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I think that's making the assumption that impeding death will always cause depression. The thought of death does not automatically lead to depression. In fact in people who suffer depression, the thought of death (or the making of plans for suicide) often brings comfort. Is it perhaps the...

Yes, it's good to bring up precise definitions of terms. I am not entirely sure whether the term "psychogenic" encompasses both psychological factors as well as psychosocial factors, but I certainly mean to include both. One example of a psychological factor that might cause depression is the...

I am sorry to hear about the loss of your friend. As mentioned above, depression is one of the few conditions where the biopsychosocial model does actually apply: depression may be caused by both biological factors and psychogenic factors. Nobody can know for sure why your friend started to...

I think almost everyone knowledgable about depression would agree that both biological and psychogenic factors can cause or contribute to it. I would say depression is one of the very few illnesses where the biopsychosocial theory applies. But what I am talking about is the fact that time and...

I did not really understand the first paragraph of your post. The quote above seems a little self contradictory: you don't believe psychogenic factors are valid as causes of depression, but then you say that environmental factors can be a factor in depression. By environmental factors I...

Sure, but I am trying to make the distinction regarding the source of depression. Neurological illnesses often induce depression, and I am calling that type of depression biologically caused. And we know that bad life events can cause depression too, which I am calling psychogenically caused. I...

Those suggesting depression in ME/CFS is due to the limitations the illness places on your life: You are in effect saying that your depression has a psychogenic cause. That is, you are saying the depression is caused by events and limitations in your life, rather than thinking the depression...

Not once you appreciate the theory behind sickness behavior. The idea is that when animals (including humans) are sick from infection, this triggers a set of adaptive behavioral responses which are designed to optimize recovery from infection, as well as limit its spread to other animals in the...

Out of 12 ME/CFS patients trying Valcyte, 6 reported a major improvement.

If you prefer it in numbers of people, then out of 35 ME/CFS patients who tried LDN, only one reported a major improvement.

In a forum poll, LDN only resulted in a major improvement in symptoms in 3% of cases, which is pretty low. (Major improvement in this poll is defined as moving up at least one level on the ME/CFS scale of very severe, severe, moderate, mild, remission). By contrast, Valcyte led to major...

OK, then you probably appreciate the general mindset involved in alternative treatments. I think a lot of that mindset comes down to having the patience and enthusiasm for trying different things. In my experience, most of the time, alternative treatments don't work; but maybe 1 time out of 10...

Some alternative medicine practitioners may have antivax views, and according to this paper (I am providing references for you!), this may influence the decision-making of their clients when it comes to getting vaccinations. But I would doubt if alternative medicine users as a group will have...

When I asked Prof Lipkin whether his sequencing technique on blood samples would be able to detect enterovirus infections in the tissues, he said no it would not. So for any enteroviruses (and possibly other viruses) infecting the tissues of ME/CFS patients, sequencing is blind to such...

Alternative medicine is in general incredibly safe. Of course, if someone foregoes conventional medicine where it is critically important, such as in this case of diabetes, and replaces it with alternative medicine, then of course you are asking for trouble. But it was not the alternative...

There word "again" in the title suggests alternative medicine is a common cause of death, but alternative medicine is used by around a third of the population in developed countries, with a fairly negligible fatality rate. This story is really about a nutter who thought that slaps to the body...

That's possible I guess. But I think what you are saying applies to any disease which mimics ME/CFS, such as anemia, hypothyroidism, lupus, celiac, etc. Is the inability to concentrate found in anemia really the same symptom as the brain fog of ME/CFS? Has anybody investigated to see if these...

My feeling is that because the ICC were written at a time when the psychogenic "all in the mind" view of ME/CFS still dominated, the authors tried their best to counter that view by recasting ME/CFS as a disease with biological causes. That may be why they describe PEM, for example, as a...

That may well be the case, but that's changing the subject. My above post showing an overlap in ME/CFS and CMS symptoms was given in answer to @Michiel Tack's earlier comment, where he asked for some references that show the symptoms of CCI look something like those of ME/CFS. @Michiel Tack...

Sorry, I nearly missed this post, as I did not receive an alert that my name was @tagged. Yes, of the 55 ME/CFS patients in the survey positive for CCI, 40 of them (73%) have POTS, and 15 (27%) do not.