Miranda Hart - British comedian

Tia said:
I imagine Miranda does have more money than most but I think ME is a situation where it doesn't matter how much money you have. I mean, obviously it makes life more comfortable but it terms of recovery I don't think it can do much. In a way, the more money you have, the more you have to spend on quacks and the more confused and lost you will become.
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Money won't allow you to recover, but it will allow you to pace as efficiently as possible, and to attain as good a quality of life as possible.

I'm also not sure we can assume that there's a correlation between wealth and susceptibility to quackery.
 
TiredSam said:
Money won't allow you to recover, but it will allow you to pace as efficiently as possible, and to attain as good a quality of life as possible.

I'm also not sure we can assume that there's a correlation between wealth and susceptibility to quackery.
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100% agree about wealth and ability to pace.

I'm not saying there's a correlation between wealth and susceptibility. But of those who are susceptible, the ones with money are more able to follow it through.
 
Ash said:
Still it absolutely does make a difference to your life chances if you have ME or any other disease or impairment. Poverty is disabling on its own.
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I'd go further than that. Of all the non-genetic influences on health, poverty is the most destructive and insidious of all.

If the psych professions really do want to maximise the impact of their own research on psycho-social factors, and deliver the most benefit to the most people, then they would have at the core of their recommendations and advocacy a guarantee of adequate minimal material support (including housing, transport, healthcare, educational opportunities, etc).

The fact that they don't tells me everything I need to know about their real priorities.

Resources are important for avoiding illness and for improving chances of recovery.
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Or at least minimising the impact of untreatable illness and disability. Which can make the critical difference between an existence and a life.
 
Oh, that reminds me: Miranda Hart was on the Graham Norton Show on Friday and talked a bit about having ME.
 
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Article in The Times (London) today.


Miranda Hart: I was bedbound with illness for years after TV success
The comedian and actress suffered from ME caused by Lyme disease

Miranda Hart has told how undiagnosed Lyme disease, which developed into myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), left her housebound for the best part of a decade.

The comedian and actress said she first became ill when she was 15 and became progressively worse until she had a “total collapse” in the years after the final series of her sitcom Miranda.

(£) https://www.thetimes.com/uk/arts/article/miranda-hart-lyme-disease-n89kz8pdn

Archived: https://archive.ph/jlOMO
 
Miranda in The Times today (but no Karen Gordon story today because that was postponed to make space for another story).


Excerpts -
'
Miranda Hart has told how undiagnosed Lyme disease, which developed into myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), left her housebound for the best part of a decade.

The comedian and actress said she first became ill when she was 15 and became progressively worse until she had a “total collapse” in the years after the final series of her sitcom Miranda.'

'She said the “easy version” of her condition was that she had ME caused by Lyme disease. It had “played havoc with my immune system”, with viral infections such as shingles constantly being reactivated. She told The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival that she had “lost my joy and know that I hadn’t enjoyed my career in the way that I knew I could have if I hadn’t been ill”.


'the hardest thing about these sort of fatigue-based conditions is that lack of understanding, lack of never knowing when there’s an end date.'

'“I was housebound and bedbound for years,” she said of the period after the final series of Miranda in 2015.“I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have a social life. I didn’t have any responsibilities or identities.” She added that she kept on telling doctors she was “leading a half-life, a very debilitated life, but with no understanding of why”. Hart said that her collapse was when she hit “rock bottom” and realised that it had to be her “change point”.


https://www.thetimes.com/uk/arts/article/miranda-hart-lyme-disease-n89kz8pdn
 
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Lou B Lou said:
Miranda in The Times today (but no Karen Gordon story today because that was postponed to make space for another story).


Excerpts -
'
Miranda Hart has told how undiagnosed Lyme disease, which developed into myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), left her housebound for the best part of a decade.

The comedian and actress said she first became ill when she was 15 and became progressively worse until she had a “total collapse” in the years after the final series of her sitcom Miranda.'

'She said the “easy version” of her condition was that she had ME caused by Lyme disease. It had “played havoc with my immune system”, with viral infections such as shingles constantly being reactivated. She told The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival that she had “lost my joy and know that I hadn’t enjoyed my career in the way that I knew I could have if I hadn’t been ill”.


