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I can’t believe that anyone launching a serious lobbying campaign would rope in the Daily Express. Probably just a function of a very small news desk’s stochastic selection process for published papers to fill in the space between Diana, meteorological scares, and Brexiteering.

I’m not sure that’s fair. A lot of papers are written for a very small community of practitioners who share the same terms of reference. That doesn’t mean that the authors are deliberately trying to exclude muggles, or to show off to them, or to obscure a lack of real insight. It just means that...

John Diamond’s memoir, C, based on his Times columns, is particularly good on the language of bravery and struggle against cancer. Your blogs are reminding me of it.

Which is why empirical research beats lazy assumptions. I withdraw the comment. I’m just very grateful for the anecdata obtained from my wife and daughters’ caring over the last year.

There may be specific annoyances for men with ME, but gender norms being what they are, people with chronic illnesses are likely much better off with wives than with husbands.

Yep, hence the Groucho club.

Without the scientific or medical background to tell duff arguments from good ones, the kicker for me was when the author mentioned near the end that he was himself an ME sufferer. When the perfect research paper is written, which ties together all the symptoms and potentially involved factors...

Classic case of repressed trauma.

When I was offered the choice to download it in a variety of front page colours, I didn’t expect the content to be as thorough, detailed and sensible as it was.

Yep, true, still some fun stuff, and although I walked away with a philosophy degree thirty years ago assuming it would never prove relevant or helpful, it’s recently proved quite useful when playing expertise top trumps on anything from AI ethics to VR.

That slice of Plato, in the context of a thread which shows the domain of pain being held captive by psychologists whose main interest is “pain beliefs”, makes me think of the extraordinary range of subjects which philosophers got to play with in their glory days, before physics and...

Must admit, I never liked exercise even before I became intolerant to it, but I do know a chap who identifies as having PVFS, and who occasionally succumbs to temptation, goes to the gym and then feels wretched, in the same way that a normal human might lapse with cakes and bacon sandwiches.

The Hockey cited is a tome called “The Psychology of Fatigue”. Depressing stuff.

There’s something a little perturbing about subreddits getting very excited about nootropics that other nootropics subreddits are simply too square and conventional to even imagine. A quick look at r/nootropicsfrontline doesn’t assuage that disquiet much.

Brachiating from tree to tree is the answer. That’s what our anatomy is designed for, and we’re clearly unsuited to walking on hind legs, whether because of boring biomechanical issues like pressure on spinal discs, or more floridly Freudian reasons like bipedal anxiety which presents somatically.

He spoke at a conference they organised on mental health, keynoting with an “overview and update” of MH. The presentation he delivered is no longer available on the conference mini-site, but neither are those of the other speakers. I’ve produced conferences in my time and I’ve been married to a...

Subtle, but bang on.

A point made in the conclusion is the one which immediately came to mind when reading the thread title. Furthermore, as women are thought to seek help earlier in their disease process than men, they may present with more atypical complaints in general practice. These pose a challenge to...

I don’t know what the guidelines currently are in the Netherlands, but is there any value in making representations to the ethics committees which permit this sort of research? This sort of statement, for instance, would presumably have informed the original proposals: Persistent somatic...

Not even sure if that makes it more sensible. Some traumas probably shouldn’t be reframed as stand up routines.