Long Covid-19 and an effective lightning process intervention: A case study, 2024, Arroll et al.

SNT Gatchaman

SNT Gatchaman

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Long Covid-19 and an effective lightning process intervention: A case study
Older A; Moir F; Jenkins E; Arroll B

Early treatment using mind-body interventions may be indicated for patients with Long Covid-19. It helps if the patient is open to it being a mind-body condition that can get better.

CASE PRESENTATION
53-year-old European woman who was COVID-19 positive on a RAT test for 13 days; solo parent and breadwinner for family; physically very fit. The main symptoms of the patient: are brain fog, extreme fatigue, breathlessness and shaky when standing or moving, even minimally.

The main clinical findings: Normal physical examination.

The main diagnoses and interventions: The diagnosis was probable Long Covid-19 and the intervention was the three half-day Lightning Process sessions via Zoom.

The main outcomes: Many of her viral symptoms disappeared, as did the brain fog, and she was able to start riding her push bike, exercising and driving within a few days of therapy.

CONCLUSIONS
For many patients, this case raises the issue that so-called Long Covid-19 is likely to be a mind-body condition. The process of how the symptoms of acute Covid transform to become Long COVID-19 is assessed using the Bayesian Predictive Coding Model (BPCM). In this case, the Lightning Process showed benefits from the first day of intervention. Early intervention, as in this case, may prevent deconditioning when symptoms persist and complicate the clinical picture.

PDF (Open Journal of Clinical and Medical Case Reports)
 
The LP is effective in other post-viral fatigue conditions, and CBT is effective for Long Covid-19. While the whole response could be a placebo response, the more likely explanation is that Long Covid-19 is a condition that can be helped with mind-body interventions. LP is often criticised as being <<commercial>>, and it would be good if it could be publically funded.
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Association is not causation, but more so cooccurrence is not association.

Otherwise you just need to try lots of different coloured socks when buying lottery tickets to identify the lucky pair that will mean you win big. Unfortunately the human psyche is primed to look out for cooccurrence and the Lightning Process preselection is designed to pick out those most likely to believe that represents causation.
 
Also I notice that as my illness improves, I also become more able to try new things. Like self-help courses or sports. So it's possible that people tend to be attracted to LP at a point in time where they're on a trajectory of improvement, perhaps in the process of recovery or just experiencing fluctuations in the illness. Even a very consistent association between LP and subsequent recovery could be meaningless.
 
Hoopoe said:
Also I notice that as my illness improves, I also become more able to try new things. Like self-help courses or sports. So it's possible that people tend to be attracted to LP at a point in time where they're on a trajectory of improvement, perhaps in the process of recovery or just experiencing fluctuations in the illness. Even a very consistent association between LP and subsequent recovery could be meaningless.
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I think this is probably also behind the recovered patient exercise gurus advocating their particular exercise programs that we regularly see in ME. As they recover they can do more exercise and they then see the trajectory of increasing activity as a consequence of their specific activity choice.
 
I think in a case like this where the patient is the author of a case study of a commercial product, it is worthwhile considering what motivations the person might have in writing about their experience. For example, were they paid to produce the account, or do they benefit in some other way?
 
This is ridiculous, the patient didn't have long Covid, she had about 7 weeks prolonged recovery from acute covid then got better.

Many of the people I know who have had Covid have a similar period of a few weeks or months of symptoms then recover without needing mind body mumbo jumbo. Long Covid is usually not diagnosed until at least 12 weeks post infection, and even then most recover without treatment within a year or two.

If this is all they can find to advertise LP, it's looking pretty pathetic. How can clinicians like Bruce Arroll be so gullible.
 
Hoopoe said:
Also I notice that as my illness improves, I also become more able to try new things. Like self-help courses or sports. So it's possible that people tend to be attracted to LP at a point in time where they're on a trajectory of improvement, perhaps in the process of recovery or just experiencing fluctuations in the illness. Even a very consistent association between LP and subsequent recovery could be meaningless.
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I'll paste what I previously said on the forum:
forestglip said:
It sounds a lot like some experiences in my own life. There have been times of severe depression/anxiety ebbing and flowing in my life. At times, I'd start some new mental habit that seems like it'd be helpful, stuff like "focus on the sounds around you as much as possible because it's something easy to focus on, and if you're focusing on that, you can't be focusing on anxiety". And I'd start feeling better and better.

Only later did I realize it was the other way around. I was actually slowly feeling better for some other reason, which gave me the motivation to try some mental health habits. I reversed the causality by mistake. And I was sure of it when the next times I'd fall into a depression, my miracle habits didn't work.
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I'll say that it's very hard to notice that you're doing an activity because you've already improved a small bit, and not the other way around, and I can see why someone would be absolutely sure it healed them if they stay well afterwards and can't test their theory.
 
forestglip said:
I'll paste what I previously said on the forum:


I'll say that it's very hard to notice that you're doing an activity because you've already improved a small bit, and not the other way around, and I can see why someone would be absolutely sure it healed them if they stay well afterwards and can't test their theory.
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Completely. Same this is way more obvious, but when my health improved, I thought “wow, now that I don’t track my symptoms anymore I feel so much better”. The reason I lost motivation to track my symptoms, was… because they weren’t bothing me as much anymore.
 
Didn't read the paper, the abstract alone passed my tolerance threshold for unwarranted leaps of logic. Plus I see no need to give the authors a buzz by upping the download stats for their paper
Hutan said:
I think in a case like this where the patient is the author of a case study of a commercial product, it is worthwhile considering what motivations the person might have in writing about their experience. For example, were they paid to produce the account, or do they benefit in some other way?
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I wouldn't bet against having yet another LP practitioner in NZ soon. Maybe the first author, maybe Arroll himself. I seem to recall him saying somewhere he had done some partial training in the LP himself, maybe in preparation for that public funding he'd like to see? All speculation but somebody must have made quite an investment
Publication charges for each manuscript is 2000 USD
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https://jclinmedcasereports.com/publication-charges.html

I would bet on Arroll including this on his list of published papers with which to vow unsuspecting audiences next time he pushes the LP at a GP conference (and never mind the dubious quality of all of those papers, which GP is gonna check, right?). Though it'll be interesting to see whether he'll highlight his own name in search of glory or focus on the first author so as to maintain his own carefully construed image of independent, neutral, wise old head so he can meddle more easily behind the scenes

I would also bet on his Otago mates Wilson and Dunbar citing this paper in any future articles

I would further bet on his Scandinavian mates citing this paper in their publications

And round and round the circle goes, feeding on itself

Also worth noting, the journal here is on Beall's list of potential predatory journals. Certainly their peer review wasn't exactly rigorous in this instance
 
The patient is 53 years old, female, of European descent. She is a solo parent of a teenager and works full-time as a communications manager at a tertiary institution in New Zealand.
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This information, together with the author's name, is incredibly and completely identifying, especially in a small country. I'm astonished that people around this woman didn't stop her revealing so much. I can't help but feel that she has been taken advantage of by promoters of the Lightning Process and/or the psychosomatic paradigm. As I noted before, presumably she felt that the benefits, immediate and/or prospective, were worth it.
 
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