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Has anybody heard of this new book out?

Messages
10
I'm not sure where to ask this but I just got an ebook called "Back from the Edge..." (I can't remember the rest of the title, lol!) but its about a guy who was really sick but can now hike (I think he climbed Mt. Whitney?) and work.

I wanted to get people's input about it?

I started skimming through it. It's well written. It talks about the role of mold and toxins in CFS.

I'm looking forward to reading it. It would be fun to have it be a book club book also.

(if this is the wrong place to post this feel free to let me know. I haven't posted in so long that I'd forgotten my password!).

I've tried about every other treatment out there (except for stem cells and Rituxan and gcMAF).
 

Sparrowhawk

Senior Member
Messages
514
Location
West Coast USA
I read it, and found it an informative angle on what happened in Tahoe. Also impressed with Erik's deductive approach to figuring out what ailed him (mold and bio toxins). It was fortuitous his military training was along those lines or it might have been a lot tougher for him to get the relief he found. May we all have similar success!

As an aside, from my meager reading so far on this extensive board, it seems like there are many routes to getting sick with CFS/ME or whatever folks would prefer to call it. Mold may be the key for some, others viral, stil others toxic exposure or heavy metals. But once your immune system is knocked back, then the question is how to rebalance and restore it.

Love the idea of a book club, but I predict it is a hard sell when everyone here is so exhausted! Is there a recommended reading list somewhere on the site? Folks keep talking about a book called Ostlers Web but I haven't looked it up yet.
 

Erik Johnson

Senior Member
Messages
106
Osler's Web is the only book that tells the real story of how the new syndrome got started.
Many people can't bring themselves to believe it, and think it is too "conspiratorial" to be the truth,
but it's all true.

Hillary Johnson even tamed it down a bit. Things were actually much worse than she described.
 

Plum

Senior Member
Messages
512
Location
UK
I've read it and enjoyed it. Am now looking in to mould in more detail to see how it's affecting me. It's a huge life changing thing to look into but if it can help me too that would be awesome!
 

Erik Johnson

Senior Member
Messages
106
The problem with looking over the literature on mold is that this information represents what was known about mold in the past, what mold can and can not do.
What that literature doesn't take into account is what mold might be doing NOW.

In fact, if mold appeared to be doing something completely different, the old literature would seem to disprove it, and convince academic minds that what they were seeing "Must be something else, because mold can not do that."
 

Sparrowhawk

Senior Member
Messages
514
Location
West Coast USA
Eric the statement I believe was attributed to you that molds working on a pile of leaves may not be a problem for the majority of humans, but mold working on drywall or other human-manufactured/toxic materials (such as the example of the fire-retardant sprayed forest) producing novel problems made absolute sense to me.

Molds digest their environment. What they produce out of digesting contemporary materials and toxins is anyone's guess and I'm not aware that has been studied in toxicology.
 

Erik Johnson

Senior Member
Messages
106
http://www.talkhealthpartnership.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=493&t=4566&p=13661#p13661


Re: Is ME infectious?
Postby Erik Johnson on Fri Aug 16, 2013 3:14 pm

I'm a survivor of the 1985 Lake Tahoe epidemic, a graduate of Truckee High School, and a Holmes et al "CFS definition patient-study group" participant as a prototype for the new syndrome of "CFS"

We have had a few more minor outbreaks since then, but nothing like the huge "Mystery Illness" incident that sickened thousands of people.

This strange illness is full of bizarre contradictions.
At times spreading like wildfire through groups of closely associated people, yet with people from these very groups seemingly unable to transmit it to anyone else.

I saw a pattern immediately. A strange "exception to the rules" in which the flu-like illness turned from noninfectious to wildly contagious.

The contagion occurred when people in the early "shedding phase" of viral illness were all in the presence of moldy buildings, particularly ones with Stachybotrys Chartarum.
Only then, was the disease easily passed from one to another.

The Truckee "teachers lounge" incident that caused Dr Peterson to call the CDC, starting the path to the new syndrome, is a very well described example of this process.

I contacted the teachers at Elk Grove, and they found the very same "toxic mold" that we in Truckee did.

The clues are right there. Simply ask yourself, "If this were a purely viral illness, then why did the one teacher who made the effort to get out of that lounge manage to avoid becoming ill?"

-Erik Johnson

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8148452
Clin Infect Dis. 1994 Jan;18 Suppl 1:S43-8.
Concurrent sick building syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome: epidemic neuromyasthenia revisited.
Chester AC, Levine PH.
Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C.
Sick building syndrome (SBS) is usually characterized by upper respiratory complaints, headache, and mild fatigue. Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is an illness with defined criteria including extreme fatigue, sore throat, headache, and neurological symptoms. We investigated three apparent outbreaks of SBS and observed another more serious illness (or illnesses), characterized predominantly by severe fatigue, that was noted by 9 (90%) of the 10 teachers who frequently used a single conference room at a high school in Truckee, California; 5 (23%) of the 22 responding teachers in the J wing of a high school in Elk Grove, California; and 9 (10%) of the 93 responding workers from an office building in Washington, D.C. In those individuals with severe fatigue, symptoms of mucous membrane irritation that are characteristic of SBS were noted but also noted were neurological complaints not typical of SBS but quite characteristic of CFS. We conclude that CFS is often associated with SBS.
PMID: 8148452 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]