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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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Dr oz preview - "simple stretching for xmrv"

Recovery Soon

Senior Member
Messages
380
Unfortunately, agitating is one of my brain's favorite activities. :p:p:)

At least SOMETIMES it comes in handy.

Viva la REVOLUTION!

F Yeah.

Let's keep this ball rolling.

Dr. Donnica is the right person at the right time.

GREAT JOB ON THE PAPER (under an hour no less- EXCELLENT)
 

Dreambirdie

work in progress
Messages
5,569
Location
N. California
Thanks so much Dr. Donnica and Dream for all the effort that's gone into this endeavour. I admit that I was skeptical but those two pages are excellent!

Well done, ladies!

Thank you. And FYI: I'm not done yet!

There are other things I am conspiring at behind the scenes. :eek::cool::cool: he-he-he

(too bad there is no demonic laugh smiley!)
 

jenbooks

Guest
Messages
1,270
Mike...

jenbooks, yes, to make significant headway for the millions of sufferers, our scientific community craves evidence, thats the way our system is designed, headway will be made, slowly but surely.

At the same time, many patients are not willing to sit around for another 20 years to wait for science based treatments, or at least western culture approved treatments.

I know. I'm still closely following the three patients your doc is working on, and no matter what happens with them, your story is one of courage and miracles. And it doesn't mean there's not a scientific basis for what happened with you.

The only issue with your doc is the art required--I don't believe it can be taught that easily.
 

Sing

Senior Member
Messages
1,782
Location
New England
Give Feedback tomorrow

Thanks so much to Dreambirdie for getting the ball rolling on this and for doing all the behind-the-scenes AGITATING to make this happen! Thanks to all for all of your support for my small part in this in advance of the show coming out. And, just a gentle reminder that if you do like the segment tomorrow (or at least mostly like it!), it would be VERY positive reinforcement to thank the producers for revisiting CFS, having us on, etc. The segment producer is Judy Rybak (JRybak@zoco.com) and I think she really did a great job as well, pulling a lot of different elements together in a relatively short time.

I plan to watch Dr. Ox (typo) tomorrow and will email Judy Rybak as you suggest. I thought your write up for his website was excellent and I'll use it as a resource. Thank you!

Cecelia
 

Recovery Soon

Senior Member
Messages
380
Letter to Dr. Oz (re: Dr. Teitelbaum)

FYI- I sent the following letter to Dr. Oz (about a week ago)

Never heard back:

Dear Dr. Oz,

Please be careful when presenting Dr. Teitlebaum as an expert on CFS. Dr. Teitelbaum oversimplifies a devastating disease, and overstates his ability to control the condition. Very few people are ever cured from CFS, and Dr. Teitelbaum's claim of helping hundreds of thousands recover is pure fantasy.

Dr. Teitelbaum conveniently refers to CFS as Chronic Fatigue on television, which widens his target market from 1 million Americans who are debilitated with a neuro-immune dysfunction (of which fatigue is but ONE symptom) to people who feel generally tired, which is nearly everyone on the planet.

CFS destroyed my life. It onset over 3 years ago, when in my mid-30's I was in tremendous physical shape, exercising for hours a day in a boxing gym, and working as a Creative Executive. One day I got the flu- and it NEVER LEFT.

I read "From Fatigue to Fantastic" and went to the Fatigue and Fibromyalgia clinics, where Dr. Teitelbaum is the Medical Director. After spending thousands and thousands of out of pocket dollars, I was very far from a recovery, as was every single other patient with whom I encountered, who had taken Dr. Teilebaum at his word. The final blow came when the head physician at the Connecticut F&F clinic left the practice. Privately, he confided to me that he could not "emotionally handle treating people and watching them not get better." He confirmed that he had not seen ANYONE get cured on Teitelbaums SHINE protocol. That was the last time I went to the clinic.

