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I was very skeptical about such claims but since these cases apparently exist only in Sweden and are not isolated events local factors must play a part in the development of this illness.

He's testing the waters, seeing how much psychologization he can get away with. What he says about support groups is close to claiming mass hysteria, but expressed so that he can always deny this interpretation should he be attacked for it.

I recognize a kind of reaction to physical exertion that has a short delay, perhaps 20-40 minutes. This is not PEM but I think a combination of muscle fatigueability and the cumulative effects of orthostatic intolerance. Orthostatic intolerance doesn't necessarily begin immediately (unless it's...

It makes the BPS approach look like an emotionally-based belief system in search for confirmation.

The ME/CFS community tends to be too quick to assume that someone didn't have ME/CFS because some other medical problem was found. There is no reason to believe that someone cannot have ME/CFS and other health problems. It actually seems to be the norm. The concept of CFS as exclusionary...

The rs identification codes refer to variants only. A variant is something that only a minority of people have.

Did she really say no research necessary? That would be unbelievably irresponsible.

One could unironically argue that the best healthcare system for ME is in countries that neglect treatment but do recognize ME and have a research program for it. I'm not sure that such countries exist.

Rumor is that Garner will receive funding for a clinical trial of GET for long covid. What a disaster.

Some were just uncaring but most were probably trying to balance the economic harm of lockdowns versus the risk of the illness and their calculations didn't consider the possibility of postinfectious syndromes in the younger population. In the first months, the narrative was that of an illness...

In my opinion, a lot. ME/CFS and other illnesses would have been researched more without the MUS belief system (which explicitly says that no disease is present). Even if no progress had been made in understanding the biology well enough to do anything, the risk of long covid would have been...

This is just brilliant. The rest of the article is very good too. It goes to the heart of the problem of what went wrong with ME/CFS and so many other illnesses: MUS and the associated belief system.

I see little chance of an actually well designed clinical trial. The risk of a reliable study producing evidence of lack of efficacy will make other people uncomfortable.

Perhaps the researchers want confirmation for their ideas from patients. They want to be feel useful and make a difference. Perhaps they don't realize, being immersed in their academic culture, that their ideas are often ugly prejudice, easily shown to be wrong, and not insightful and brilliant...

The authors seem to have poor knowledge of ME/CFS. Looking at the abstract, they fail to propose the obvious explanation: patients have exertion intolerance and orthostatic intolerance and so they don't leave home much. The internet is a way to connect to the outside world. The other...

I'm in my 30's, my neighbor in her 60's. We sometimes walk together. The last time I observed that initially I'm the one with apparently better cardiovascular fitness and strength, as seen by her breathing heavily while walking uphill and being a little slower. But she can keep going, while my...

Psychosomatic medicine seems to be a continuation of the ancient belief that illness is a punishment from God for sinning and moral weakness. At some point God and the punishment was removed from the explanatory model. What we consider sins (undesirable behaviour) and moral weakness also...

I suspect that Garner is also confused by the unpredictability of his illness. It's difficult to predict PEM precisely. He predicted PEM, exercised and it didn't happen so he thought that his mental attitude allowed him to prevent PEM. I also see in myself that as the illness fluctuates, during...

Garner seems to be cognitively impaired in some way. His ideas contradict each other and he doesn't seem to realize it. He says we should take people's lived experience into account, but he also thinks patients are wrong to reject "the mind-body connection" and "exercise therapy" and that he...