Thread by @itsbodypolitic

Graded Exercise Therapy (#GET), once recommended as "treatment" for patients with #MECFS, has been found in multiple studies to instead cause patients *significant* harm. Thread ⬇️ graphics by Body Politic Vice Pres. Lauren Nichols: instagram.com/p/CKl50EyhT84/

In 1989 an erroneous & damaging paper about a “new approach” to chronic fatigue emerged in a British medical journal.

In it, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) was dismissed as psychological. News flash: it isn’t. Not even remotely. It stated that the pain patients felt after exercising was in their heads and that if they exercised enough, their symptoms would subside.

“The paper’s authors recommended cognitive behavioral therapy combined with a gradual increase in exercise, even if symptoms got worse....Unlike other diseases like heart failure, pulmonary hypertension, and kidney disease where exercise is tolerated…It’s not with ME/CFS”

One defining characteristic of ME/CFS is that patients feel significantly worse after exertion. This symptom is called Post Exertional malaise (PEM). With ME/CFS, the main energy production system in the body (the aerobic energy system) is broken.

ME/CFS is an exertion disease. Problems with simply exerting oneself (physically or mentally) are often so serious that a federal report suggested ME/CFS be renamed “systemic exertional intolerance disorder" (SEID) as a result.

Studies indicate that exercise impairs an ME/CFS patient’s ability to produce energy and think. It negatively impacts the functioning of their brain and autonomic nervous gastrointestinal and immune systems.

Exercise produces a burst of inflammation in ME/CFS patients...one study found that walking, due to patients’ reduced ability to utilize oxygen, placed far more of a physiological burden on patients compared to healthy controls. And there are hundreds more studies...

A 2019 study found that GET caused deterioration of physical and mental health, worsening of existing symptoms, and development of new symptoms in ME/CFS patients. The news came years after doctors “treated” patients with GET, inflicting physiological and psychological harm.

Heroin was once a cure for coughs, cocaine was once a cure for tooth pain, and lobotomies were once a cure for mental disorders. The point? What was once used as a treatment is now known to harm.