Lightning Process - discussion thread

What a find most odd here is Dr Flottorp's comment that LP has more than a placebo effect.
As Knoop, White et al pointed out in 2008 (?2007) treatments like CBT and LP are actually designed to work as placebos. They are treatments that are supposed to work by the mode of presentation of the treatment altering the person's beliefs and feelings about their symptoms - as a placebo.

Trying to maximise a placebo effect in this sense is a reasonable aim. My objection to use of placebos is the pretence that you are doing anything more than this and doing it in a dishonest way.

But Dr Flottorp thinks there is more to LP than this. It is as if she is saying that it is not just black magic but real evidence based black magic. Essentially she seems to be admitting that she has been conned just like the patients.
It is mind boggling that this sort of thinking should exist in a public health research institute.
 
LP seems to have occupied an inordinate amount of members' time and energy endlessly discussing what we all agree is a nonsensical and dangerous 'training' program based on very poor understanding of science and shoddy research.

It is a pyramid selling scheme of a snake oil treatment to vulnerable people who are brainwashed and frightened into thinking the reason it doesn't work for them is because of their own inadequacies. Sadly it has also hoodwinked a surprising number of the medical establishment, despite them not actually knowing what goes on in this secretive cult.

I do not in any way criticise individuals who say it has helped them. It may help some people suffering from health anxiety feel more in control of their health, and some people suffering from stresses to learn to learn some relaxation or other techniques they find helpful, but there is no evidence that it has any objective benefit on any physical illness and plenty of anecdotal evidence that it causes harm.

Here are some of the many threads where it is discussed.


Norway:

Lightning Process study underway in Norway

Norway: Opinion piece by prof. Saugstad: Give ME patients help that works

A Messiah in the Norwegian health system? Lightning Process and the Norwegian medical establishment - Blogpost by Nina E. Steinkopf (2019)

LP coach on research, Lightning Process and ME (Norway)


UK SMILE trial - study of LP in children, including a selection of David Tuller's articles and talk:

Smile Trial - Crawley Lightning process trial

BMJ Archives of Diseases in Childhood: ''Editor’s note on correction to Crawley et al. (2018)'', 2019, Nick Brown. (SMILE LP Trial)

Trial By Error: My Talk in Newry, Northern Ireland

Statnews - BMJ should retract flawed research paper on chronic fatigue syndrome -STAT - David Tuller Dec 2019

Trial By Error: An Open Letter to Dr Godlee about BMJ’s Ethically Bankrupt Actions

David Tuller: Trial By Error: Time to Retract the LP Study; Letter to Archives of Disease in Childhood

Trial By Error: The Lightning Process Is “Effective”? Really?

Trial By Error: A Letter to Archives of Disease in Childhood

Letter from parents of children with ME to paediatricians in the UK
"Abuse of ME Patients by Health Care Professionals"

David Tuller: Trial By Error: NICE's Consideration of the Lightning Process

David Tuller: Trial By Error: Professor Crawley’s Bogus BuzzFeed Claims - 17th January 2018

Buzzfeed News - A Controversial Therapy For ME Has Led To Claims Of Death Threats, Harassment, And Pseudoscience

David Tuller, "Trial By Error: My Questions for the Science Media Centre"




And more

Lightning Process- is CFS/ME psychological or physical?

Understanding the Lightning Process Approach to CFS/ME; a Review of the Disease Process and the Approach

Positive Health Online: ME/CFS, NLP and the Lightning Process in the Looking Glass

Thread in the members only forum here

New ruling on Lightning Process from British Advertising Standards Authority

Personal experiences of LP:

Facebookpage: True Stories About Lightning Process (Critical)

Interview with Joan McPartland

Trial By Error: Joan McParland’s Lightning Process Experience (thread also includes other members experiences of LP also)
 
I’ve done it myself, it didn’t work, I managed to speak to him on YouTube of all places to ask why and he just said try again with another practictioner, he didn’t give a shit why it didn’t work he would probably blame me i suppose but there’s not way I was handing over naother £700 but that’s what he would have been hoping for
 
I wonder how many people they have knowledge of for whom it did not work, and maybe were worse off for it? And they never mention ... not good for marketing. Makes you ponder the legality of publishing only one side of the story endorsements, without ever publishing the full picture.
 
They all seem to be the same

Lightning process, mickel, reverse therapy etc

When it doesn’t work they just shut down on you and totally stonewall you

It’s like they don’t want to admit it or accept it which seems bizzare, a lot of them are very well off, for example some of them are actual doctors so I assume they don’t need the money so why can they not just be honest with People?

