by David Tuller, virology.ws:
Note: This account draws from interviews, a close reading of a fraction of the 4608 epidemiologic studies that pop up (as of today; yesterday it was 4606) on a PubMed search for “chronic fatigue syndrome,” and a review of many pages of government documents–in particular the minutes and testimony from meetings of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Advisory Committee to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, one of many such panels established to provide guidance to federal health officials. Not much here will be a surprise to anyone who has read the better ME/CFS blogs, or Hillary Johnson’s authoritative and prodigiously researched 1996 account, Osler’s Web: Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic. Some readers might know that I have written a number of articles on chronic fatigue syndrome as a freelance contributor to The New York Times, so I want to be clear: The Times has nothing to do with this piece. I want to thank Professor Racaniello for letting me invade his space to post this very long story.
<----> the CDC’s website on the illness has long been a font of misinformation and has been routinely used by insurance companies to deny legitimate claims for tests ordered by doctors. (After years of complaints from patients and doctors, a paragraph that dismissed the usefulness of many tests, including those for various infectious agents, was finally changed this month.) Critics also note that the CDC website does not incorporate much clinical expertise from doctors who have treated patients for years, but it does highlight a behavioral form of treatment—a gradual increase in exercise, known as “graded exercise therapy”–that is widely discredited in the CFS community.
Patient surveys and anecdotal testimony, as well as an increasingly robust body of research, suggest that the therapy might cause severe relapses in CFS patients by encouraging over-exertion. Read more>>
See also: The main characteristic of ME is an abnormally delayed muscle recovery after doing trivial things, if you don't have that, you don't have ME
See also: GET (graded exercise therapy) is torture for ME patients and directly contravenes the do NO Harm principle of the GMC
See also: Post-exercise acid exposure 50 times higher in ME/CFS patients vs healthy controls, with no reduction with repeat exercise See also: Jan 2011, Spanish study shows that CBT and GET make things WORSE in ME/CFS !!!
See also: Journal for Psychotherapy 2011: CBT and GET are ineffective and potentially harmful for many ME/CFS patients
See also: Study using cycle ergometers shows that exercise exacerbates ME/CFS
See also: Pacific Labs in California (Snell, Stevens et al): it is dangerous to put patients with M.E. through a graded exercise program
See also: GET (graded exercise therapy) is torture for ME patients and directly contravenes the do NO Harm principle of the GMC
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