• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    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.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Article: An MD on the Lightning Process

>>> Cort "If this is too open ended for you then that's the way it is. MS is in an entirely different category - it has biomarkers, a recognized locus of central trauma.... CFS, on the other hand, has diagnostic criteria that allow many different types of people to be diagnosed with it."

Not true cort, your ignorance is astonishing. MS is diagnosed by a set of criteria that is not specific at all, many people with Lyme, with Huges Syndrome and other disorders routinely get diagnosed incorrectly as having MS. The trauma in MS is only clearly detectable on autopsy, it looks identical to stroke plaques. But again the few autopsy studies in ME patients also clearly show trauma - its just that the evidence is ignored.

Similarly ME does have equally specific markers, these have been well described for over 40 years. Indeed The John Richardson research group identified very specific tests. These markes whilst not 100% specific or sensitive are as good as those used for MS!!!!!

The difference between ME and MS is a simple one - expensive tests are done on MS patients to identify these markers IN EVERY PATIENT. However with ME we get imbeciles that claim that there are no specific markers, then lump in mental disorder patients with personality disorders, depression, anorexia etc and then write something like you just did.

That is NOT the way it is, that is the way WESSELY... and strangely YOU.... are TRYING TO MAKE IT, against thousands of medical papers and 40 years of scientific discovery. I really do not have words for what you wrote!
 
Four years later I reply!!! I had forgotten about my post about LP until it has started doing the rounds again here I live in GB.
I haven't read all the replies about my post, just one asking if I would recommend LP as a cure for M.E.
The answer is NO. Perhaps for CFS occurring from depression, it could possibly help people who are depressed, anxious, low self esteem etc but NOT a neurological disease.
There were benefits of the few weeks of elevated mood and a certain feeling of being brainwashed into believing I could overcome the illness. The downside of believing you can actually overcome M.E. resulted in doing much more than my body was capable of and which of course resulted in massive relapse.
I was able to accept the relapse as I knew what caused it but it was very hard to accept the emotional turmoil as the LP coach did impress that if we didn't recover then it was our own fault because we didn't do the process correctly. This messes with your mind, you also feel like a fool for telling others, as instructed by the LP coach, that I was cured.
You feel a failure to yourself, your family because of all the money which was wasted and to all the patients who you may have persuaded to do LP.
Needless to say I remain 80% disabled from this illness which started suddenly over 14 years ago.
 
@lazybones (you might want to pick a different handle!)Sorry to hear you found this out the hard way, and your gov't believes this is helpful for people with ME/CFS. People get CF from depression etc..Not CFS, they are 2 entirely different things! FYI

GG

PS You might want to break up that paragraph into smaller segments, lots of people on this forum, have a hard time reading such a large "block" of text. FYI