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    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

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The Lightening Process. Does it work? If so then how?

Messages
10,157
Why is it when I read about LP, I think about Jim Jones and drinking Kool-aid.

When I go to the doctors sometimes I am offered medications I am not sure about. I often say okay I will give them a go to see what happens even though I remain skeptical about any effects or side-effects. My doctor doesn't tell me I am not ready, he just accepts that and tells me to give it a go and report back. No blame on me if I say I don't find the medication any good. It's always trial and error.

LP is not something that will cure a biological illness. You can't think yourself out of ME, cancer, diabetes, MS, etc, etc. If you could, we wouldn't need LP we would all cure ourselves via positive thinking. I am now doing negativity about LP and it's making me feel oh so fine (but not having an effect on my physical illness).
 

Ambrosia_angel

Senior Member
Messages
544
Location
England
@Dster if we are incorrect could you tell us what actually happens in the program? The only piece of information I can find is the one from Sally on that blog. I would like to do the LP as I'm desperate (and probably vulnerable. Not gonna lie) but I don't want to be naive. Telling us isn't going to reveal all the LP secrets that we are gonna steal or something? We just need hard facts as most of our information is very minimal because it is for some reason restricted.


I do think it's unfair to say that you must have psychological issues if the LP works. I think the LP could work for a lot of illness'. I don't think that labs would help but I do think that if you have been adapted to feeling "ill" and having that lifestyle than its hard for your mind to adapt back when your body is biologically better. At the end of the day these people have been diagnosed with cfs and/or ME and their symptoms are consistent with ME so who are we to say they don't have ME? If we used this theory of psychological problems and ME don't go then 90% of the people on this forum wouldn't be here so I think it's unfair. If someone had PEM and therapy or LP works for them then they still suffered PEM.

I still do think the lack of info on the LP is skeptical but I still want to be better and normal. No other treatment has worked for me and I don't give too hoots if LP only helps psychology illnesses. I'll do anything to be "normal".

@Dster I think if there was more testimonials on blogs, YouTube videos, word of mouth ones without connections to a trainer then we would be able to understand but it's way too secretive...
 
Messages
10,157
@Dster if we are incorrect could you tell us what actually happens in the program? The only piece of information I can find is the one from Sally on that blog. I would like to do the LP as I'm desperate (and probably vulnerable. Not gonna lie) but I don't want to be naive. Telling us isn't going to reveal all the LP secrets that we are gonna steal or something? We just need hard facts as most of our information is very minimal because it is for some reason restricted.


I do think it's unfair to say that you must have psychological issues if the LP works. I think the LP could work for a lot of illness'. I don't think that labs would help but I do think that if you have been adapted to feeling "ill" and having that lifestyle than its hard for your mind to adapt back when your body is biologically better. At the end of the day these people have been diagnosed with cfs and/or ME and their symptoms are consistent with ME so who are we to say they don't have ME? If we used this theory of psychological problems and ME don't go then 90% of the people on this forum wouldn't be here so I think it's unfair. If someone had PEM and therapy or LP works for them then they still suffered PEM.

I still do think the lack of info on the LP is skeptical but I still want to be better and normal. No other treatment has worked for me and I don't give too hoots if LP only helps psychology illnesses. I'll do anything to be "normal".

@Dster I think if there was more testimonials on blogs, YouTube videos, word of mouth ones without connections to a trainer then we would be able to understand but it's way too secretive...

Really, can you think yourself out of cancer, Aids, diabetes? LP will not make you better, it will lighten your wallet. Why are you not getting this.
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
Has the LP ever been used to help with addiction?
I have been thinking quite a lot about what it could be good for, and it struck me it might help alcoholism.
Being a non-practising alcoholic myself, I do think it might have been helpful.

All addicts need a "damascus moment" where they change their beliefs (to understanding/believing the drug is actually doing them harm) and I do think LP could be a reinforcing sort of thing.
 

Ambrosia_angel

Senior Member
Messages
544
Location
England
Really, can you think yourself out of cancer, Aids, diabetes? LP will not make you better, it will lighten your wallet. Why are you not getting this.
But can we deny that people diagnosed with cfs actually recover using this? Even famous people have gone on tv after 7(?) years of cfs said it was amazing and helped them recover? Whether they have been cured or seen a slight improvement people are getting help with this.
We can't say that just because it worked that their symptoms and health situation wasn't as bad or as valid as the ones we have been or are in. It's a bit dismissive just like the way the drs who don't understand cfs/me dismiss us so quickly.
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
CFS, yes. ME, no.

