explain.
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"oooo they wont like that, i'd better cushion it a bit with a pat on the head - dont worry dear you're only upset with me because you just cant understand such things."
I understand perfectly well, you ignorant, patronising ****.

I'm sorry that's rude but i am losing patience with it all.

If you keep conflating CF with CFS then you are the one who has an 'inability to understand'
 
BeautifulDay said:
our brains have tremendous power

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...ng-the-unexplainable-chronic-fatigue-syndrome
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Yes, so stop thinking that nothing can go wrong with how it works. It infuriates me that it is acknowledged that blood clotting needs a long sequence of steps each of which can go wrong but anything in the brain must be caused by wrong thoughts.

BeautifulDay said:
It takes courage, commitment, and strength.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...ng-the-unexplainable-chronic-fatigue-syndrome
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There's our problem. We are sinners who must repent, lazy beggars who need to become heroes. It is all our own fault.

BeautifulDay said:
"Research on the function of the brain shows that the brain definitely has the ability to create real, physical symptoms.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...ng-the-unexplainable-chronic-fatigue-syndrome
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I have followed this since I was a biologist in 1972 and never seen any plausible theory. I can't remember ever seeing a theory actually though that could be my memory, just lots of assertions. Even if someone gets better by changing their thoughts or finding what is making them stressed, that is not proof that their thoughts caused the disease unless there is a biochemical theory of what changed. Anything else is just a correlation and gives no clue to causation.

:banghead::banghead::banghead:
 
I find this infuriating, especially when real brain research has be so under funded in ME. It’s only in the vacuum of solid proven abnormalities that this arrogant waffle can exist. Do the PET scans to see if we do have serious microglia activity before waffling On about function and implying psychological cause.
We can only educate stubbornly stupid drs by showing the biomedical research already done , getting better research done on a large scale (the bps do large studies whilst we do inconclusive 15 people ones) and hoping evidence becomes incontrovertible. Pointing out the inflammatory / immune symptoms is important to me because theses type people think they have answers to fatigue and pain as generated in the brain but that’s missing half the picture for many. that is not to say the brain isn’t involved
 
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Of course! I get it now. I was saying it all wrong. It's Leviosa, not Leviosaaaa. Years lost and it was so simple all along.

It's them spooky unexplainable symptoms. Not like this ever happened before, something we didn't understand and managed to understand by doing this "research" thingy. Literally not a single example of this happening in the whole of history. Nope.
 
There must be some truth to this, don't judge! I've had (in retrospect) a remarkably uneventful magical carefree life until I caught mono. Afterwards everything was suddenly unbelievably hard. This is an event from my past that was pretty stressful to deal with I guess. I fully accept that this entire situation is not my fault and probably something in my brain, although I just kinda assume the last part and am very open to the possibility that the brain is just an endpoint.

Just how exactly do I work through that now? Why is the interesting part always skipped in these articles!? I am literally on the edge of my seat. Figuratively speaking. Because I am literally sitting on a ball that has no edges but tilting it forward to reach my keyboard. But I digress.

When there is no clear medical reason for chronic fatigue [...] it is likely that the symptoms are actually caused by the brain and that this is a reversible process rather than a structural disease of the body or of the brain.
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Now if I had learned not to trust people when they appear to just make stuff up, I'd obviously ask for citations. Especially since deducing that if there is no clear medical reason for a symptom it must be due to some clear medical reason, i.e. the brain misfiring in some way, just seems like something that was made up by someone as he went along. And super-double-down-especially if it is claimed to be a reversible process, but the part on how to reverse it is conveniently skipped and you're just left with some 'address some of you issues, man, like, the best you can, bro'.

Research on the function of the brain shows that the brain definitely has the ability to create real, physical symptoms.
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Well, wow. I always assumed my brain is a potato powering my magic energy levels, but if it can actually do real, physical stuff, how are my arms moving? What part of me is actually typing right now if it is not my heart and soul just pouring wisdom all over the internet? Brb I gotta rethink my life and outlook on reality k thx bye.

Next thing you're gonna tell me we're not actually perceiving the world directly but rather constructing it via a physical processes that rely on interpreting and translating input. Whoa. Like, dude.
 
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Cinders66 said:
I find this infuriating, especially when real brain research has be so under funded in ME. It’s only in the vacuum of solid proven abnormalities that this arrogant waffle can exist.
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Stanford's fasciculus brain abnormality was just confirmed by a Japanese study ( I have no link handy) - so there are now replicated findings of abnormal structural changes in the brain. Stanford has a follow-up study in the works.
 
Philipp said:
Next thing you're gonna tell me we're not actually perceiving the world directly but rather constructing it via a physical processes that rely on interpreting and translating input. Whoa. Like, dude.
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With one important change I might agree with this. We construct our understanding of the world. All our understanding is filtered through our physical and cultural limitations, including language. So we don't have a direct grasp of reality, and we are constantly learning if we want to stay ahead of a changing world.
 
BeautifulDay said:
In this Psychology Today article from 2016 "Explaining the Unexplainable: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome", Howard Schubiner M.D. states that:
"It is my opinion, and the opinion of a group of physicians and mental health professionals,
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Clinical opinion is the lowest level of evidence in the Evidence Based Medicine rankings.

At best, basically worthless. At worst, highly prejudiced, misleading, and dangerous.
 
Sean said:
At best, basically worthless. At worst, highly prejudiced, misleading, and dangerous.
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Actually the issue here goes to biases. Its rife with bias, including patient selection bias, confirmation bias, and so on. So it might or might not be good for an individual patient, but generalising to a group is much more problematic. In any case the whole personality thing is highly controversial, and much of it is pseudoscience.
 
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