Miranda Hart - British comedian

Or maybe it's the perfect title, if you apply it to the content of the book.

Sometimes things like that align perfectly if you view them from just the right angle.

Also, just perfect for a Mitch Edberg classic: "I haven't been entirely honest with you, I'm still not, but I haven't been entirely honest with you, too".

 

Michael Sharpe is gloating on Twitter about how well MH's book is selling. (I'm not going to link to him.)

 

Sharpe currently has his own account set to "Protected".

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Parody account:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1847309486165209458

 

I’m not saying I have all the answers or a cure, I’m just saying that when I did these things which include believing that a pain in my shoulder was a piece of grief which needed to be exorcised, and so I stood in a garden and screamed, then did a big tidy up and didn’t think “oh I feel terrible” I felt a lot better, because thinking “oh I feel so tired” makes you feel tired! But I don’t have any answers, I’m not touting a cure.

 

But there is where i fundamentally disagree. 23yrs ago I believed that. I believed that telling myself how i felt made me feel that way - telling myself i felt great made me feel great, telling myself i felt awful is what would make me feel awful. But y'know what? it didnt work!
I tried to talk, think, believe, wellness into existence.
All that happened was that I behaved according to what I believed and pushed myself from mild to severe, and eventually i collapsed.

Stating reality doesnt create reality. That is just a

LIE




Edited: for sense, to remove a swear word, and to add - I'm not saying Miranda is lying, I'm sure she believes it to be true.

 

Unfortunately it is a lie that too many people seem primed to believe.

 

yes because the truth is so incredibly uncomfortable.

I worry for Miranda, I really do. How many times have we heard of people doing the LP and thinking they were so much better only to spectacularly crash later.

Placebo is a very powerful thing, but it doesnt alter anything objective, so if you're actually ill, rather than tired or angry or grieving or whatever, then it's not gonna end well.

 

It’s the lie Miranda is promoting though. But she hasn’t got any answers. But she has written a book where she explains extensively and in detail how she got better. Sucks to be her when the inevitable “good vibes only” -proof crash happens.

 

From:
Documentary: Undercover in German Lyme Clinics
https://forums.phoenixrising.me/threads/documentary-undercover-in-german-lyme-clinics.55493/

 

In this very public context though it would of course be proof that the stress of the online assault from those militant patients caused the physical symptom deterioration. BPS, being an unfalsifiable religion, can never lose.

 

It never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to be tricked into conflating physical and emotional states. When you feel happy, physical problems are easier to tolerate but they are still there. Pain is still there but happiness and many other things can distract for a while. They are like painkillers that wear off and you can't keep taking them constantly. I can't see how it's possible to be distracted all the time. It must take more and more effort to keep up the facade in front of one's own eyes until eventually it's all too hard and it all comes crashing down one way or another. Miranda has been sold a pup.

 

Yes, sorry. I only saw the first part -

It is heartwarming to see @mermhart book selling like hotcakes, just like my mind-body approach to ME does (see my Oxford Conference Talk). So many of the things I pioneered here in Oxford are here in this book. Miranda has is right, heal your mind and your body will follow

which looked like it could be genuine. I'd delete, but that might just be confusing.

 

When all this woo doesn't work she'll face the difficult choice of admitting it or keeping quiet about / denying it. Not the first woo-merchant to face that choice. Almost feel sorry for her.

 

If she does have a crash post-publication, I hope she doesn't believe it to be a result of the negativity that's been directed at her from pwME. (I'm not saying there shouldn't be any criticism - some of the things she's written about exercise curing tiredness are dangerous and need to be challenged - I'm just wondering how she will make sense of it given the framework she's currently using.)

 

A number of high profile people, including celebrities, have gone public that they have long term Lyme. Off top of head, Daryl Hall (of Hall and Oates music duo) and Kris Kristofferson, who was very sick but misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's for years. KK was much later accurately diagnosed and had treatment for Lyme, his illness improved considerably then, though not fully cured. Daryl Hall also had treatment, and some improvement.

But none of the high profile/celebs with Lyme ever call it ME, only Miranda. They all call it long term Lyme. None of the celebs say that their Lyme 'turned into ME', I guess because they already have a name for their awful symptoms - long term Lyme Disease. Sure there are overlap symptoms. But Miranda seems to want to call her Lyme disease ME.

.
Does the Optimum Health Clinic (Dir Alex Howard), which Miranda says helped her and champions, does the OH Clinic actually have a treatment program for Lyme Disease? It looks not. The clinic only mentions specific diseases as part of the recovery Testimonials, and I don't think any of them said they recovered from Lyme Disease. The OHC site only talks about 'Fatigue Recovery', and 'Cultivating a healing state for anxiety'.

.

 

Yet when I tried this it left me terribly weak and caused an increase in physical symptoms because it was an exertion like any other physical act.

By explaining this she shows the wide gulf between herself and people with ME who get PEM regardless of how ' therapeutic' it is supposed to be.

 

I guess there is no reason why the bacterial infection triggering acute Lyme Disease could not also trigger ME/CFS, but you would presumably expect some discussion of a differential diagnosis between long term Lyme and ME/CFS.

I have not read the book and have no opinion on the best way to describe the author’s health issue. I generally feel we need to take individual's self designation at face value, however it does not seem clear if Miranda sees ME/CFS and Lyme Disease as distinct or as over lapping conditions. Certainly on the basis of what has been quoted of a book commending a specific treatment/management strategy, there would ideally be some clarity about whether we are talking about long term Lyme Disease mislabelled as ME/CFS, ME/CFS triggered by the original acute bacterial infection or a co occurrence of both long term Lyme and ME/CFS.