This is the huge problem the psychs have created by subsuming ME under the CFS label.:bang-head::bang-head::bang-head:

I also want to add for the sake of this thread, that I'm well aware that CFS is the only label that is available in the States, so when I am referring to CFS, I am talking about UK, NICE guidelines CFS, when I am referring to ME, I am talking about Canadian Consensus or International Consensus criteria.
 
Messages
15,786
But can we deny that people diagnosed with cfs actually recover using this? Even famous people have gone on tv after 7(?) years of cfs said it was amazing and helped them recover? Whether they have been cured or seen a slight improvement people are getting help with this.
Maybe patients with Oxford CFS - basically just chronic fatigue. But for ME patients with PEM and other physical symptoms, LP will do nothing good, and has the potential to be quite harmful.

The primary problems which ME patients face are not at all psychological, and there is a great deal of research supporting that it is not psychological. 2 day CPET (maximal exercise tests) document definite disability and show a decline in performance which is not known to exist in any other disease or in healthy or sedentary controls, providing proof that PEM is neither imaginary nor psychological nor deconditioning.

Orthostatic intolerance is proven by tilt table testing (or blood pressure monitor, or pulse oximeter), and several studies have shown that most ME patients have it. It is not the result of deconditioning, as it often suddenly appears or disappears.

Swollen lymph nodes absolutely cannot be explained by psychological theories, and are even part of the CDC diagnosis, thus almost universally accepted as a symptom. Deconditioning or "wrong thinking" cannot cause that!

Muscle twitching and spasms are also not psychological symptoms, and are often visible even to the most skeptical of doctors when a muscle is visibly jumping around in a manner which cannot be deliberate.

Active and chronic bacterial and viral infections have been documented in many of us, even if we don't all have the same ones. Again, this suggests an immune problem, and is certainly neither caused nor cured by how we think or feel.

The LP promise sounds attractive because we are sick and desperate. They use that to exploit us. Vague explanations of "reprogramming" make no sense whatsoever. How do they propose that thinking differently causes any physical disease to go away? Why doesn't this cure cancer, or autoimmune disease, or everything else?

They take advantage of the uncertainty regarding the exact pathology of ME/CFS as an excuse to declare it is a thinking problem, and that they can offer a thinking cure. While they are correct that there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the pathology, there's no doubt by anyone who reads the research that ME is 100% a physical disease. Positive-thinking therapies have been extensively disproven to cause any improvement in disability of ME patients.

If you have ME symptoms, you are not imagining them. You are not creating them due to having a bad attitude. It is not your fault that you are sick. They are despicable human beings for preying upon us for their own profit, and they belong in jail.
 

Min

Guest
Messages
1,387
Location
UK
But can we deny that people diagnosed with cfs actually recover using this? Even famous people have gone on tv after 7(?) years of cfs said it was amazing and helped them recover? Whether they have been cured or seen a slight improvement people are getting help with this.
We can't say that just because it worked that their symptoms and health situation wasn't as bad or as valid as the ones we have been or are in. It's a bit dismissive just like the way the drs who don't understand cfs/me dismiss us so quickly.


It is naive to think that celebrities promote wares for free. Esther Rantzen, president of AYME, promoted LP every chance she got, claiming her daughter had been cured by it. He daughter turned out to have coeliac disease and could not possibly have been cured by LP.
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
I agree with you wholeheartedly Kina.:thumbsup:

@Dster -- it's very nice that you could think yourself better. Most of us can't because our issues aren't caused by psychological problems or bad thinking.

oh, please miss, I know about this du thing!
I was reading PPs site - it's a new word he's invented for du-ing his "processes". You actually need some funny accents on it, to get it right,

Think I'll just "du" meself with a lubed asparagus and a friendly Dyson vacuum cleaner while singing "Things Can Only Get Better", if that will cure M.E., ooher!
*he says like Kenneth Williams* :wide-eyed: :jaw-drop: :woot: o_O :D

 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
Not only that, but Emily ended up in the full glare of publicity, struggling on and on pretending to be better when she wasn't for the sake of PP and her mother's promotion of it.
She had been full of hope that the pretending would somehow become reality - but of course, it never did because she was REALLY SICK, with a disease which should have been diagnosed from the start.

She has been horribly abused by the LP.
 

Ambrosia_angel

Senior Member
Messages
544
Location
England
Am I still a part of the Canadian census criteria if I have fatigue while and after activity but not PEM? I have other symptoms on the list as well like pain and cognitive problems, quite severe muscle problems etc.
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
PEM is the cardinal feature of ME which is not present in CFS.
(speaking very generally).

If you don't get PEM, then this might work for you.