Even if they was to say it works for 50% people and doesn’t for others and we don’t know why, but they seem incapable of that, it seems almost vital for them to do th eopposite
 
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Barry said:
I wonder how many people they have knowledge of for whom it did not work, and maybe were worse off for it? And they never mention ... not good for marketing. Makes you ponder the legality of publishing only one side of the story endorsements, without ever publishing the full picture.
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Yes it does. Putting up stories of people praising the product while ignoring people who have reported being harmed is I think actually illegal. Problem is, the only way to test this is for someone to file suit. The UK legal system is notoriously suit averse. I don't know how it would work to sue from another country where the LP is offered for sale.
 
Merged thread

"What on Earth is going on?" Homemade documentary on the Lightning Process

I've never come across this before. It seems to be a homemade documentary by a lady whose daughter improved / was 'cured' by the LP. She goes to Norway to film a severe ME patient undertaking the LP from the practitioner who treated her daughter, who has a remarkable turnaround.

It discusses the LP in some detail - though of course it's still quite vague. It even shows the practitioner doing the process, which I've not seen before. Includes an interview with Phil Parker.

I found the imagery and tone of the documentary quite dark and eerie. I think it's worth a watch for a better understanding of the LP.

Of course, I remain completely unconvinced.

 
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It's often hard to understand due to the editing and vagueness in what is being said.

I understood that according to the LP paradigm, ME/CFS is a dysfunction of the fight and flight response and the sympathetic nervous system and that people can reprogram their nervous system by telling it that it's doing the wrong thing when it reacts negatively to something.

By fight and flight response they seem to mean a tension or restlessness in the body.

By reacting negatively they seem to mean having symptoms or noticing that something is wrong in the body.
 
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this endorsement is a bit worrying (although it is from 2015)
SHTM-136x136.jpg

Dr Phil Edwards – Head of Department of Population Health (2008-2015)

Sam tailored and delivered a training day for the personal development of staff in my academic department in summer 2015. I was overwhelmed by the positive responses I subsequently received from a wide range of staff, including junior professional support, research fellows, and senior professors, who all declared the day to have been a tremendous success. Sam is a professional with integrity, sincerity and a big heart, who re-energised us all.
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© Neurologica Practice Ltd.
T +44 (0)203 005 3259


http://www.neurologicapractice.com/testimonials/

eta: this is the professor who wrote the testimonial
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/people/edwards.phil

there is an email address


 
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Agreed @SlySaint I suspect the team involved aren’t aware their comments are being exploited in this way. Among a selection of “the cured” the logo is doing a lot of dubious validation there. Maybe you should email the biobank team to ask them to raise it with their colleagues. Does Parker even have permission to use that logo
 
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NelliePledge said:
Does Parker even have permission to use that logo
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Definitely worth finding out.

If I recall correctly there's a certain emminent psychiatrist who wrote a report on ME on stationary with the WHO logo. I'm a bit vague on the precise details but I believe the institution he worked for was authorized to use the paper but he wasn't. It leant false authority to the document as it made it look like it was written at the WHO's request or endorsed by them, neither being the case.
 
Sarah94 said:
Will Esther Crawley no longer be allowed to conduct her Lightning Process trials?
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dave30th said:
Well the question is whether the Norwegians will still go forward with theirs
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Well, this page is still up on the Bristol University site:

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/academic-child-health/research/research/cfsme/lightning-process/


"Lightning Process


This project seeks to define and describe the Lightning Process® (a commercially-available complementary intervention) compared to specialist medical care for paediatric CFS/ME, with a view to identifying potential mechanisms of action, and seek funding for a full-scale trial.

Research Team: Dr Emma Anderson, Dr Lucy Beasant, Dr Rebecca Barnes, Dr Nicola Mills, Professor Esther Crawley

The Lightning Process®(LP) is a commercially-available complementary intervention based on Neurolinguistic Programming, Life coaching and Osteopathy. The SMILE trial1,2,3 demonstrated that adolescents with CFS/ME were more likely to improve with LPplus specialist medical care (SMC) compared to SMC alone. We need greater understanding of the LP and how it may benefit patients, looking for potential mechanisms of action that may improve SMC. The aims of this project are to:

  • Define LP in the context of established/evidence-based therapies (e.g. CBT/behavioural therapies)
  • Analyse practitioner-patient interactions within LP sessions, seeking distinctiveness from SMC sessions (using SMILE Trial recordings)
  • Apply for a full-scale trial of LP vs CBT for paediatric CFS/ME
This work is funded by the Linbury Trust.

Centre for Academic Child Health



 
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