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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, long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.
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To all the doctors, psychiatrists, and especially employees of the CDC (are you listening Bil Reeves?), repeat After me:
I dont Know
I dont know
I dont know
Now doesnt that feel better than having to keep up the charade?
is naive about philosophy and the philosophy of science and the bounds of science.
Geez, it's like The Matrix! Thanks for that red pill, y'all!
It's crazy, I know.
We're expensive. If it turns out that we have something which can be treated pharmacologically we will become lucrative and everything will change.
Just to be the pedant that I am, note that "psychological" is certainly a fair description of say depression, in the abstract, if one sets aside how the word might be mis-perceived. But in practice, everyone mis-perceives it!
Everyone perceives that it means these illnesses have a psychological origin or cause, not merely a psychological nature. But that is not established. I am one who believes it likely that no psychogenic diseases exist, except maybe PTSD. Many groups including some in high places (Harvard) find that elevated cytokines are a likely cause of major depression; however this is hotly disputed.
Of course, in science we assume without overwhelming proof that the psyche is made of neurons and their actions, because there is no way to address the psyche scientifically if this isnt so. I still believe that a fairly clear distinction between psychogenic and physiogenic can be made. The former occurs via experiences, via what comes into the "psyche" and how it is processed. An event in the psyche should precede any physical change that can be summarized in the sense of "a great percentage of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra died". The physical changes that correspond to an event in the psyche presumably lack this simplicity; they should instead contain incompressible information such as "this neuron fired, then this one and this one, and 25 milliseconds later, this one did", etc.
I do think that a pyschogenic disease, if any exist, could cause summarizable, compressible physical events that are causally downstream of the disease cause. For example, depression *could* be psychogenic, and the psyche could, eventually, cause the elevated cortisol found in something like 1/2 of depression patients. The cortisol change could even be upstream of the depression experience (altered qualia and behavior). But only a psychological-neural phenomenon with no simple physical description can be at the top, if it be a psychogenic disease. If a great percentage of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra die, this too could have a psychological cause -- but only if the less-compressible psychological phenomenon happens first.
So yeah, depression-ologists often take depression to be psychogenic and yet to very often show elevated cortisol. Lloyd is doing the same thing they are doing. The only absolute reason to believe that Parkinson's disease is *not* psychogenic is because the correlated physical phenomenon (death of dopaminergin neurons in the substantia nigra) is more spectacular than elevated cortisol.
Actually there is one more reason. Most diseases lower fitness and there should, ideally, be some reason why they occur nevertheless. I think many people find it easier to see how psychogenic depression could happen nevertheless, and cant see why psychogenic Parkinson's could happen nevertheless. I dont really agree, but it would take another page or two to explain.
Remember when they came out with Lyrica and all of a sudden fibromyalgia got legitimate?
Drug Approved. Is Disease Real?
By ALEX BERENSON
Published: January 14, 2008
Fibromyalgia is a real disease. Or so says Pfizer in a new television advertising campaign for Lyrica, the first medicine approved to treat the pain condition, whose very existence is questioned by some doctors.
For patient advocacy groups and doctors who specialize in fibromyalgia, the Lyrica approval is a milestone. They say they hope Lyrica and two other drugs that may be approved this year will legitimize fibromyalgia, just as Prozac brought depression into the mainstream.
But other doctors including the one who wrote the 1990 paper that defined fibromyalgia but who has since changed his mind say that the disease does not exist and that Lyrica and the other drugs will be taken by millions of people who do not need them.
As diagnosed, fibromyalgia primarily affects middle-aged women and is characterized by chronic, widespread pain of unknown origin. Many of its sufferers are afflicted by other similarly nebulous conditions, like irritable bowel syndrome.
Because fibromyalgia patients typically do not respond to conventional painkillers like aspirin, drug makers are focusing on medicines like Lyrica that affect the brain and the perception of pain.
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Despite the controversy, the American College of Rheumatology, the Food and Drug Administration and insurers recognize fibromyalgia as a diagnosable disease. And drug companies are aggressively pursuing fibromyalgia treatments, seeing the potential for a major new market.
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But doctors who are skeptical of fibromyalgia say vague complaints of chronic pain do not add up to a disease. No biological tests exist to diagnose fibromyalgia, and the condition cannot be linked to any environmental or biological causes.
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Dr. Frederick Wolfe, the director of the National Databank for Rheumatic Diseases and the lead author of the 1990 paper that first defined the diagnostic guidelines for fibromyalgia, says he has become cynical and discouraged about the diagnosis. He now considers the condition a physical response to stress, depression, and economic and social anxiety.
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When you help physicians to recognize the condition and you give them treatments that are well tolerated, you overcome their reluctance, he said.
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Theres definitely room for several drugs, Dr. Chappell said.
But physicians who are opposed to the fibromyalgia diagnosis say the new drugs will probably do little for patients. Over time, fibromyalgia patients tend to cycle among many different painkillers, sleep medicines and antidepressants, using each for a while until its benefit fades, Dr. Wolfe said.
The fundamental problem is that the improvement that you see, which is not really great in clinical trials, is not maintained, Dr. Wolfe said.
Still, Dr. Wolfe expects the drugs will be widely used. The companies, he said, are going to make a fortune.
Kurt,The 'adaptive' mechanisms of the brain do indeed include a type of neural network learning process that by definition means that cognitive events can produce biological change in an organism...
GMA patients who were tested in either one of two studies need to stay patient a little longer. We have provided over 130 samples to Dr. Judy Mikovits for extended testing for XMRV. Dr. Mikovits tells us most of those samples have been tested, and that we will receive the results as soon as they are finished analyzing the data. Those who provided samples to Panorama labs will also need to wait. XMRV is proving to be a difficult virus to find in testing, and both labs are working to do their best to provide accurate information. We will contact you as soon as we receive the results.