Year: 2020
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Professor Chalder’s PRINCE Has Arrived
So here’s yet another paper with Professor Trudie Chalder of King’s College London as the senior author. That usually means there’s a lot to dig into! In this case, the journal is BMC Family Practice and the paper is titled “Integrated GP care for patients with persistent physical symptoms: feasibility cluster randomized trial.” Professor Chalder’s…
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How Professor Lubet’s Nightmare Began…
A few years ago, my friend and colleague Steven Lubet, a law professor and scholar at Northwestern University, wrote the following account of the start of his struggle with what was then largely called chronic fatigue syndrome. While his story does not directly relate to current events, Steve’s frustrations in his effort to seek a…
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NICE Draft Guidance on ME/CFS Coming Next Month
The pandemic has played havoc with everything, including the timeline of the development process for the new ME/CFS guidance from the UK National Institute of Health and Care Excellence. Originally, a draft of the guidance was supposed to be released earlier this year. Following a period of public comment, NICE planned to issue the final…
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More on the Royal Society of Medicine Webinar
On September 24th, the Royal Society of Medicine hosted a webinar called “Long-COVID: Understanding the shadow of the virus.” In a previous post, I criticized one of the panelists, infectious disease expert Alastair Miller, on several grounds. He promoted graded exercise therapy, made unwarranted claims about recovery rates from CBT/GET treatments, and suggested that the…
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That Royal Society of Medicine Webinar on Long-Covid
Proponents of cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy as treatments for CFS, ME, or their variants keep trotting out their favored interventions for patients suffering from persistent fatigue and other symptoms after acute Covid-19. Last week, the Royal Society of Medicine conducted an online webinar called “Long COVID: Understanding the shadow of the virus.”…
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The CDC’s Stakeholder Meeting
The US Centers for Disease Control held one of its occasional briefings for ME/CFS stakeholders last week. I was unfortunately busy during that time, but #MEAction has posted a useful account of what was discussed, which you can read here. The #MEAction account includes short, helpful descriptions of a number of CDC initiatives, including efforts…
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More CBT Research from Sir Simon and Professor Chalder, Part 2
And now Professor Sir Simon Wessely has popped up again to present more misinformation in a paper produced along with his longtime King’s College London colleague, Professor Trudie Chalder. I wrote about this paper last month, when it appeared in a pre-print version after having been accepted for publication by the Journal of the Royal…
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A Short Talk for UK Docs and Researchers
This morning (Wednesday) I gave an informal online talk about the piece of crap known as the PACE trial to a small group of UK doctors, researchers and others. The group had been pulled together by Paul Garner, a physician and professor of infectious diseases at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Garner has written several…
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UK Docs Speak Up on Long-Covid; Mayo Shifts Gears (a Little)
Doctors in UK urge caution on long-Covid exercise advice Despite BMJ’s current dereliction of key editorial oversight responsibilities, it has provided a forum for members of the medical community with Covid-19 and post-Covid symptoms to express their strong views. The reference to current dereliction of key editorial responsibilities involves a case I and others have…
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Some Stuff about Long-Covid, BMJ and ME
It is clear that there will be much grappling going forward over the similarities and differences between long-Covid and ME (or CFS, or ME/CFS, or whatever this illness or cluster of illnesses is being called). The two entities overlap in some ways, but no one should conflate them. We are past the pandemic’s half-year mark.…
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What Is the Dynamic Neural Retraining System?
The Lightning Process, which I have covered extensively, isn’t the only program out there making big assertions about its impact on how the brain functions. These assertions piggyback on the emerging science of neuroplasticity and related concepts and involve the brain’s capacity to generate new neural pathways when it adapts to changes in stimuli. The…
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The Lightning Process Strikes Again
The Lightning Process was founded more than two decades ago by Phil Parker, a British Tarot reader and specialist in auras and spiritual guides. The LP, as it is often called, could be described as “a neuro-physiological training programme based on self-coaching, concepts from Positive Psychology, Osteopathy and Neuro Linguistic Programming,” as Parker and colleagues…