One thing that could make a difference is Marty Pall's theory of unexplained illnesses. Childhood sexual abuse, and adult sexual abuse, and emotional abuse of all kinds -- any kind of abuse over an extended period of time -- is likely to cause PTSD. And PTSD, like ME-CFS, MCS, and FMS, involves a vicious cycle with high levels of peroynitrite, an antioxidant that damages the lipid membranes of cells. All nerve cells are largely lipids, and extremely sensitive to peroxidation.
PTSD often leads to illnesses that look a lot like ME-CFS, such as Gulf War syndrome. It is unfortunately miscategorized as a mental anxiety disorder and treated with talk therapy, which is largely ineffective.
In any case, I think the hoopla about sexual abuse is a waste of $$$ and time unless research advances to the point of looking at how abuse damages the oxidative regulation of the body, an important role, but it is not the cause or the cure for a large majority of individuals.
its energy production and signal production. B12, as Freddd suggests, plays
Janis
Ji Janis,
an important role, but it is not the cause or the cure for a large majority of individuals. its energy production and signal production. B12, as Freddd suggests, plays
You have a major understatement and misunderstanding here. First b12 "crashes" can be triggered by any and all kinds of stressors including physical trauma, bacterial, viral, vaccine and for all I know emotional/psychological abuse. Once triggered it's like the person can never dig back out of the hole. It can start with an injury from a car accident and be all downhill after that. I was certainly subjected to that. My mother was an abusive psychotic. The two kinds of b12 play over 600 roles in every system of the body, enegy production is just one. The neurological , immune, digestive, pulmonary, cardiac and all other systems of the body. Look at the list of symptoms, and that isn't complete. I would love to run a controled trial on this one. In this, people respond based on symptoms, not diagnoses. For the people with a large assortment of the symptoms on the list very significant response to both active b12s with methylfolate, basic cofactors and critical cofactors as I have specified is in excess of 80% and it's a rare person who has these symptoms who doesn't have at least some response. Maybe a factor is that the unbound active b12s stimulate a healing response regardless of the cause.
Brainfog, neurological pain, widespread body pain, exercise intolerance, IBS, muscle pain of multiple kinds, 18 specific tender muscle locations, severe unrelenting fatigue, etc all respond reliably and with varying degrees of quickness to the appropriate combination of the two active b12s of the tested brands taken in the specified manner with methylfolate and the specified basic cofactors and specified critical cofactors. Some things happen almost instantly and some types of things take longer. Individuals often require some fine tuning. For instance some people require quite a different ratio between the two active b12s than other people. When one is working through the permutaions and combinations of critical cofactors you never know which one will be a jackpot and which other ones it must be combined with to work. People use wrong methods and don't get results. I've had people do it wrong 5 or 6 times and just absolutely refuse to actually do as I suggest that you ought to try it before you say it doesn't work. However, don't change the recipe by taking different brands, inactive b12s, no methylfolate etc etc etc and then say it doesn't work. I have spent the last 6 years working out many of the kinks as to why it doesn't work. I have found a lot of ways a person can go wrong and very few for it to work predictably and reliably in most people.
I had a classic case of CFS/FMS. There was no disagreement at all about that once it became an acceptable diagnosis. I was treated as if it was all in my head for years by lots of docs which is a common experience here. I got onto the methylb12 because of the neuropathies I also had. I was totally surprised when it actually cleared up the CFS/FMS far more quickly and easily than the neuropathic symptoms, some of which I am still affected by. That most of the symptoms were caused by b12 deficiencies was not at all obvious to anybody except in retrospect. Now, in retrospect it is an easy analysis to see how all the pieces fit together. Yes, I had my suspicians about some of the symptoms as early as 1978 but was told I was wrong by 100% of the doctors 100% of the time. I was diagnosed with idopathic neuropathies. Many of the doctors just assumed I was actually a secret alcoholic, very common here in Utah in the Mormon culture, perhaps like that woman in the car crash who turned out to be drunk recently. That was considered a totally different thing from all the traumatic neuropathic injury I also had and the mutitude of times I was diagnosed with FMS/CFS.
Is it such a terrible thing if CFS/FMS turns out to be treatable? Doesn't it seem unlikely that 100% of the symptoms and onset characteristics would match up with and respond as if it is this stealth deficiency syndrome of a dozen or so factors if it isn't?
As these symptoms can be found easily in people with serum cobalamin levels under 2000-3000pg/ml, that 2 of the 4 syndromes have no relationship with serum level at all or any other serum or urine test and are not detectable by such tests and hence can't be ruled out regardless of test numbers and so the methods used to rule out b12 deficiency are fallacious based on incorect hypotheses. It's an easily testable hypothesis unlike most of them. Take this sexual abuse hypothesis. Even if it is correct, so what? So that may be a triggering event for some people. It doesn't point out the cure by knowing that. Finding the triggering cause is pretty worthless in knowing how to treat it. I was emotionally abused. Maybe it was a factor but it isn't a testable hypothesis in terms of a cure or reliable treatment. Maybe it starts a biochemical cascade in susceptable people that ends in CFS/FMS. Now, at this end of it is where a treatment hypothesis is testable. I have all sorts of candidate trigger events. Knowing any of them or all of them gets us nowhere on treatment. I offer you a testable treatment hypothesis and you act like I'm offerring you an untestable trigger hypothesis.
A 1-3 month trial of the correct items done correctly will demonstrate conclusively for just about anybody if they will have some degree of response. If they have some degree of response then much more can follow with adjustments and fine tuning. This is a complicated thing. Lack of response is rarely the problem. More often the response is so large that people become scared of it. The initial response often isn't pleasant so people interpret it as a "bad response". Having walked many hundreds of people through this, a heavy duty intital response indicates that it will work quite well. I haven't yet met anybody with what turned out to be an actual detrimental response. All responses are positive. It's just upsetting the applecart of sickness which can't be avoided if a person is going to get well.
I understand a persons lack of belief in what I say. No belief is necessary. A trial will tell all. It's a testable hypothesis that doesn't require faith. It may be no more effective than the last dozen things you tried. On the other hand it may restore you to health and being able to live a normal life. I'm not selling anything. The test of this hypothesis is not going to break the bank. The 80% trial costs $60. That will leave 20% of the people who could benefit undetected because it is lacking what they need and only takes 5 weeks. But it does a test for all four of the base deficiency types including the CNS/CSF deficiency of both kinds of active b12s. It's a pragmatic test and I know of absolutely no other method to get at that. I also don't know of anybody else offerring a protocol that gets at that. I've never seen any other one that does. I can't even offer you an estimate of a percentage that might turn up with that. Some will. For that percentage, whatever it is, nothing else will help them. Japan is the only place in the world studying this aspect. They are at least 50 years ahead of USA/UK research. A lot of politics stands in the way of this ever being studied here. I couldn't wait for that. I had already waited 60 years and my life was running out. Who here can't wait another 50-100 years?
All in all I would be very surprised if at least 50% of those here don't benefit substantially. Good health to all.