BBC: Long Covid course [LP] is ‘exploiting people’, says ex-GB rower, 2024, article and radio program

SNT Gatchaman said:
Good to see that Long Covid is clearly not due to deconditioning then.
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:rofl:
BBC audio item said:
He also told me he believes Long Covid is physical and that the Lightning Process is not about changing mindset. Instead, he said it is about using the brain to influence positive physiological changes in the body.
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Unless of course Rachel Whitfield's powerful brain instantly overcame the deconditioning? (In which case, GET seems rather superfluous.)
 
RaviHVJ said:
This makes them sound like a lifestyle cult
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Sounds like, because it is.
rvallee said:
What about from people who are medically qualified? Saying the exact same thing? Publishing research saying the exact same thing? Clinically advising the exact same thing? With the same intent and purpose? Officially? With consequences, for insurance and disability? Valid expert opinion in a court of law?

What about then? Because the "carefully managed" bit is complete red herring. There is no such thing, it makes absolutely no difference and may as well say that it's "supervised by Santa Claus". Comments like this actually show how significant the problem is, because they give weight to the same lie using different words. This is exactly what the PACE-type ideologues have been saying for years, with the same intent and purpose. They keep using the No true Scotsman fallacy and almost no one cares, it's an accepted fallacy here.

What's worse is that it's written explicitly in those terms. This "asking patients to exercise just on the idea that they've changed their mindset about it" is exactly the premise of PACE, and PACE is the foundation of the entire treatment model. The problem isn't just LP, it's the profession that has lost its way. Even the worrying about symptoms is core to the official CBT+GET model, and to the generic psychosomatic rehabilitation model.

Actually there is a way to read this that basically means that doing LP is problematic, but doing CBT+GET is fine, even though they're basically the same thing. Which is basically one expert criticizing pseudoscience on some basis, who then promotes the same pseudoscience in the same sentence, even though it features the same problems.
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Worth repeating.

This is just a turf war between the fringe and officially approved mainstream versions of pseudo-science. The underlying content is not fundamentally different.
 
Sean said:
This is just a turf war between the fringe and officially approved mainstream versions of pseudo-science. The underlying content is not fundamentally different.
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I'm not seeing much of a turf war.

We saw the UK Royal Colleges submitting comments in favour of the Lightning Process. And the Lightning Process is being trialled in the NHS.

Here in NZ, we have an ongoing battle with the Royal College of GPs, who are promoting the Lightning Process at every opportunity - at their training events, in education content for GPs. It's been used in publicly funded rehabilitation clinics.

It's all just one big morass of pseudoscience. And the doctors in charge don't seem to be remotely embarrassed. I guess it says clearly what they think of us - any old placebo will do to get us abandoning our false illness beliefs.
 
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:rofl: 'neurobollocks' :rofl: High five to Prof Nord. I hope that word makes it into the Oxford dictionary this year!

This is basically 'mindfulness' in a CFS/ME Clinic in 2011 in the South West, but without the A3 sheet of paper. You can see now why Crawley did the Lightening Process study, the fact that she was funded for it points to a policy of denial of clinical investigations and denial of healthcare dating all the way back to the opening of these CFS/ME clinics and beyond. How much harm has that caused since 2002, at the very least?

untitled (meresearch.org.uk) Breakthrough newsletter from 2008
 
JTJ
Hutan said:
At around 9 minutes, about the Lightning Process:

"In fact, it's currently being piloted by one NHS Health Centre in Scotland. The Centre for Integrative Care in Glasgow offers both conventional and alternative therapies, including homeopathy. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said the Lightning Process was being assessed until this autumn and a report would follow."
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Trish said:
It was mentioned in the radio program. It's the NHS hospital in Scotland that does alt med like homeopathy.
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NHS Centre for Integrative Care - NHSGGC concentrates on integrated care for long term conditions, which of course includes ME/CFS

Under the tab Mindfulness and Meditation you'll find the only scan we'll ever receive. I can't even spare the energy to look up what 'Mistletoe Therapy' is.
 
Didn’t the LP people also claim LP was being ‘used’ under the NHS banner somewhere in the English Midlands, though I don’t think it was established where or in what circumstance?
 
