Personalised relaxation practice to improve sleep and functioning in patients with CFS and depression: study protocol, 2018, Vollmer-Conna et al

Another study funded by the Mason Foundation. This one has people listening to white noise, Mozart or a guided relaxation every night in an effort to fix their fatigue. For goodness sake, there are so many better things to be spending money on. The Mason Foundation appears to have funded the whole study, even though it looks at major depression just as much as CFS.

The trial was registered in Dec 2016. Study recruitment commenced in April 2017 and was planned to continue until study size was reached. This study protocol was received by BMC in Feb 2018 and was accepted in June 2018. So, there are no results here, just the study protocol.

It appears that it is 'Open Peer Review', comments can be made at the bottom of the document.

 

On the plus side, if it doesn't work, it's more evidence that ME/CFS is not just 'tiredness' or 'fatigue' that can be fixed with soothing music. And they are at least doing some objective measures - whether they are relevant ones is another matter. Much too short a time scale for any real benefit or lack of it to be gauged.

 

Excuse my scepticism, but there's enough subjective measures there that they'll find something to justify calling this trial a success for some people. No more of that expensive GET that requires a therapist to run sessions and that just makes the patients bleat on about harms. No, give them headphones and either a white noise recording OR Mozart* and send them home. Evidence-based, personalised medicine at a fraction of the cost.

*And, for the pregnant patients, this option has the added benefit of making their babies smarter.

 

I share your skepticism, @Hutan. But if they replace GET with sleep music at least it might reduce the harm! But I agree with your central point that there are much better things to spend money and research effort on.

This reads to me like something dreamed up on the back of an envelope to create a research project for a student, not serious science, but dressed up as science by using some objective measures, even if not ones relevant to ME.

 

I find I'm much more likely to relax and fall asleep hearing about Harry Potter fighting Lord Voldemort, or Sherlock Holmes solving a case, than I am listening to a relaxation CD or whale music, or even Mozart. Soothing stuff bores me into wakefulness. I sometimes think I am very odd.

 

What if I don't like Mozart? Or white noise?

 

I had to switch from having Radio 4/World Service on low in the background all night to Classic FM as the talking was keeping me awake

but I only have the smooth classics programme going on catch up as it gets more up beat after that and that would keep me awake or wake me up

I have tried a lot of different stuff for sleep used to read myself to sleep until that stopped working and I would be reading until the early hours

Melatonin actually gets me to sleep most of the time.

Sleeping is a lot better than not sleeping but I agree with @Mij it doesnt address PEM

PEM is a major issue in sleep for me and my current low dose Melatonin doesnt combat PEM tired but wired, some kind of relaxation tape definitely doesnt work for tired but wired. for me experience so far is that the only thing to do is ride it out and a bit of distraction watching TV or coming on here for a bit. then get some sleep when it wears off - had tired but wired last night yuk

 

There are also lots and lots of nature sounds videos on YouTube, that are several hours long. Rain, forests, streams, seashore, dawn chorus, frogs in swamps, etc.

Compared to audio only sites like Spotify, YT does have the disadvantage of having a video component, which adds to the amount of download data for those with data restrictions. But that component is often just a still image, so it isn't too bad.