ME/CFS SKeptic: A new blog series on the dark history of psychosomatic medicine

[Sean]

I knew somebody who early in adulthood developed extreme RA, to the point where by his early 30s his body was seriously deformed, he suffered constant serious pain, needed full time care, and had his legs amputated because they were useless and just causing him serious problems.

Psychosomatic, my arse.

 

[bobbler]

Merged thread

The dark psychosomatic history of rheumatoid arthritis

https://mecfsskeptic.com/the-dark-psychosomatic-history-of-rheumatoid-arthritis/

ETA: Showing as updated yesterday

Someone needs to publish these somewhere the general public useful idiots who talk mind-body having sucked it up read. With the clear message that this is where their beloved ideologies came from/just more carefully veiled now.

 

[ME/CFS Skeptic]

New blog post: The dark psychosomatic history of peptic ulcer part I.
Peptic ulcer was long seen as one of the prime examples of psychosomatic disease. From the 1930s to the 1980s, repressed emotions and stress were considered its main cause. "That psychic factors play a prominent role in the causation of ulcer is doubted by no one”, a 1952 JAMA review proclaimed.

The common treatment of hospitalization, bed rest, and frequent feeding with milk and cream was seen as a confirmation of Franz Alexander’s theory that peptic ulcer patients had a repressed desire to be nurtured.

Then, in the 1980s a paradigm shift occurred. Two Australian doctors discovered that peptic ulcer was caused by a germ, earning them the 2005 Nobel Prize in medicine. Ulcers, it turned out, could easily be treated by a combination of antibiotics and acid inhibitors.

In a three-part series, we will explore the dark psychosomatic history of peptic ulcers. In part I, we look at how psychosomatic explanations of peptic ulcers became so popular in the first place.

Full text at: https://mecfsskeptic.com/the-dark-psychosomatic-history-of-peptic-ulcer-part-i/

 

[Peter T]

New blog post: The dark psychosomatic history of peptic ulcer part I.
Peptic ulcer was long seen as one of the prime examples of psychosomatic disease. From the 1930s to the 1980s, repressed emotions and stress were considered its main cause. "That psychic factors play a prominent role in the causation of ulcer is doubted by no one”, a 1952 JAMA review proclaimed.

The common treatment of hospitalization, bed rest, and frequent feeding with milk and cream was seen as a confirmation of Franz Alexander’s theory that peptic ulcer patients had a repressed desire to be nurtured.

Then, in the 1980s a paradigm shift occurred. Two Australian doctors discovered that peptic ulcer was caused by a germ, earning them the 2005 Nobel Prize in medicine. Ulcers, it turned out, could easily be treated by a combination of antibiotics and acid inhibitors.

In a three-part series, we will explore the dark psychosomatic history of peptic ulcers. In part I, we look at how psychosomatic explanations of peptic ulcers became so popular in the first place.

Full text at: https://mecfsskeptic.com/the-dark-psychosomatic-history-of-peptic-ulcer-part-i/

Another important instalment in this series of blogs. The following particularly struck me:

By the 1950s the psychogenesis of peptic ulcer had become “one of the major problems of psychosomatic medicine.” Numerous scientific articles appeared claiming that peptic ulcer resulted from stress, personality features, or repressed emotions. Over time, this was considered common knowledge. One article, for example, explained:

“Certainly based upon our present day knowledge, it can be said that most if not all ulcer patients have emotional difficulties of some severity and that emotional conflict and stress play a very important role in provoking the onset and exacerbation of most ulcers.”

Others presented these theories as established facts. A 1952 review in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) confidently proclaimed: “that psychic factors play a prominent role in the causation of ulcer is doubted by no one.”

A consensus of contemporary medicine here was achieved not by evaluating the underlying assumptions with scientific investigation but by press of literature presenting those assumptions as established fact. This is what happened with ME/CFS in such as the PACE study that asserted deconditioning and fear of exercise that was never demonstrated and it strikes me that this is now happening by sheer volume of papers in relation to MUS and FND which still may only exist in the minds of their proponents.

 

[Sean]

The output of the psychosomatic advocates tells us far more about what is going on in their minds than it does in the minds of their patients.

 

[alex3619]

Here is my blog on the H. pylori story on Phoenix Rising years ago -

https://forums.phoenixrising.me/blog-articles/here-we-go-round-the-merry-go-round-part-one.1228/

A bacterial cause for gastric ulcers was discovered in 1875. It was rediscovered again and again, including using antibiotics for treatment, and even filing a patent for treating it with antibiotics. Some interests in Big Pharma worked to slow discussion on the issue once the cause was proven by Marshall and Warren. How many times was it really discovered, then the results ignored or buried? We will probably never know.

As some of you know, Barry Marshall is one of my heroes. He went against the medical mainstream, he stuck with science (though we can debate the ethics), he was under consideration to have his medical licence struck off, then he got a Nobel prize. One day the ME community will have its own Barry Marshall.

 

[ME/CFS Skeptic]

The dark psychosomatic history of peptic ulcer part II
....
In this three-part series, we will explore the dark psychosomatic history of peptic ulcer. In part I we examined the reasons behind the popularity of psychosomatic explanations of peptic ulcer. In part II we will explore some of these psychosomatic theories in depth.

https://mecfsskeptic.com/the-dark-psychosomatic-history-of-peptic-ulcer-part-ii/

 

[Arnie Pye]

The dark psychosomatic history of peptic ulcer part II
....
In this three-part series, we will explore the dark psychosomatic history of peptic ulcer. In part I we examined the reasons behind the popularity of psychosomatic explanations of peptic ulcer. In part II we will explore some of these psychosomatic theories in depth.

https://mecfsskeptic.com/the-dark-psychosomatic-history-of-peptic-ulcer-part-ii/

From the blog post :

In the worldview of a baby, the wish to be loved and cared for is closely associated with feeding. Therefore, the unresolved wishes of peptic ulcer patients to be nurtured, express themselves in a stomach that is constantly preparing for food. As result, these patients produce too much stomach acid which over time could result in the formation of peptic ulcer.

I've just realised another absurdity about that belief I've quoted above. It turns out that the most common stomach problems, i.e. indigestion, heartburn, gastritis, and oesophageal damage are usually caused by too little stomach acid, not too much. So the idea of fixing anything stomach-related by neutralising acid is completely the wrong direction to go in. Instead people should be adding more acid.

 

[ME/CFS Skeptic]

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