Lightning Process - discussion thread

The 2021 NICE ME/CFS Guideline explicitly recommends against the Lightning Process.

@Brian Hughes reacts to the promotion of this therapy by various Royal Colleges of Medicine here: herehttps://thesciencebit.net/2021/10/31/self-styled-medical-leaders-defend-neurolinguistic-processing-as-legit-treatment-for-me-cfs/

As you might guess from its silly name, the Lightning Process is not a standard medical intervention. Rather, it is a commercially marketed, trademarked, three-day personal development seminar, first developed in the UK by an osteopath back in the 1990s. It combines elements of osteopathy (an alternative medicine), life coaching (part of the self-empowerment movement) and neurolinguistic programming (a pseudoscience). Unsurprisingly, it enjoys no scientific basis, no biological plausibility, and no reliable evidence base.

As with many complementary treatments, the Lightning Process is heavily reliant on anecdotal testimony and marketing. But not all has been plain sailing. In 2012, the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that claims made on the official LP website were “likely to mislead” and should be taken down. Another red flag is the guru-like status of LP’s founder, whose name is so personally associated with the “official” form of the therapy that the British Medical Journal described the LP movement as “secretive” and as having a “cultish quality”.
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Nina E. Steinkopf with interesting news from Norway.

The Norwegian Directorate of Health and the Consumer Ombudsman defined LP coaches as practitioners of alternative treatment in 2018.

This year, LP coaches asked the Norwegian Directorate of Health to review that definition. The Directorate complied and stated that LP is not a form of alternative treatment.

However, in a letter to the LP association this autumn the Directorate has again changed their mind and pulls their statement. In short they say it's not their mandate to define what is and what is not alternative treatment.

It seems that in order to assess whether or not LP is to be defined as alternative treatment, someone must submit a report to the police or a complaint to the Consumer Authority.

The Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman and Norway's National Research Center in Complementary and Alternativ Medicine however, both define LP as alternative treatment.

Confused? Me too...

Nina E. Steinkopf: Helsedirektoratet trekker tilbake uttalelse om Lightning Process
google translation: The Norwegian Directorate of Health withdraws statement of Lightning Process
 
strategist said:
If not alternative treatment, what would it be? Quackery? Surely not mainstream medical treatment.
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good question. This is a google translation of the argumentation from the LP association from Nina E. Steinkopf's article:

The decision was based on the LP association's view on the matter: “LP must be regarded as a teaching activity where stress-regulating and performance-enhancing knowledge and techniques are disseminated, which by use can increase the participants' stress management competence and mental resilience. The association shows that the purpose of the teaching is not to alleviate or treat illness, and that such an intention cannot be deduced from the marketing of the course offer on its own website and in the dialogue with the course participants. In the association's view, the LP instructors' activities cannot be assessed on the basis of the marketing of LP in the United Kingdom and Phil Parker's mention of the method as this is not representative of the Norwegian LP activities. ».
 
strategist said:
If not alternative treatment, what would it be?
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What Industry a company is registered as is public info in Norway. Here the most profiled LP coach. Attached Google translate of the central parts.

(Bonus info: education/training could be exempt VAT in Norway. Alternative treatments is 25% VAT.)
 

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Another article from Nina E. Steinkopf who tells the story of a parent of a child who underwent LP. The article was first published in July 2021, but has now been translated into English.

Treating children with the Lightning Process

quote:
It was a scary experience for me as a parent. How bad was it then, for him who had to go through this?

We have made many mistakes as parents – because we wanted to help. Sending him on a LP course is one of the biggest mistakes and has given me a lot of guilt. I consider exposing my child to LP as a form of abuse, sadly.
 
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From Wikipedia page on Simon Singh:
Wikipedia said:
On 19 April 2008, The Guardian published Singh's column "Beware the Spinal Trap",[33][34] an article that was critical of the practice of chiropracticand which resulted in Singh being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA).[35] The article developed the theme of the book that Singh and Edzard Ernst had published, Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial, and made various statements about the lack of usefulness of chiropractic "for such problems as ear infections and infant colic"
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(I’ve also posted these tweets on the NICE guideline stakeholder submissions thread: https://www.s4me.info/threads/nice-...1-discussion-thread.23066/page-12#post-389420)
 
Moved post

Not sure where else to post this, but a Reddit user posted about their experience with LP. Seems pretty typical and in line with others. Medicine making it clear they are still in the dark ages with chronic illness when so many authorities are pushing for this stuff, or are at least fine with it. Completely indefensible, this is brain worms stuff.

Toxic Positivity: My experience of the ‘lightning process’
 
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Merged thread

Toxic Positivity: My experience of the ‘lightning process’

Edit : I've just realised that my post and its title implies that I wrote the reddit post. I want to make it clear that this is not my reddit post! I've never done LP and have no plans to either.

...

Posted on Reddit on 27th Jan 2022

Title : Toxic Positivity: My experience of the ‘lightning process’
Link :

Code: 
 https://www.reddit.com/r/cfs/comments/sebew1/toxic_positivity_my_experience_of_the_lightning/

Against all advice, I decided to give the ‘lightning process’ a go recently, because I really wanted to experience for myself what ‘brain retraining’ really involved and come to my own conclusions about it. I now want to post about my experience so that others can make a more informed decision when deciding whether to try this or one of the other programmes. I apologise in advance for the long post, but I want to be thorough and bring more transparency to what this process really is.

So, I paid £750 for a 3-day course. I was also asked to buy audio files for £20 to listen to that would prepare me for the course. The audio files laid out the ‘science’ behind the process, as well as arguing that others had recovered and so we should prepare to put ourselves into this ‘success group’ and stop thinking that nothing will work. The rest consisted of hopeful stories narrated by women who had miraculous recoveries. One of the girls went shopping after the first day of the course. Another went hiking up a mountain. Ridiculous stuff, but the cumulative effect was to make you feel hopeful that you might experience some gain from the 3 days.
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Post continues - and there are lots of replies - at :

Code: 
https://www.reddit.com/r/cfs/comments/sebew1/toxic_positivity_my_experience_of_the_lightning/
 
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