Effects of the Prolong Life With Nine Turn Method (Yan Nian Jiu Zhuan) Qigong on Brain Functional Changes in Patients With CFS, 2022, Xie et al

Full title: Effects of the Prolong Life With Nine Turn Method (Yan Nian Jiu Zhuan) Qigong on Brain Functional Changes in Patients With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in Terms of Fatigue and Quality of Life

Background: Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is characterized by persistent fatigue, which often leads to physical and psychological damage. The Prolong Life with Nine Turn method (PLWNT) Qigong is considered as one of the complementary treatments for improving symptoms in patients with CFS. In this study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the effects of PLWNT intervention on the subjects with CFS.

Methods: Thirty four CFS patients were randomly divided into PLWNT group and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) group. Both groups were taught by a highly qualified professor at the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine once a week and were supervised online during the remaining 6 days at home, over 12 consecutive weeks. We calculated the regional rs-fMRI index amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF) for all subjects. To study the changes of the brain network, we used the brain regions with significant differences in ALFF as the regions of interest for whole-brain functional connectivity (FC) analysis. The Multi-dimensional Fatigue Inventory 20 (MFI-20) and Short Form 36-item Health Survey (SF-36) were used for clinical symptom assessment to explore the possible correlation between the rs-fMRI indicators and clinical variations.

Results: The ALFF values of the right superior frontal gyrus (SFG), and left median cingulate gyrus (DCG) were increased, whereas those of the left middle occipital gyrus (OG), right middle OG and left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) were decreased in PLWNT group. The FC values between the DCG and middle temporal gyrus (MTG), and those between the left OG and the right OG were enhanced. In addition, the SF-36 were positively with the left OG (r = 0.524), SFG (r = 0.517), and DCG (r = 0.533), MFI-20 were negatively with the SFG (r = −0.542) and DCG (r = −0.578). These results were all corrected by FWE (voxel level p < 0.001, cluster level p < 0.05).

Conclusion: CFS patients have abnormal regional spontaneous neuronal activity and abnormal functional connections between regions after PLWNT intervention. PLWNT can relieve the fatigue symptoms of CFS patients and improve their quality of life.

Open access, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2022.866424/full

 

"The recruitment of the subjects was conducted from December 2018 to September 2019 at the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine. We included hospitalized patients with a preliminary diagnosis of CFS, according to the latest Revise Guidelines for Treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 2021 (55). The inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) age between 20 and 60 years; no gender requirement; (2) severe chronic fatigue that is unexplained after clinical evaluation and has a history of no <6 months; fatigue was not caused by the work performed during the trial, and the fatigue was not alleviated after rest; and (3) at least four of these eight symptoms (memory or concentration decline, failure to regain energy after sleep, sore throat, headache, lymph node tenderness, muscle pain, multiple joint pain, and myalgia after exertion for more than 24 h). The exclusion criteria were as follows: severe cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, endocrine system diseases, motor system diseases, autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases, use of medications which may affect the judgment of the results. The detailed fundamental information of CFS subjects is available in our previously published protocol (28)."

Well, the recruitment criteria looks all over the place to me.

• Recruited between Dec 2018 and Sept 2019.
• According to "the latest Revise Guidelines for Treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 2021" - link is to an article about the revision of the NICE guidelines. Clever of them to have that information two years before it came out.
• And then the list they give looks very much like Fukuda.

So I'm sure it will be fine to trust the accuracy of the rest of this paper......

 

Seems that it was more "effective" than CBT:

 

The mix of traditional Chinese medicine using the standard biopsychosocial formula in evidence-based medicine and essentially saying all the exact same things and that it "works" even better than the other BS quackery they market with this sausage-making machine is just beautiful, a sight to behold. This is the future of medicine right there, chef's kiss. You wanted holistic, you sure got it.

They even added BS imaging to up the pseudoscience factor, just like their FND colleagues! They're learning to apply the rote formula, the void is staring back.

Godzilla-let-them-fight.jif

 

And most likely PEM.

 

I have trouble taking any research from traditional Chinese medicine academies seriously.

 

Well, immortality is likely to come out a bit abnormal, I guess.
Ninety-nine times round should fix it - older than Albus Dumbledore.

 

I review papers for the Journal of Consciousness Studies and it seems that Qigong is good for telepathy and interfering with quantum mechanics.

Which is presumably why a few people were unimpressed when the World Health Organisation pronounced that traditional Chinese medicine should be as respected as Western medicine.

I blame the multidisciplinary stakeholderbabble.

 

So either health psychology becomes more critical of their own evidence base and starts to conduct scientific experiments to test and improve the reliability of their trials and studies.

Or quacks continue to exploits these weakness to promote their own pseudoscientific theories so that evidentially it becomes clear to all, how unreliable open-label trials with subjective endpoints can be.

Sad to say, but at the moment the latter seems to be the more realistic option.

The "crisis in psychology", mainly started because Bem et al. claimed to have shown that people can "feel" the future.

 

What fresh hell is this?

 

Not at all fresh...by the ninth turn.

 

Is this a type of faith healing?

 

QiGong is mostly light exercise. You can pretty much substitute for yoga. There's a spiritual system to that is formalized in a more or less organized belief system (about energy, Chi) but for the sake of this kind of study it doesn't really matter. In a non-pharmaceutical interventions systematic review, it would be in the exercise programs set.

With some countries having openly bet everything on pseudoscience, especially LP, the only way forward is down, standards can only get lower or it reveals the whole scam. Once you fully go down the thoughts-and-prayers road, there is no backing out. Big politically-motivated scams like IAPT need that self-preservation, they represent huge wasted sums and have already been running for years.

So as pseudoscience gets more common, standards will have to be lowered still to hide the truth. And since they are already deep underground, we're pretty much already at the point where anything could pass, where thinking about healing crystals could be shown to be more effective than holding them, or whatever, anything can pass if they want. "Effective" and "work" have become meaningless, so nothing matters.

The only significant factor is cultural beliefs surrounding a journal and their editors and peer reviewers, since they are most likely to accept pseudoscience that aligns with their expectations, such as TCM in China and CBT in Europe.

And the general trend in medicine is that medicine should be more psychosocial, which basically guarantees that standards will all be eliminated, as nothing psychosocial passes any actual scrutiny.

Seriously, the only thing that will save medical regression is either AI or the death of our civilization. At this point the race to the bottom is already too deep. Probably AI, as it's very close.