Miranda Hart - British comedian

I guess if you can “think yourself better” it makes sense that other sick people can “think you sick” too. I didn’t realise my ME gave me psychic powers! Amazing. There should be more promotion of that.

 

martine mccutcheon having started with ME also says she has Lyme. She seems to go between the two in various interviews.

 

Maybe she's been told she has both.

They are both diseases that boil down to belief systems. They are beliefs in a disease, whether held by the patient or the clinician. Usually neither diagnosis is concrete.

 

Like voodoo but without the totems. Which makes it even more laughable, but it's considered cutting edge medical science.

Humans are soooo freaking weird. Either we are the weirdest species in the galaxy, which, wow. Or there are even weirder species out there, which, WOW!

 

But surely there is no comparable 'think yourself better by never thinking or speaking about your symptoms/by eliminating negativity from your mind' culture of commercially driven 'recovery courses/books/ear seeds etc' aimed at Lyme disease. Or is there?

UK newspapers do not regularly feature stories such as

'I went from bedbound to climbing mountains as I recovered from my Lyme disease by telling my symptoms to STOP and choosing The Life I Love', etc etc.

Whereas people with ME are bombarded with the stuff, largely because of the UK media's apparently inexhaustible appetite for ME 'recovery stories', which exploit our disease for clickbait.

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That's fair, although I'd venture they're out there. The mind-over-disease thing doesn't seem to pervade Lymeworld like it does ME/CFS (at least not that I've seen).

But because Lyme is purported to be caused by a bacteria, and persistent Lyme supposedly occurs in the face of failed antibiotics treatment, what you do find is a culture of alternative cures, which range from hopeful to unfortunate to outright nonsense.

Both cultures can be toxic to patients.

 

I don't remember Martine McCutcheon talking about Alex Howard or OHC, but she did Lightning Process and names Lightning Process in a video of Martine being interviewed by Alan Titchmarsh about her illness, ME, and her career.


This video of Martine advertising Lightning Process on UK TV (by name dropping it when asked what she'd done to get back into her life and career after illness, ME) .... Phil Parker still displays Martine's interview on the main Lightning Process Website, even though the TV interview was 10 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whQ3BRmVQ1I

Not a recommendation, scroll down for the Titchmarsh interview video.
https://lightningprocess.com/


On the video Martine says she was diagnosed with ME, said it came from pushing herself, working in a West End show, also caused by (“Manifested itself”) "a lot of heartache", "a lot of unaddressed issues" she "hadn't dealt with" which "manifested as a sort of 'Dis-Ease".

Interviewer Alan Titchmarsh asked Martine what she did to get back to where she is now …. Martine says eating well, Lightning Process, Juicing Retreat, resting as much as she could then gently got back into exercise. Now she is 'back in a place where she can work again'.

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Do just want to mention, lest we forget, that all this mind-over-disease thing is rampant in the cancer world too though.

My mother was told, by an nhs nurse, during her chemo, that if she didnt let go of her (perfectly normal justifiable) anger, the cancer would kill her, that negative thoughts would prevent her recovery.... yes thats right, an nhs nurse. It's everywhere in the cancer world, its repugnant.

See Barbara Ehrenrieich's books & talks for more on that

 

A very well meaning family member texted me about this tonight, suggesting I watch the Graham Norton clip. It really upset me. I don’t have the resilience to engage with that kind of discussion tonight.

 

Big hugs HYTY, thinking of you.

I feel the same, its becoming distressing.

Its such a tragedy. From being a fan of hers for some yrs, I'm certain that distress is the very last thing she'd want to be causing. But that doesnt change the effect and impact of it all.

 

That's true. When my mum was an inpatient receiving chemo for lymphoma, she was told by an NHS physiotherapist that her emotions and mindset would affect the outcome of her treatment. She was extremely unwell and there was a very real chance that she wouldn't survive. It was completely unsolicited an inappropriate advice. It's the arrogance and unacknowledged privilege of people like this that really annoys me.

 

Awful. So sorry.

Yep. It is everywhere. People are constantly making false claims and launching cult success off the back of people with Cancer.

Then every random is picking up this toxic wellness ideology. But a lot of it comes from medicine originally. So doctors would not tell their patients that they were dying incase it caused them to give up hope and die sooner than they would if they didn’t know.

 

It's often individual healthcare staff abusing their position to foist their personal beliefs on a captive audience. It's rampant in Germany too, I've had it from doctors (offering to dangle a pendulum to diagnose my son's allergy) and physiotherapists (insisting on twiddling my toes, her own personal version of reflexology, even though I went in with a bad back). There's a chart of acupuncture points hanging on the wall of my dentist. It really annoys me every time I come across it, which is often. These people really need to decide what it is they want to be, and if that's a woo-merchant then please get out of healthcare.

 

I’ve got a “zinger” for unsolicited wellness advice “oh really? No that’s not a study I’ve heard of, do you know who carried it out or published it? Oh it’s on the internet? Have a look for it and send me the link so I can share it!”

 

It's the last great respectable universal belief system. Whereas many beliefs are still OK as long as they are kept private, this is the last one to be publicly approved. Go back a century ago and things like mentalism, hypnosis, telekinesis, ghosts, astrology and so on were very common. There was nothing shameful about being a world-renowned expert in something or another and also being very into some spiritual mumbo jumbo.

Humans just deal poorly with death and illness. So much that even for health care professionals it's basically expected that they espouse this nonsense. It's actually a fringe position to dispute it, hardly anyone actually speaks out against it.

It too will pass but it just sucks to be stuck as collateral damage for the last remaining belief system to have legal power. Outside of societies where organized religion rules anyway, but those are always very specific beliefs, not universal enough to allow completely generic nonsense to be promoted.

 

Accusations of ‘pseudoscience’ against Miranda Hart are deeply unfair

by Clare Wilson

The accusations levelled at the TV star are unfair - there's evidence for the techniques she used to alleviate her ME

Miranda Hart is getting attacked for writing a book about how she recovered from chronic fatigue and illness by reducing stress in her life and using other techniques to improve her mental and physical wellbeing. Such approaches are pseudoscience, say the critics, who are largely other people with the poorly understood condition known as myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).

(...)

To take a few examples of where Hart’s approaches chime with mainstream medical advice, talking therapy is recommended by official NHS guidelines for people with ME/CFS. While it is no cure, such therapy helps some people manage their symptoms and improve functioning. So that’s hardly pseudoscience.

Lifestyle approaches such as gentle exercises and talking therapies are also recommended by the NHS for anyone who has long-term pain, whatever the cause.

(...)

There is also a group of related conditions called functional neurological disorders – with symptoms ranging from seizures of unknown origin to inexplicable paralysis – which are thought to be caused by faulty brain processes. Distraction techniques are emerging as the mainstay of treatment for this group of disorders – for instance, trying to name everything in a room that is a certain colour is a recommended technique for stopping this kind of seizure. Hart’s approach of spotting everything in a room that is a nice colour sounds similar, but with a “Miranda” twist.​

Full article: https://inews.co.uk/opinion/accusat...gainst-miranda-hart-are-deeply-unfair-3338148

 

Miranda Hart: Seven things we learned when she spoke to Kirsty Young

rest of article BBC Radio 4 - Young Again - Miranda Hart: Seven things we learned when she spoke to Kirsty Young

 

Unfortunate.

Who’s the author CW?

If anyone is clever and energy filled enough I wouldn’t mind a non inews link?