Article: Recovering from chronic fatigue syndrome as an intra-active process, 2019, Synne Groven and Dahl-Michelson

[adambeyoncelowe]

The article appeared in the journal "Health Care for Women International," which had a 2018 "impact factor" of 0.788.

https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/uhcw20/current



Anyone want to take up the challenge of summarizing the Wikipedia page on agential realism?

It's basically Schroedinger's cat stuff. Classic postmodern literature theory spiced with quantum theory:

Barad's agential realism is a way of understanding the politics, ethics, and agencies of any act of observation, and indeed any kind of knowledge practice.

According to Barad, the deeply connected way that everything is entangled with everything else means that any act of observation makes a "cut" between what is included and excluded from what is being considered.

Nothing is inherently separate from anything else, but separations are temporarily enacted so one can examine something long enough to gain knowledge about it.

Everything is everything, and can be understood and can exist in multiple ways prior to human observation. In observing something, the multitudes of understanding and being collapse into a single form so that we can understand it.

Just as light can be a wave or a particle at once, and only resolves into one or the other when measured, everything else is equally both one thing and many others until we look at it and make it just one thing.

So a chair might be a bed until we enter the room, for instance, or purple might be a sound and no might really mean yes. In short, it doesn't really work. It's just literary masturbation.

 

[Mithriel]

When they started with their GET rubbish Ramsay said that what defines ME as a disease is that it is made worse by exercise so if anyone gets better with exercise they do not have ME by definition.

LP cannot cure the biological deficit in energy production which is the hallmark of ME anymore than shouting stop to yourself can cure a stomach ulcer. If someone claims that it has done so we can safely say that they never had an ulcer in the first place.

If the BPSers cannot accept the 2 day CPET testing results as showing proof that ME is a disease where energy production deficits are ongoing because there have not been enough people tested then we need more evidence than anecdote to accept that human physiology must be rewritten (as Brian Hughes so clearly stated)

Saying that this woman did not have ME is our right because if she had ME she would not be cured. She may have had something else which was misdiagnosed as CFS or she may have had a postviral or she may have had ME but was going into remission (just possible but what a coincidence) and if it was a remission how dare she claim a cure.

Sticking her head up, bad mouthing other ME patients, helping someone who is exploiting suffering patients and making life more difficult for all of us (the definition of a hate crime) why should we give her the benefit of the doubt. it is like saying "maybe some parts of the earth are flat" Some things are just plain wrong.

 

[Anna H]

Why on earth do anecdotes like this get published in journals

This.

 

[Forbin]

It's basically Schroedinger's cat stuff. Classic postmodern literature theory spiced with quantum theory:

Everything is everything, and can be understood and can exist in multiple ways prior to human observation. In observing something, the multitudes of understanding and being collapse into a single form so that we can understand it.

Just as light can be a wave or a particle at once, and only resolves into one or the other when measured, everything else is equally both one thing and many others until we look at it and make it just one thing.

So a chair might be a bed until we enter the room, for instance, or purple might be a sound and no might really mean yes. In short, it doesn't really work. It's just literary masturbation.

"But thats so, easy! I should have thought of it myself!"

 

[TheBassist]

I just left one FB page after someone calling themselves a doctor insisted that acupuncture cures many diseases. I asked for list, was told to research it my self. I called BS and checked out.

 

[TheBassist]

Check this for a response:

Paul Welsh I think these modern illnesses are here to break paradigms. This illness is multi systemic and complex. It’s not very unscientific to use different ways to get well. I relish in her healing process and hoe we all will figure out how to recover our health.

 

[TheBassist]

Sure, there’s many ways to improve symptoms, but the insistence here was that acupuncture was a cure.

 

[TheBassist]

from Oslo.. oh dear..
I've only skimmed this but

Here's from the patient's story in her own words (from the sci-hub-link)

I got in contact with the CFS organization through the internet, but I soon learned how they “protected” their disease. They turned down every suggestion I made about things that might help me, because according to them there was only one thing that helped and that was rest. So I decided to break off contact with them because I thought, “This is not good for my mental health.”

...

But when I got home that day, after the acupuncture, I had to go straight to the toilet. I understood that something had happened to my body after that acupuncture appointment. And then I started on the herbal medicine. It was strictly organized and I had to follow a certain order, so I had a timetable which enabled me to organize what to take and when.

Then more things started to happen in my body. There was a change in my energy level. I did not see it so clearly myself, it was my family who saw that after I’d been for treatment I could do things I couldn’t before. The infections I’d suffered became less frequent, the pain in my muscles and my stomach problems also eased... I could do more things. I could do more and more. Still, I did not feel completely recovered. And I was deeply afraid of becoming very ill again.

So then, after hearing stories from people who had recovered after participating in Lightening Therapy, I decided to give it a go.

....

During the program, the therapists explained that when I got the BCG vaccine, on top of having glandular fever, and later had a flu vaccine, my body had begun stressing out. It got into survivor mode, producing adrenaline to fight back – and that adrenaline production has never ceased.

So every time I had thought “I’d like to go hiking in the mountains but it always makes me so unwell,” my adrenal glands had received a signal from the brain saying “ok, here we need to produce more (adrenaline), so the body never got a chance to rest”

The therapists [in the Lightening Program] explained how my body was in survival mode, and that I could end this myself. I had to stop it through my thinking; I had to change my thinking. I needed to think “There’s no reason why I and my body should be so afraid.”

So, I had to learn this way of thinking, of being aware what I was thinking. For example, although I wasn’t negative about going hiking in the mountains, my body reacted against it at once.

It was like, for example, being in a room where a projector was making a racket. Please switch it off: that noise is giving me a terrible headache. So, it’s like STOP. Now you must THINK, [get to your feet and trace a circle on the floor in front of you]. Every time I started to feel afraid or think in terms of my own sickness, I told myself to STOP.

To start off with, I went (physically) out of the situation and said “stop.” But after a while I put this into my own language. I told myself: “I am not going back to CFS; I am going to have a life that I love.” Then I’d remember how it was to be completely healthy and, well, you go into that situation, imagining how it is, the feeling [in your body], the smell ... . And then that bad feeling, and the fear of failing to recover, just seemed to melt away. I stopped that train of thought, and I no longer needed to walk in a circle... It sounds silly, it sounds so simple, but I did this the whole time ...

Then there was a sudden change, and it was very strange. After that, I was healthy and well ... I think it was the combination of LP and alternative medicine, including two years of acupuncture and herbal medicine. I got rid of all the misery that was part of my body. But I still needed to strengthen my body and muscles ... So now I focus on keeping it going.

But if I get the flu I get a bit panicky, because flu has many of the same symptoms [as CFS] and I become very frightened about getting ill again, of being reclaimed by ME. So, I use the techniques I learned in LP. I say “stop.”

I suggest this person never had ME in the first place or the remission was a coincidence, which is perfectly plausible. You either wake up in the morning feeling like roadkill or you do not. You CAN NOT wish it away. I do wish more people in public forums had the nerve to correct woolly thinking.

 

[TheBassist]

I know we shouldn't say this, but this sounds so different to my experiences. She's getting ill at the very thought of hiking--that's worry, in my mind. It's not the thought of doing things that makes me ill.

It’s ok to call bullshit for what it is. We will never end the stigma unless we filter and oppose the bullshit.

 

[TheBassist]

Why on earth do anecdotes like this get published in journals?

Writing a abstract that is full of nonsensical jargon shouldn't make it academically respectable.

This sentence looks like it was written as a joke:



Do people really get paid academic salaries for this?

That looks like Deepak Chopra word salad. Enjoy the link!http://wisdomofchopra.com