[Thread]
PD White has just co-authored a #MECFS paper which has a dubious, wishy-washy recovery definition: not a complete remission of symptoms & a return to premorbid functioning" but where basically people who are not recovered are seen as recovered journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10…
1/n
2/n From a former patient of White's
'To me if I'm recovered, I'm able to come off benefits, work full time, do my house work & have a life. But when I said this he asked me: 'Do you want to go back to the life that gave you ME?' That's a cop out"
See more s4me.info/threads/sick-o…
3/n These bizarre & infuriating comments in 2006 on the draft NICE guidelines show again Peter White's odd views about #MECFS in general & recovery in particular
4/n Could his statements about recovery & similar could be influenced by the presumably lucrative work he has done as a CMO for a reinsurance company? Records show he turned down a claim saying what the patient required was (more) CBT +/or GET
5/n Many will recall bizarre way White & co redefined recovery in £5M #PACETrial (see image for one example). We showed using their original criteria, #CFS recovery rates were very low with CBT & GET & not statistically significantly different to controls tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
6/n White isn't saying patients should adapt to their illness & accept their lower functioning; he w/o evidence believes there's no reason why people can't recover eg see PACE Trial GET manuals where there is no reason why people can't get back to normal me-pedia.org/images/8/89/PA…
7/n One could say White plays on people's "ableist" views that adapting to disability & using mobility aids is bad and should be discouraged. See for example this video at 27 minutes, where he criticises an image of a woman with ME using a mobility scooter
8/n Peter White co-authored a paper on "full recovery" from #CFS with Hans Knoop, a prominent Dutch proponent of CBT for CFS who claimed in his PhD "recovery of CFS was possible, even if the physical activity level of the patient remained low"
9/n If alternative therapists used such loose definitions of recovery for patients who use their therapies, many people would rightly be challenging maybe even mocking them. But it seems many people don't apply the same rigour to psychs and recovery claims regarding #MECFS.
10/n Given the risk of relapse in #MECFS, which often can happen partly or wholly due to mental +/or physical exertion (at a level which might not be problematic to other people), considering yourself recovered can be a risky mindset to have #ChronicFatigueSyndrome#CFS#MyalgicE
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2/n Draft NICE guidance “recognizes that #MECFS is a complex, multi-system, chronic medical condition where there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to managing symptoms,particularly where there is the potential for an intervention to benefit some people but cause harm in others”
3/n “Because of harms reported by people with #MECFS + the committee’s own experience of the effects when people exceed their energy limits...any programme based on fixed incremental increases in physical activity or exercise eg GET should not be offered for treatment of ME/#CFS”
Misleading about mainstream CBT for #MECFS: the manuals show it's about reversing symptoms & impairments, & claim people should be able to recover with CBT. The results from trials are not particularly exciting esp. with regard to objective +/or long-term outcome measures
I'm not convinced by this claim either "Unsurprisingly, people experiencing many symptoms like this feel anxiety, which in turn can drive more physical symptoms.”
"ME/CFS has been continually written off–even by some in medicine–as a “made-up” or “psychological” issue because biological triggers for the issues have yet to be found. This can see patients maligned rather than supported" Cohort studies have shown it often follows infections
[Thread]
“Doctors examining possible link between #chronicfatiguesyndrome and #COVID19: For many, chronic fatigue syndrome develops after a viral infection” by Dr Danielle Weitzer and Dr Christie Richardson
2/n “By this point, many people can identify symptoms of #COVID19 -- fever, fatigue, shortness of breath -- but fewer know that those can occur after a successful recovery* and closely resemble another illness: #chronicfatiguesyndrome”
*I dislike using “recovery” in this way
3/n “‘About 75 to 80% of #chronicfatiguesyndrome cases are post-viral in nature,’ estimated Dr. Mark VanNess, ‘The viral infection and following immune response are precipitating causes for long-term symptoms.’”
[Thread]
"#LongHaulers Are Redefining #Covid_19: Without understanding the lingering illness that some patients experience, we can’t understand the #pandemic."
In-depth reporting by @edyong209.
Include some discussion of #MEcfs
3/n “More than 90 percent of [#Covid] #longhaulers also have “post-exertional malaise,” in which even mild bouts of physical or mental exertion can trigger a severe physiological crash. “We’re talking about walking up a flight of stairs and being out of commission for two days,”
“The ME/CFS community with its knowledgebase, its research findings, its doctors, advocates and the patients who have been through it all, has much to contribute to the long haulers.”
“You should know – and may already very well know – that many doctors have reacted to this kind of illness by denying it, by downplaying it, or by calling it psychological.”