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Depression in advanced cancer, or any cancer, I wonder how much is due to having to put on a brave front. CBT which tries to change the patient's cognitions does not seem very appropriate. We all know how bad it is with ME and it must be worse with terminal disease. You can't tell people close...

I think the confusion is that they are no longer treating added anxiety, depression etc. That used to be the case but now they have decided that the body expresses emotional distress, not just by anxiety and depression, but by producing physical problems like headaches, IBS and all the MUS...

I think being told it would stop the progression of your cancer over the telephone every day might help you eat more! Though feeling rotten and ill makes it hard to get and prepare vegetables. I would eat lots more vegetables if they did not have to be peeled and cooked. Ready prepared stuff can...

The 1980s saw ME begin to be taken seriously as an organic disease There was a lot of research being done that would have borne fruit if he had kept his mitts off it. Note the sly dig of patients being offered "rest". He kept insisting that complete bedrest was not good for patients and he was...

Basic biology is very similar among mammals and anything which is the same in flies and mice is relevant to us. This is the sort of research that can lead to new ideas about ME that could be more accurate than we have. It is whether anything that helps mice would help us that is more doubtful.

I think they are saying that colonisation with pseudomonas even if it is not actually causing infection can still impact exercise capacity and be causing damage to the lungs. It is an important finding for a terrible disease but has no relevance for us as far as I can see. Though when I think...

This is the frustration of having ME. For over 50 years I have had episodes where I cannot move voluntarily. It is very embarrassing when people notice and I can't tell them that I will be fine, but more usually I can be in a room full of people and no one notices. A distressing personal report...

This is important because it is a good example of the wider problem with the BPS MUS, FND etc school of thought. It is a banal soundbite that seems profound and meaningful at first glance but is deeply problematic when you give it some thought. Too many statements about disease are of this...

a beautifully succinct description. I do not see how it is possible to do this. Can the subconscious make a decision like that? The addition of "subconsciously" here seems like a weasel word so they can insist they are not blaming the patient but what they really mean is that the patient is...

It is difficult to talk about FND because it is a mess. You can't disagree with what they say it is because they can't be pinned down to anything in particular. The lists from Dx Revision Watch are the clearest I have ever seen but that is not how they talk about it in papers or to patients...

These are good points but the situation is not so simple. When Stone wrote his first FND papers there were lots of caveats especially with movement disorders. As he has become more secure in his beliefs these have disappeared yet movement disorders are very complicated. MS may be easily...

The cynic in me wonders how many of these "retired" senior staff are now doing lucrative work in the private sector as CBT is rolled out as the answer for everything.

What is in my mind is the things I have to do as a duty which would once have been a pleasure. Things like ordering presents for my family at Christmas which I did because I wanted to do it and because I know from experience that when I have had to stop doing something it is gone forever. It...

There is no value in this sort of review. There have not been enough (any!) proper Rcts to do a systematic review. It is the wrong place to look for any interesting data and looks like something made up to get a grant rather than anything done for the benefit of patients.

This is interesting. That definition exactly matches what happens with ME, no pleasure or reward just pain and illness, in fact it is a cost, the opposite of reward. I know that isn't what they mean, but their definition is not exact, is it, so you can see why some doctors insist we are...

That is not the way it works. I understand what you are saying and don't disagree with what you mean but it is a way of saying things that is used against us. "Our unconscious mind does exist so Freud's theories of hysteria are partially true" The miasma theory of disease was completely wrong...

It shows that microbes have a massive arsenal of tricks to fool our immune system so they can invade and hijack our biology. We find more and more as technology gets better. This fact alone discredits MUS as it is used as a disease category and refutes the idea that psychological processes are...

I do not understand much about the details of the biology or statistics in these studies, but I do wonder if some of the results are not as dramatic as they might be because people with ME, have had to find compensatory mechanisms to be able to function at all. Even away from the cell biology...

It is being a bit picky, I know what you meant Spinoza577, but Dr Lily Chu, who is an authority on PEM, makes the distinction between post exertional fatigue and post exertional malaise which is what we experience with the delay, long lasting effects, immune activation etc. She is trying to get...

This is true, but distorts the facts. The risk of opioid prescribing is that some people use them to deal with other problems in their lives so take higher and higher doses. If they had not been prescribed them in the first place, it would never have happened. So over prescribing and giving them...