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Something that came up on PR: can long-lasting neural patterns form in response to immune activation events, resulting in symptoms, which then responds to future immune signals? Something like a "sickness behaviour habit" in response to even a small level of a cytokine or whatever. It doesn't...

The problem for images of ME is that many (most?) of us look completely normal. Many of us have been told by our doctors and others that we look fine. I was told by one GP that I was his healthiest-seeming patient. If you post a picture of someone flopped down listlessly, you can't tell if...

Somewhere in my 20's, I noticed that whenever I ate an orange or drank OJ, a couple of days later I'd feel cold symptoms coming on: just a sneeze or two and that feeling of a viral infection coming on, and it would be gone a day or so later. Really insignificant symptoms, but a reliable...

True. For example, if the theory involved a small change in synapse function somewhere in the brain, a drug that alters brain-wide synapse function could test whether that affects the symptom severity. You would of course want to test safe drugs. What's a bit of safe hallucinating in the name...

No tender lymph nodes in my 24 years of ME.

The problem is that ME's mechanism may not be observable with present technology.

I admit that was my first thought. I think it's likely that ME's mechanism involves something that doesn't exist in plants (astrocytes, for example). It's not impossible for an understanding of plant biology to trigger an idea about mammalian biology. I think it's more likely that someday...

Who claim to be in remission. Your question is how to verify such claims, so you should be careful to use proper terms to distinguish between unproven claims and actual proven remissions. Until we have a reliable diagnostic test for ME, it's not really possible to verify remissions.

There's also the possibility that the abnormality isn't on the scale of a wire carrying high current vs no current; it could be a fairly subtle set of changes, with a high level of background signals. Furthermore, it's unlikely to be the exact same wiring pattern in the exact same place in all...

I think of ME's mechanism as a complex feedback loop, possibly involving multiple parts of the body (brain, gut, maybe other squishy bits), which in turn can be represented by a very complex mathematical equation. Changing even one of those many factors, by a microbial infection or other means...

Is that "includes" or "can include". Is there a set of symptoms for PEM that applies to 100% of people, or does it vary with the individual?

When I glanced at the entry, I thought it was posted in the psychosomagic forum.

Feedback loops can get locked into a state. In digital circuits, one "memory element" is a flip-flop, which is a bistable positive feedback loop. In mathematical terms, I think what you mean by "purely reactive" is an equation of first order (derivative = a scalar?). When you have higher...

Does that fit with abrupt switching of state (ME 100%, then 0%, then 100% again)?

People wonder why there's no clear evidence of abnormalities causing ME symptoms. This sort of undiscovered complexity is likely why. I expect there's some abnormality, such as nanoscopic structures on astrocyte processes, or the number of molecules in vesicles travelling short distances, that...

Lots more still to learn about how the body works. Yesterday I read about Queuosine, an important molecule for RNA transcription, which it seems was largely ignored because no one could figure out how it got into cells. Does ME involve some subsystem that hasn't been studied properly yet...

The paper on the hypothalmic heat sensor seems to be about temperature regulation, but not about perception of temperature, which might be different. I'm guessing there are other neurons involved in perceiving skin temperature and internal temperature. In short, we don't understand how it...

I think it's less the intent of the medical system and more the intent of "professionals" whose careers and income depends on convincing people of whichever beliefs. It seems no different from religions or other belief systems that claim to provide luck, good health, seeing the future, etc. I...

Too difficult to measure important factors in living brains. Also, brains are very complex, so there are a lot of potential factors involved. Furthermore, the abnormalities could be limited to just a few brain cells, and the measurable factors could be limited in range and time frame. Imagine...

I wonder if anyone has checked for muscle activity in resting PWME. I'm imagining some signals causing the muscle cells to contract randomly; enough to qualify as exercise, but not enough firing together to move limbs noticeably.