'the hardest thing about these sort of fatigue-based conditions is that lack of understanding, lack of never knowing when there’s an end date.'

'“I was housebound and bedbound for years,” she said of the period after the final series of Miranda in 2015.“I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have a social life. I didn’t have any responsibilities or identities.” She added that she kept on telling doctors she was “leading a half-life, a very debilitated life, but with no understanding of why”. Hart said that her collapse was when she hit “rock bottom” and realised that it had to be her “change point”.


https://www.thetimes.com/uk/arts/article/miranda-hart-lyme-disease-n89kz8pdn
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If I remember rightly, one of things Miranda Hart's messages was about giving other sufferers hope. It may sound thoughtful, but I don't think giving people unsubstantiated hope is appropriate. If she's getting better (and I hope that's true and wish her well) she's just been lucky (which she has said she recognises). Extrapolating from her experience to say others will recover isn't backed up by what we know about recovery rates. I think it's unhelpful and cruel.

For myself, I'm in a better place psychologically having given up hope. I used to feel the start of the recovery process must be just round the corner and it took me over twenty years to become reconciled to this being my life now and living day to day. If there's a breakthrough in medication or I just get lucky before I'm out the door that would be wonderful. But constantly reaching mentally for recovery is just disappointing and painful.
 
The truth behind Miranda Hart's controversial chronic fatigue cure claims - as the star is accused of peddling pseudoscience

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/...controversial-Lyme-disease-pseudoscience.html

Vikings star, actor Jennie Jacques, who developed ME in 2019, said: 'Nothing personal at all @mermhart... I believe your intentions are in the right place but it would be irresponsible for me not to speak out.

'With great power comes great responsibility. Eighty to 90 per cent of this narrative is dangerously outdated.'

Frances Ryan, a journalist and activist for people with disabilities also wrote on X: 'Miranda Hart’s new memoir on chronic illness seems very well intentioned but this pseudoscience is worrying.

'If you’re writing a book after you’ve recovered, there’s a particular responsibility to be accurate to readers who are desperate to recover too.'

Responding to the backlash online, Ms Hart claimed she'd been misunderstood.

She added that lessening stress was beneficial for her symptoms and that she didn't mean she had found a cure.​

Some also pointed out that in 2021, Ms Hart endorsed a book by Alex Howard called Decode Your Fatigue.

A quote from the comedian features on the cover: 'A hopeful, practical book to help people move from debilitating fatigue to a purposeful, joyful life once again'.

Howard is the founder of the Optimum Health Clinic, which teaches courses in the Lightning Process and claims to 'train the brain to ward off tired thoughts', including treating conditions like ME, depression and chronic pain.

But in 2022, health watchdog the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommended that the Lightning Process should not be used by GPs.

'The Lightning Process is not a treatment that we endorse or recommend for people with ME/CFS,' says Dr Charles Shepherd, Medical Adviser for the UK ME Association.

Meanwhile, studies linking stress to these long term conditions have long been divided.

Research on long Covid is also still in its infancy.

Many people in the chronic illness community say they dislike the presumption that stress has caused their conditions, reporting that this stigma itself can cause stress.

There is currently no cure for ME and no single test that can diagnose it either.

Treatment instead revolves around therapy, lifestyle changes and the use of some medications to alleviate symptoms such as pain and sleeping problems.

According to the NHS, this can include cognitive behavioural therapy and advice on how to make best use of the energy you have.

One current study, led by Professor Chris Ponting, an expert in genome biology at the University of Edinburgh, aims to find the genetic causes of the condition.​
 
tornandfrayed said:
If I remember rightly, one of things Miranda Hart's messages was about giving other sufferers hope. It may sound thoughtful, but I don't think giving people unsubstantiated hope is appropriate. If she's getting better (and I hope that's true and wish her well) she's just been lucky (which she has said she recognises). Extrapolating from her experience to say others will recover isn't backed up by what we know about recovery rates. I think it's unhelpful and cruel.

For myself, I'm in a better place psychologically having given up hope. I used to feel the start of the recovery process must be just round the corner and it took me over twenty years to become reconciled to this being my life now and living day to day. If there's a breakthrough in medication or I just get lucky before I'm out the door that would be wonderful. But constantly reaching mentally for recovery is just disappointing and painful.
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Yes she’s being manipulated there with that idea isn’t she.