Yes, Dr. Teitelbaum has some relevant knowledge on herbal supplements, which may offer very modest benefits to CFS patients. But his overall message is one which oversimplifies a devastating condition, and further alienates CFS sufferers from a world in which we have been ignored, disrespected, and left to lose everything we have in life. Such practices have left us unfunded and unrecognized by the CDC for years- a travesty beyond explanation.

The final insult is being told that we have imagined this condition, which is nearly always the first assumption, and usually the final diagnosis. In fact, Dr. Teitelabum himself told me in person at one of his appearances, that I was clearly a very driven person, and that I needed to examine the issues in my life if I wanted to get better, when I pressed him on why I was seeing no benefits from his protocol. Dr. Teitelbaum is used to wooing crowds with a library like knowledge of Herbal Remedies, and is not very used to pointed questions about his recovery discrepancies. Pretty ironic, coming from a man who touts himself as a CFS advocate fighting against the nitwits who dont believe CFS is a physical disease. In many ways he perpetuates the very same stigma he claims to guard against.

I would rather this disease go unrecognized than see this man do further damage on your show.

I can only hope in the future you will not further the grossly inflated "cure" claims of your guests, and do the homework necessary to validate the suffering of people who have dealt with more than you could imagine for longer than you would ever hope to believe.

If you want a reference point- just think of MS patients being laughed at in the early 20th Century, and called crazy.

Pretty unbelievable, huh? Well, believe it, because this is the reality for a million CFS patients in the early 21st century. And from the looks of the treatment of this condition as presented on your show, things are not about to change any time soon.
 

shiso

Senior Member
Messages
159
Thanks Recovery Soon for your letter - it so effectively expresses what I would have wanted to say.
 
M

misskoji

Guest
Dr. Donnica

Thank you so very much for such a succient, well written article and every thing you do for us. You are brilliant! It means a lot to us that you come and interact with us here. I'm just sorry that you also understand the illness the way you do, from a very personal perspective.

Dreambirdie, many thanks are also owed to you. I can't wait to see what else you're working on. You rock!

I'm hoping a lot of us will write or scribe our comments of thanks to Dr. Oz, the producer, ect after the show airs.
 
A

anne

Guest
Dr. Donnica, your article was wonderful. I was curious about the mention of noisy places--could you talk a little more about that?
 

blackbird

caged.
Messages
100
Location
UK
Thanks to everyone for what they're doing here.

The more I read, the less I trust my ME diagnosis, partly due to the complete absence of brainfog.
In spite of that, I found the colourscheme on the Dr. Oz site a little difficult to read.

I think I first saw this on twitter though:
http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

It takes the main text of a web page and presents it more like an easy to read word/openoffice document.
I don't know if it works for iexplorer, but I've tried it on firefox, opera and safari (Windows) and it works with all three.
 

usedtobeperkytina

Senior Member
Messages
1,479
Location
Clay, Alabama
Likely

Likely, Donnica is referring to noise sensitivity, which is one of the many symptoms that comes with this illness. Light sensitivity is common as well. Basically, anything that puts a demand on the central nervous system.

Healthy people can handle the demand without even noticing it. For us, it starts a downward spiral if the demand is high.

Basically, we are sensitive.

I hate to say that about myself. But it is my body that is sensitive. My personality is not. And I hate that my personality does not match my body, or vice versa.

Tina
 

Michael Dessin

Senior Member
Messages
608
Location
Ohio
Blackbird

Symtoms including brainfog come on at different phases of this illness.

Many get brainfog early in the illness others not for a very long time.
Mine started 12 years after onset and got much worse than brainfog.

Usually the physical limitations are first to be noticed and most obvious.

Mike
 

Andrew

Senior Member
Messages
2,513
Location
Los Angeles, USA
BTW, I'd gladly lend my CFS to Dr. Oz for a couple of years. Let him do all his stretching stuff. Then at the end of the two years, no need to give it back to me. His stretching will have cured it.

OTOH, I'm willing to try his stretching. Heck, I tried Luvox, which is an antidepressant that supposedly cures CFS. As you might guess from my ongoing participation here, it didn't work.