ME/CFS Alert - Llewellyn King interviews Ron Tompkins. October 2019

The volume of the sound drops considerably at 16:12. You're not imagining it.

 

I have only watched ten minutes so far but am pleased the sound quality so far is improved
Also I find it encouraging that we now have interest from a team with neuroimaging as a focus. Hopefully we will get neuroinflammation or not demonstrated soon.

 

Hi, Trish - you've misspelt Tompkins in the title - might make it harder to find.

 

I have to say I'm always put-off by the default of the idea that me/cfs is 'stress of any kind unresolved'. I wasn't stressed emotionally or physically when I became sick. I just gradually developed me/cfs over several months going about my business.

Eventually I did get a big flu, but I was already so fatigued and out of it, if I didn't catch that thing I would've caught something else the next week or the week after.

I can't help but think that retrospectively looking back to any three month period and a good chunk of people will find some major stressor and try to understand the illness through that framework.

I know some people do get it after a major infection, but I just think the assumption that stress is at it's core doesn't really resonate with me and is unsuitably vague of overstretched.

 

Dreampop stress and stressors mean different things to different people a stressor for your body immune system would likely mean a viral attack or other severe injury to some members of the medical profession but others might think of emotional stress . confounding language is a bane to all in science and basic communication . of course confounding language is the hallmark of politicians and psychologists all the better to bamboozle us .

 

I get it, that's why i'm saying, there was no particular stressor of any kind, I just gradual became ill. It wasn't a stressful period, I wasn't overworked, no infection etc.. it was quite a nice time in my life, certainly no more than any unremarkable period in anyone's life. I suspect that's true for a number of us.