I get so many bigoted healthiest trying to these days enforce ‘hope’ on me in ways that really are just hurting he invalidating me and an excuse for them to talk nonsense and get back to what they fancy I know it’s BS. But then I’ve a lot of narcissists in my life which means a good radar for if they cotton onto it it’s just an excuse for the norms to be nasty bigots as tell themselves they aren’t hirrid people but ‘doing the ill people a favour’ (and tell me I’m horrid for it not being all about me having to understand them instead of them ever letting me for ten seconds describe what the illness actually is for the first time in over two decades)

it’s just another Sharoe style bs cover for being a bigot being excused.

and then enforcing its down to the disabled person to ‘act hopeful even when we are deliberately never funding like we would any other disease any research’ while we leave you waking into the abyss, so said abusers aren’t made to feel bad about doing this to you


So yes she’s being manipulated. No it’s not going to help anyone . But I imagined she’s being psychologically ‘bombed’ with all this distortion. I know those I know if the luvvy type were the most vile when I came out to them as more severe. I assumed it was their arts background combining with hubris of getting high in a career meaning they thought they could now ‘read science’ and understand because someone was doing these stirytellibg propaganda things for them. Then they all sit around and talk about ‘the disabled’ and their own ‘phone anxiety’ over a glass of vino. I imagine Miranda isn’t this at heart but surrounded by it
 
Remarkable that the Daily Mail – one of worst newspapers in the world – is the voice of reason on this issue.

Agree with most of the comments here. Miranda appears to a kind and caring person but her message is neither helpful nor evidence-based.
 
tornandfrayed said:
If I remember rightly, one of things Miranda Hart's messages was about giving other sufferers hope. It may sound thoughtful, but I don't think giving people unsubstantiated hope is appropriate. If she's getting better (and I hope that's true and wish her well) she's just been lucky (which she has said she recognises). Extrapolating from her experience to say others will recover isn't backed up by what we know about recovery rates. I think it's unhelpful and cruel.

For myself, I'm in a better place psychologically having given up hope. I used to feel the start of the recovery process must be just round the corner and it took me over twenty years to become reconciled to this being my life now and living day to day. If there's a breakthrough in medication or I just get lucky before I'm out the door that would be wonderful. But constantly reaching mentally for recovery is just disappointing and painful.
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Oh and the awful idea that offering some bs placebo which is less good than telling people to burn sage once a day ‘to give them hope’ is ok to ‘alleviate the uncomfortableness’ which is the very message the real ME articles are putting out there of it’s not ok to refuse any medical care for anything to a demographic of patients for their entire lives - so they finally you know, are shown up.

of course everyone wants us all to be shut down if we open our mouths or dare to show our collapsed bodies on the street with ‘not doing your mantras well enough hey’

rather than have a conversation where we take the billions spent on these wasters having a cushy job in the name of making our lives excruciating in every way by piling psychological harm and bullying on top of debility and no one even caring we’ve had medical care removed - to put those human rights back in , which would be real hope

of course this industry who everyone is a mate of because they’ve hog it time to be at these parties and sucking up to the slebs (cos it’s not medical care) don’t


There’s a simple answer in retort to this - can we have the money stopping leaking into this nonsense now please and have the normal research and care everyone else can assume for their bodies , and let the ‘well-paid hippies’ find some new money suck

their prosperity currently relies on everyone agreeing to let us be left with a foot on our neck it’s immoral not ‘hope’ they rely on that desperation being caused and play a part in causing it with propaganda and dodgy research sliding funds out if real care and into pseudo functional ‘pathways’ that rely on pushing bigotry.

sorry they can’t pretend clean hands on the part they play and just claim they are offering hope to those done over rather than it being in their interests for that not to change
 
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tornandfrayed said:
For myself, I'm in a better place psychologically having given up hope. I used to feel the start of the recovery process must be just round the corner and it took me over twenty years to become reconciled to this being my life now and living day to day. If there's a breakthrough in medication or I just get lucky before I'm out the door that would be wonderful. But constantly reaching mentally for recovery is just disappointing and painful.
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I could have written that myself. I feel the same and I think 'giving people hope' has to be realistic otherwise what sounds helpful can actually make things worse.
 
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