Good blog post by Edzard Ernst in response.
https://edzardernst.com/2024/05/alm...ightning-process-no-please-dont-i-was-joking/

'Let me try to summarise:
  • The LP is promoted as a cure for long-Covid.
  • There is no evidence that LP is effective for it.
  • The claim is that it has been shown to work for ME.
  • There is no evidence that LP is effective for it.
  • A 3-day course costs £1 000.
  • Their website claims it is good for practically everyone.
Does anyone think that LP or its promoters are remotely serious?'
 
JemPD said:
lol in radio programme - only managed the 1st 30 mins or so....
Prof Nord says

"I'm afraid now we've strayed very very far from neuroscience, <laughs> its what i would call 'neurobollocks' a kind of abuse of neuroscientific terms"

fantastic :rofl:

this has been a good week for funny terms "biopsychosauruses" - (was that you @Barry? & now 'neurobollocks'

Edited: i'd mistakenly said Dr Cambridge when i meant the dr *from* Cambridge, i believe her name was Prof Nord... honestly if you're going to quote someone Jem the least you can do is get there name right! my brain is all over the place, thinking through treacle :D
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Ridicule is an awfully powerful weapon against people who claim the ridiculous and are reliant on faith. I'm definitely gonna keep using these two terms. I saw a third one somewhere in this thread but have forgotten what it was.

There are so many angles you could ridicule them from.
 
I thought the program was good. Phil Parker came across as a paranoid conspiracy theorist (or at least trying to appeal to that demographic) with his 'anti-recovery activists' line. I'm very grateful to Oonagh for speaking out.

I wondered if the program could have drawn attention to the way that encouraging people to speak as though they are better (using positive language) creates significant difficulty when it comes to discerning the effectiveness of the program. People are effectively being coached to say they're well in order to be well; so if you ask them if they're well, and they want to be well, they may say that they're well, even if they're not.

I don't know about the LP but other similar programs encourage people to share their 'recovery story' as a step towards healing, as though the act of sharing a recovery story will itself lead to further recovery (handily also providing free PR for the company). I think people want to be liked and part of the 'recovery gang' and to be a 'good participant'. There's also often a heavy push for people to train as 'coaches' themselves which appears a great option for many who have been unable to work because of illness because it's flexible, work from home, doesn't require any qualifications. But of course you need to have recovered yourself to be a coach so you have to share your recovery story, even if you're not actually fully recovered. (Then you pay the company extra money to train as a 'coach' so good for them all round.)

But there probably wasn't time to include all of that in the program. And maybe elements were there for listeners to notice. Also, I guess they can't undermine the statements of the participants on the program. That one woman who'd had LC for a relatively short time, and had been able to walk inside her house but not outside, definitely seemed to have been helped. Whether or not she still had LC at the point at which she did the LP, we'll never know.
 
Tia said:
That one woman who'd had LC for a relatively short time, and had been able to walk inside her house but not outside,
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It's quite telling that she said that as if it meant LC is all in the mind, whereas if you have fatigue/pain + dyautonomia + brainfog then of course it's easier to walk around in a familiar space with short distances between easily accessible resting spots than it is to walk outside where there are fewer or none of those things.
 
Tia said:
I don't know about the LP but other similar programs encourage people to share their 'recovery story' as a step towards healing, as though the act of sharing a recovery story will itself lead to further recovery (handily also providing free PR for the company).
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This is also true for LP, at least it was. We have a case in Norway where a participant said on a TV interveiew she was well, but later she said she had been told to do this as part of her recovery. I think the LP practioner was with her in the interview and they discussed recovery. I don't remember where her "I'm didn't recover" story is online, do you remember this @Kalliope ?
 
JohnTheJack said:
Good blog post by Edzard Ernst in response.
https://edzardernst.com/2024/05/alm...ightning-process-no-please-dont-i-was-joking/

'Let me try to summarise:
  • The LP is promoted as a cure for long-Covid.
  • There is no evidence that LP is effective for it.
  • The claim is that it has been shown to work for ME.
  • There is no evidence that LP is effective for it.
  • A 3-day course costs £1 000.
  • Their website claims it is good for practically everyone.
Does anyone think that LP or its promoters are remotely serious?'
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I left a comment pointing out how the LP and similar 'brain retraining' programs are routinely promoted by MDs, and that it's largely identical to the CBT+GET model, making it impossible to criticize.

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