Search results

In the UK, testing for CMV and EBV is different. If there are questions about viruses it should not be limited to EBV. The outbreaks did not follow the infection pattern of herpesvirus. Enteroviruses are more prevalent in the Summer months so the time of infection is important as well.

This virus is obviously one which mutates easily so I expect that it will be case of getting your covid jag alongside your flu jab every year. People with ME may have to fight to get them in the same way it is for flu. The risks we face from a viral infection needs to be acknowledged by the...

I seem to remember that the Faroes Islands have very high rates. 10% keeps coming to mind but that does seem very high. I was reading a twitter thread about whether MS was once seen as hysterical paralysis where it was said that MS has always been diagnosed by neurologists even before MRIs were...

It was possible at one time to say that vit D problems could be one reason MS is so common in northern latitudes but there number of children with dark skin born in northern latitudes has vastly increased in the last forty years so you would expect them to be particularly susceptible to MS...

The rate of MS in Scotland is very high and the Highland Clearances saw a forced mass emigration to Canada in particular so it could be one explanation. MS has a genetic link in the same way ME does. It is often said that the risk of MS depends on where you spend your childhood so it was no...

I have a biology degree and thinking back to my time and university I was very young and naive. You took notes at lectures then memorised them to pass exams. It was only later that I realised there were some glaring problems. For instance, we were told about spontaneous generation of mice from...

Not that long ago, hysteria started to be seen as being an outrageous, useless idea with no scientific credibility that should be relegated to history. Nowadays it is not only respectable it is in the process of taking over much of medicine. This has been done by a judicious strategy of...

That seems easy to test for.

It is not that they think we are crazy, that would generate a certain sympathy. They think we are neurotic and hysterical adopting illness to get attention and sympathy or to get out of situations we find distasteful, like work and responsibility. Even worse if you have fatigue because you are...

I don't know how good this pacing coach is or if her clients recover but there is a danger with the emphasis on pacing as if it was a treatment. Pacing is just a word used to describe a way of living that people are forced to use to have some life with ME. It can takes years before you can...

I don't think PEM is common enough to have evolved directly as a protective mechanism but it could work that way in practice. Pain and things caused by the effects of our build up of lactic acid as a result of cellular aerobic respiration failure would be the same as from over exercising and...

In a way, POTS is an artificial construct like thyroid problems, anaemia and diabetes. If you have a certain number in the test you have the disease but if you do not you are considered healthy! Yet these numbers are just cut off points which are an average from looking at a large number of...

A long time ago, there was a study done which looked at the hormones involved in water regulation and found differences in diurnal timing in people with ME but it is more anecdote than anything. There has been so little research into the basic symptomology of ME that anecdote is all we have for...

Just seen this thread. Studies from the NIH showed that people with ME/CFS have diastolic heart failure. Dr Cheney had recently needed a heart transplant after systolic heart failure so he was very interested. He tested his patients and found diastolic heart failure in them too. He said that...

POTS is obviously a problem in ME and longcovid but I worry that it is being taken out of context for us. In ME, there is a general dysautonomia (if that is the right word) where the homeostatic control in the body is broken and inefficient. In the ME days it was thought that this was due to...

You are right, I was incorrect. It is a vast improvement from a respected British institution so may be a force for good. I don't believe all longcovid is ME I was just being sarky and annoyed about the thinking we face :) I very much hope it takes hold of medical thinking this time. Half...

The description of a typical patient with ME given by Dr Ramsay was a colleague who managed to work for a few weeks then became ill again. The idea of ME as something where patients never recovered form the initial infection but remained weak and very fatigued for months came with the invention...

The problem with that is most diseases people feel worse with exercise and have a flare up of symptoms. The difference with ME is that the consequences of exercise are different so we have an abnormal response to exercise that is not logical. Walking can make our eyesight go for instance or...

There is no one we know on either side who has diabetes but my grandson developed it when he was 17. Obesity has no connection with type 1 which is not caused by insulin resistance but by the part of the pancreas which secretes insulin being attacked and destroyed by the immune cells. Covid...

You forget that CFS simply requires 6 months of fatigue in the UK and some additional symptoms in the US. By these definitions long covid is the same as CFS. We prefer the name ME/CFS and then many of us just say ME (4 less characters!) so longcovid is ME. It is not right, but it is what we...