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Sorry, I missed your post here. Please move my two above posts to that thread if you think it's appropriate. Though I think those comments are also pertinent to this thread too.

I agree, eventually you have to examine each idea proposed during the brainstorming mode in the cold light of day, when you are in a more down-to-Earth and critical mood. I remember reading about a theoretical physicist with bipolar: during the manic stage of his condition, when had the...

Yes unfortunately hurt feelings are sometimes an unavoidable consequence of a rigorous skeptical investigation into a scientific hypothesis or empirical study. And certainly eventually all science needs to be scrutinized under a skeptical light. However, when a new scientific or observation...

What I have seen so far is also not very scientific, and I am not talking about Jen and Jeff's story, but the responses to it on this thread. Science moves forward through curiosity, receptivity, enthusiasm, imagination, creative lateral thinking, which results in hypothesis creation and...

I think you might have misread that: on the PR poll as it stands, 18 have tested positive for CCI/AAI, and 11 tested negative. Total of 29 people. I agree. At the beginning of this year @Mattie and I were briefly discussing the idea of creating a database of ME/CFS patients who have been...

Well here is a professional physical therapy and chiropractic table which can apply cervical traction, and it uses pretty much the same system as the over-the-door traction devices. Although there are also tables like this one which have a slightly more sophisticated-looking traction device.

I am not suggesting any ME/CFS patient should try an over-the-door traction device. What I am suggesting is that a study could be conducted which uses an MRI to detect CCI/AAI and any other spinal conditions, and then where appropriate applies neck traction to see if certain symptoms such as...

Saying "a very small minority" may be mischaracterizing the stats. So far out of 20 ME/CFS patients tested by MRI with flexion, extension and rotational views, over 90% were found to have CCI/AAI. Now, at this stage it's not clear if those 20 individuals constitute a random sample of ME/CFS...

It would be interesting to conduct a simple study examining whether ME/CFS patients when placed under neck traction experience instant remission from POTS. This I believe occurred with Jen and Jeff. Traction is an easy thing to do: you can even buy over-door neck traction devices on Amazon for...

I imagine a virus might affect connective tissue in various parts of the body, depending on which organs get infected; but when it happens to affect the connective tissue in this critical part of the spine where it connects to the skull, perhaps that's when CCI/AAI arises. I found it very...

I would doubt a fluoroquinolone connection to CCI/AAI in the general case, but it's possible there could be a subset with CCI/AAI who already had some ligament weakening due to fluoroquinolones which exacerbated the issue.

I thought it was ligament degradation that caused CCI/AAI, rather than it being a bone thing? EDIT: Ah, I see from this article that there can be other causes for CCI/AAI:

Note: I just edited my above post to include a point (4).

What I am speculating is something along these lines: (1) You catch a viral infection, and perhaps initially develop post-viral fatigue, which as we know often clears up on its own after 6 months or so, presumably as the virus is slowly cleared from the body tissues. (2) But during this...

It does seem implausible. But what if the CCI/AAI only appears a little later in the course of the ME/CFS disease, as a consequence of ME/CFS? Once patients receive the ME/CFS diagnosis, they probably are not going to get much further medical attention in terms of MRIs etc. How could ME/CFS...

That's an interesting idea! It might be worthwhile conducting a poll asking all those 20 ME/CFS patients who have tested positive for CCI/AAI whether they had a substantial course of fluoroquinolones in previous years.

I agree that there is much uncertainty about the significance of the finding that 90% of these ME/CFS patients have CCI/AAI. Even if we assume these patients genuinely have CCI/AAI, it's not clear if the CCI/AAI might be a cause or consequence of ME/CFS. I guess this can only be known for sure...

It's good to enumerate risks, costs and uncertainties involved in such surgery as you have done. A couple of points though: That's true, the range of motion is usually substantially reduced. But Jeff said here: I am not sure if we can say that at this point. Jeff said that out of 20 or so...

OK, that's interesting. I understood it took many months for your ME/CFS symptoms in general to disappear after surgery (although Jeff's disappeared after only a few weeks), but I did not realize that the PEM symptom disappeared immediately post surgery. The first thing that comes to mind is...

Glad it raised a smile. I was in a playful mood when I wrote it! The jury is still out on that. There are researchers who discount viral theories of ME/CFS, but others who pursue them.