>However, recovery is possible in all cases, even for the most severely disabled patients, and in many cases this can be achieved by a relatively simple change in lifestyle
You appear to have reached that conclusion by extrapolating from positive, lifestyle magazine style reports of CFS recovery based on a range of dubious treatments (which you put down to the placebo effect) -- along with your own experience.
Can I suggest that's not a great source of evidence?
If I understand you correctly, you believe HPA-axis dysfunction causes the symptoms of CFS, which is prolonged by "factors such as mental attitude and negative feedback". Change your mental attitude and you stop the negative feedback loop, allowing recovery to occur.
This theory appears to me to be:
- Based on many unproven assumptions and leaps of logic around HPA-axis involvement.
- Based on inherently biased recovery reports that could be due to spontaneous recovery (which you mention) as much as anything.
- Results in an unfalsifiable theory that blames patients for their continued suffering (people can recover if they change their attitude/lifestyle; if they don't, they mustn't have changed their attitude/lifestyle).
This is not scientific. Theories around HPA-axis involvement are a dime a dozen. Theories around changing your lifestyle/attitude resulting in a "cure" are simplistic and patronising to the many, many sufferers who have done just that, and not seen the cure you say is possible for all patients.
CFS patients get sick of this sort of thing because it seems to be the proponents of psycho-social approaches with faulty beliefs and poor logic -- not the patients -- that leads to unfalsifiable, unscientific theories being promoted to very sick, very vulnerable people, who you say could be cured, if only they stopped with their gosh darn negative attitudes and poor lifestyle choices!
You need better evidence than anecdotes from mass media and a hand-wavvy physiological/psychological explanation to make such grandiose claims.
Please consider re-evaluating your own beliefs in light of the much broader evidence. For example, a positive attitude and lifestyle change are the driving forces for many CFS patients that leads them on decade+ journeys attempting to right the ship, only to find improvement fleeting at best.
While some people may spontaneously recover along the way, confusing correlation for causation, and painting a minority of psychological cases as reflective of the whole is unhelpful and, honestly, could do with a large serving of humility and more research about those that haven't recovered before you make grand claims about "recovery in all cases" based on mental attitudes and lifestyle changes.
Again, what patients need is real research from the scientific and medical establishments, not hand-savvy, victim-blaming theories from armchair internet experts.
>A lot of CFS patients bring up the subject of stomach ulcers. It's almost as if they want to prove that psychosomatic illness doesn't exist.
And we're the ones with the negative attitude?
Anyway, I'm sorry you suffered from a psychosomatic illness.
I see that you've written a book (http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Body-Health-Stress-Tolerance-Jame...) and have articles covering your views on CFS & recovery here: http://www.mind-body-health.net/cfs.shtml. You say:
>However, recovery is possible in all cases, even for the most severely disabled patients, and in many cases this can be achieved by a relatively simple change in lifestyle
You appear to have reached that conclusion by extrapolating from positive, lifestyle magazine style reports of CFS recovery based on a range of dubious treatments (which you put down to the placebo effect) -- along with your own experience.
Can I suggest that's not a great source of evidence?
If I understand you correctly, you believe HPA-axis dysfunction causes the symptoms of CFS, which is prolonged by "factors such as mental attitude and negative feedback". Change your mental attitude and you stop the negative feedback loop, allowing recovery to occur.
This theory appears to me to be:
- Based on many unproven assumptions and leaps of logic around HPA-axis involvement.
- Based on inherently biased recovery reports that could be due to spontaneous recovery (which you mention) as much as anything.
- Results in an unfalsifiable theory that blames patients for their continued suffering (people can recover if they change their attitude/lifestyle; if they don't, they mustn't have changed their attitude/lifestyle).
This is not scientific. Theories around HPA-axis involvement are a dime a dozen. Theories around changing your lifestyle/attitude resulting in a "cure" are simplistic and patronising to the many, many sufferers who have done just that, and not seen the cure you say is possible for all patients.
CFS patients get sick of this sort of thing because it seems to be the proponents of psycho-social approaches with faulty beliefs and poor logic -- not the patients -- that leads to unfalsifiable, unscientific theories being promoted to very sick, very vulnerable people, who you say could be cured, if only they stopped with their gosh darn negative attitudes and poor lifestyle choices!
You need better evidence than anecdotes from mass media and a hand-wavvy physiological/psychological explanation to make such grandiose claims.
Please consider re-evaluating your own beliefs in light of the much broader evidence. For example, a positive attitude and lifestyle change are the driving forces for many CFS patients that leads them on decade+ journeys attempting to right the ship, only to find improvement fleeting at best.
While some people may spontaneously recover along the way, confusing correlation for causation, and painting a minority of psychological cases as reflective of the whole is unhelpful and, honestly, could do with a large serving of humility and more research about those that haven't recovered before you make grand claims about "recovery in all cases" based on mental attitudes and lifestyle changes.
Again, what patients need is real research from the scientific and medical establishments, not hand-savvy, victim-blaming theories from armchair internet experts.