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Howard Bloom and CFS

Ember

Ember

Senior Member
Messages
2,115
Healtheo360 is launching an in-depth new interview series…360Interviews!

“360 Interviews takes an in-depth look at the journeys of incredible individuals, how their lives were altered by chronic conditions, and how they took back control.”
In our first 360 interview we give you an introduction into the world of Howard Bloom. He brings us back into his childhood, his family upbringing and his fascination with science. Howard shares everything from his days of working with Michael Jackson to the moment CFS took over his life, and how support from others and social networks helped him get proper diagnosis and saved his life.
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Watch the Howard Bloom interview -- Chapter 1: The Origins of Howard Bloom, described here as “Part 1 of a multiparter on my 15 year wrestling match with the illlness that imprisoned me in a bedroom."

See also: health360's 360 Interviews highlight the life of Howard Bloom, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Authority

"With more than 90% of Americans living with CFS being initially dismissed or misdiagnosed by their families and healthcare providers, Howard Bloom shares his journey of diagnosis, adaptation and survival."

The 2007 book Chronic Fatigue Syndrome For Dummies includes Howard Bloom as one of the ten most famous people with CFS.[5]
 
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Valentijn

Senior Member
Messages
15,786
Very fascinating person ... sucks that he has ME/CFS, but I'm glad he's part of the community.
 
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SpecialK82

Ohio, USA
Messages
993
Location
Ohio, USA
Thanks for posting Ember! I just read something about him last week and learned that he had CFS. I kept thinking, he would be a great public relations person for our cause. He understands marketing and he has alot of contacts.
 
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HowToEscape?

Senior Member
Messages
626
Thanks for posting this. Howard is quite a guy, someone who did everything on his own initiative. I read "Genius of the Beast" and he's just published another book, "The God Problem".
 
Ember

Ember

Senior Member
Messages
2,115
Harold Bloom has been promoting his new book, The God Problem, in California. Impatient with the slow progress of his tale, I indulged in this sneak preview, taken from Dan Schneider's earlier interview:
And then I’d finally been forced to sit there in my office and to tell my staff that I was giving them the business and that I had to disappear in two weeks because for all I knew and for all my doctors knew, I was dying. So for the next fifteen years I was a prisoner in my own bedroom and for five years I was too weak to talk and when my wife tried to keep me company and she lifted the pages of the newspaper and turned it, the sound tore through me like a cannon ball, it hurt, physically. And she had to leave the room and I had to be in a room without any humans and without talking and it was intensely painful. You hear about political prisoners in China being given solitary confinement because the Chinese know it will drive them insane and that it turns your entire body and psyche into a torture chamber and that’s what it did to me. Meanwhile, around 1996, we found a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome specialist, Dr. Derek Enlander, who was willing to do something no other doctor would agree to—to make a house call. There is no way in hell I could have gotten to a doctor’s office. And Derek was into something I was also into—the Internet. I had gone on the Internet in 1983. Peter Gabriel and Larry Fast—Peter’s keyboard player--and I were about the only people on the Internet, aside from professors and scientists. But with the CFS, I lost my identity and lost my validity as a human being. Finally, I had two computers set up next to the bed, got a Chinese box that let me control them both from one keyboard and one monitor, and had a keyboard fixed up with foam rubber and gaffer’s tape so it stood up at an angle and I could see the keys while I was lying flat on the bed with my head on a pillow. And I reconstructed my identity over the course of seven years, using my keyboard when I was strong enough to type and developing a personality online. And Derek Enlander introduced me to a community of other CFS victims online, especially to another one of his patients, an amazing woman in Texas named Linda Diane Scalf. Once I built a new identity in cyberspace, I wrote three books and I founded two international scientific groups, and Linda Diane Scalf and other CFS activists online helped me find my way to some of the medications being tried for CFS. And Dr. Enlander gave me the prescriptions that allowed me to use them. I suspect that it’s a combination of those medications and a radically reinvented lifestyle that finally got me out of bed and out of the house in 2003. But I thought that I’d never escape my bed again. So being out and talking in Moscow, Amsterdam, Paris, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, and Chengdu, China, is a material miracle.
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I hope that this hasn't spoiled the ending!
 
Ember

Ember

Senior Member
Messages
2,115
Howard Bloom interview -- Chapter 8: Chaka Khan & The Birth of the Howard Bloom Organization...Howard branches out and forms the Howard Bloom Organization.

Howard Bloom interview -- Chapter 9: Publicity & The Womacks...In the world of PR, honesty and truth always find a way.

Howard Bloom interview -- Chapter 10: Cyndi Lauper and CFS...While working with Cyndi Lauper, Howard is confronted with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
 
jenbooks

jenbooks

Guest
Messages
1,270
He's well now.
But I'll wait until he tells how he did it.
I wouldn't be able to use his method but it gets to a key issue about neuroendocrine disorders, stress, central sensitization in the brain--for CFS, MCS, and many other "conditions."

It's fascinating.
 
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leela

Senior Member
Messages
3,290
Wow. Thank you Ember. Part 11 is really powerful.
"That doesn't mean you have nothing, it means [your doctor] has nothing.That means there's something wrong not with you, but with your doctor."
He makes his points with such potency and conviction. It's beautiful.
I'm so glad he's speaking out about these things.
 
Ember

Ember

Senior Member
Messages
2,115
Oxytocin Injection
About your treatment

Your doctor has ordered oxytocin, a hormone, to stimulate contractions of the uterus and smooth muscle tissue. The drug will be either injected into a large muscle (such as your buttock or hip) or added to an intravenous fluid that will drip through a needle or catheter in your vein.

Oxytocin is a hormone produced by the hypothalamus and stored in the pituitary gland. It is used to help start or strengthen labor and to reduce bleeding after delivery. This medication is sometimes prescribed for other uses; ask your doctor or pharmacist for more information.

Your health care provider (doctor, nurse, or pharmacist) may measure the effectiveness and side effects of your treatment using laboratory tests and physical examinations. It is important to keep all appointments with your doctor and the laboratory. The length of treatment depends on how your symptoms respond to the medication.
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Gabapentin
Why is this medication prescribed?

Gabapentin capsules, tablets, and oral solution are used to help control certain types of seizures in people who have epilepsy. Gabapentin capsules, tablets, and oral solution are also used to relieve the pain of postherpetic neuralgia (PHN; the burning, stabbing pain or aches that may last for months or years after an attack of shingles). Gabapentin extended-release tablets (Horizant) are used to treat restless legs syndrome (RLS; a condition that causes discomfort in the legs and a strong urge to move the legs, especially at night and when sitting or lying down). Gabapentin is in a class of medications called anticonvulsants. Gabapentin treats seizures by decreasing abnormal excitement in the brain. Gabapentin relieves the pain of PHN by changing the way the body senses pain. It is not known exactly how gabapentin works to treat restless legs syndrome.
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