Thanks for your opinion, Jody, and please don't worry about how "expert" you are.
I think most of us on these forums are more "expert" than most of the physicians we see, at least in my case, but I understand the need for a disclaimer.
Here's a far out expert opinion that I got once.......you may enjoy this story. For my birthday in 1998, I was given a reading with a nationally known psychic. It was a telephone reading, and he had nothing beforehand but my name and credit card number. I made sure there was nothing ever put on that card that was health related before I used it, since I intended to ask mostly about my health and did not want to give him any clues. The first words out of his mouth were: "Have you ever heard of chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia?" I was not going to help him, so I said: "Yes, I've heard of them". He then said: "Well, you've got them both". It went on like that for 30 mins. of very specific things, some of which I thought were absolutely impossible, but all of them did come true within the following four years. He only made one error, and it was something he could have avoided simply by noting my area code when he called me! FWIW, he said both FMS and CFS are caused by unusual viruses that humans had not been exposed to before the rain forests were burned, letting the causative viruses and many other bugs loose into the atmosphere.
It's a strange world....
klutzo
Hi Klutzo,
I had the chronic swolen glands from childhood until I did the Pauling vitamin C thing, 16 grams a day. They decreased to normal in about 5 years. I had during that period a pretty clearcut case of ME except it wasn't characteristed or anthing at that time so it became "It's All In Your Head". At around age 30 I developed a pretty clearcut case of traumatic injury induced FMS except, you guessed it , "It's All In Your Head" because FMS hadn't been described or accepted yet. At 39 I developed a clearcut case of virus infection CFS except yet again it was diagnosed as "It's All In Your Head" as CFS was very debatable then. So the docs don't understand it, blame the patient and tell them its psychosomatic and all in your head.
Now interestingly, I have found what cures ALL these things, and once again, some folks take that as even more evidence that "It's All In Your Head". In finding the treatment, these experiences, the traumatic injury and the virus, both become triggers in a larger experience of a lifetime of such triggered periods that I managed to recover from in a period of months each time. That these trriggers exist is quite clear to me as I expiernced more than half a dozen in my life. What they trriggered were certain deficiency syndromes that were on a tipping point, that once pushed over the edge, without treatment, there was no going back. In finding these deficiency syndromes, I find that there are 4 main forms of b12 deficiencies combined with folate deficiency making 8 main divisions that form up in various combinations giving CFS, FMS, CFIDS, ME and ???? (unnamed variations) Then there are additional modifications depending upon a few other factors such as poor mitochondrial funtion and/or poor methylation.
The differences between those 4 items are quite clearcut in the contribution each of the main deficiencies make. There isn't a single symptom of any of them that doesn't show up on a consolodated active b12 deficiency and folate deficiency symptom list. Even the grouping of symptoms for each syndrome makes sense in terms of the specific sets of symptoms for each type of deficiency. Of course there is overlap in symptoms as many of the specific underlying deficiencies have overlap. There are several causes for muscle symptoms, several for neurologiccal symptoms, depending upon whether peripheral or central depending upon whether it is lack of mito funtions in the nerves or damage or other funtional aspects.
I had several viral triggers of completely unidentified natures back in the early to mid 70s that were horribly infectious, prevented schools from opening, infected large percentages of people and that the CDC said were "nothing". I was sick for months with each. Finally one clobbered me and I was sick for 16 years until I got lucky and tried one of the two 5 star breands of mb12. Then I followed the trail of a dozen other items until I put it all together. My immune system was very weakened because of b12 and folate deficiencies.
