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ME/CFS Research Newcastle UK - Team Newton

Messages
15,786
Oh good. Dr Vincent Deary has the cure in video 8 at around 4:20. We just need to be a little more active immediately before and after intense activities we struggle with, so we don't have "too much" rest and thus can "keep our system going". :confused: And 10 minute breaks at work will be more restorative if we walk around during those breaks and aren't accustomed to 2 hour naps at home!

And being more active will magically generate more energy!

It's all pretty stupid really, and deceptive. He talks about minimizing the excesses of activity so that more can be done during the down period. But he's adding activity in, and not removing any, just inserting marginally longer breaks at work.

And then the GET starts. Which is sold as "increasing more enjoyable activities", which of course increases energy via some unknown mechanism. Fortunately our symptoms will only "temporarily feel a little worse", but really it's just like the soreness he'd get if he started training for a marathon tomorrow. And because there's a bit more rest at work, she's now doing less and can therefore handle doing more. o_O Even though 1) she's not doing less, just resting a bit more while doing something and 2) if she were doing less to offset the increase in other activities, it would hardly be a net increase in activity as illustrated by the nice steps.
 

Snow Leopard

Hibernating
Messages
5,902
Location
South Australia
Oh good. Dr Vincent Deary has the cure in video 8 at around 4:20.

It is interesting to note that all studies which have actually measured activity patterns have failed to find "boom and bust" patterns. It is a failed hypothesis.

Yes, some patients may occasionally have a boom and then a bust (say there is something the patient really wants to do!), but a large majority of the time, patients do not behave in this way. Patients naturally trend towards pacing (hence the real-world activity patterns observed), unless consistently pushed by outside sources to do more than they can physically achieve.

"Boom and bust" is yet another myth associated with CFS.
 

meandthecat

Senior Member
Messages
206
Location
West country UK
Do these homilies follow a bell curve? starts off ok, caring but a bit wet. Then things seem a bit off, definitely picking up emerging sub-text, then down it goes as all pretence of objectivity is abandoned and the same old same old is trotted out.
On video 6 at about 19.20 the stratagy is revealled.

Thanks for the link by the way even if it does just confirm my cynicism toward psychostition
 

Chris

Senior Member
Messages
845
Location
Victoria, BC
I think Julia Newton and her group are doing some great work on figuring out just what our fatigue and OI are, and where they originate.Look up their essay on "Abnormalities in pH handling by peripheral muscle and potential regulation by the autonomic nervous system in chronic fatigue syndrome, 2009--I put "mitochondria" for "peripheral muscle". And then this one: "Home orthostatic training in chronic fatigue syndrome--a randomized, placebo-controlled feasibility study," 2010. I have been doing the exercise described there for about 3 months now, and it has significantly improved my OI, and is, I think, beginning to improve my exercise tolerance. And remember Nancy Klimas' comment on a gene expression study that first the ANS tanks, and then brings down the immune system with it. Since the HHS is obviously aiming to trash us, it will be up to us to try to improve our own state. Try it! Chris
 
Messages
15,786
Do these homilies follow a bell curve? starts off ok, caring but a bit wet. Then things seem a bit off, definitely picking up emerging sub-text, then down it goes as all pretence of objectivity is abandoned and the same old same old is trotted out.
On video 6 at about 19.20 the stratagy is revealled.
Yup. Basically don't tell the patient what you really think, and feed them some bullshit about CBT also being used for "real" diseases. Without, of course, mentioning that the rationale for the CBT and the application of it is completely bass-ackwards. CBT is used elsewhere for acceptance of chronic illness, but the psychobabblers use it to teach us to deny our illness.
 

Firestormm

Senior Member
Messages
5,055
Location
Cornwall England
Yup. Basically don't tell the patient what you really think, and feed them some bullshit about CBT also being used for "real" diseases. Without, of course, mentioning that the rationale for the CBT and the application of it is completely bass-ackwards. CBT is used elsewhere for acceptance of chronic illness, but the psychobabblers use it to teach us to deny our illness.

BBC article 18 October: Cognitive therapy study hope for hypochondria patients ;)
 

Firestormm

Senior Member
Messages
5,055
Location
Cornwall England
Ah yes the BBC - the propaganda wing of anything "elite". Can anyone take anything they spew seriously?

Ah but if you accept that CBT is at best a help for anxiety, from whatever it develops, then perhaps they (or whomever they got their report from) has a point. I mean we all know - and as Val has indicated - that CBT (or the principles thereof) are used across most (if not all) walks of life including chronic disease. Seems to me that if anything it is helpful in relieving some of the anxiety associated with disease persistence.

Anyway, I wouldn't mind keeping this thread about Newcastle and it's developments if that's alright? I can post the BBC report separately if you think it might lead to some more discussion on this subject. Although I think CBT has been done to death.
 
Messages
13,774


That looks well worth a thread. Extra CBT vs just usual medical care in a non-blinded trial, and they get only an extra 7% of hypochondrpriorities's reporting 'normal' levels of anxiety? If that was self-reported, it looks like another poor result being hyped as a success. EDIT - just read the paper, and they do attempt single blinded assessment. That, and more exciting news in the thread linked to below!

Maybe it's because I was being educated during the peak of the CBT/bio psychosocial/psych bubble, but I'm just amazed at how little value there is in these interventions. That result is being used to argue that more money needs to go into training people for CBT?

So many thing I want to take the time to read closely and think about. Dodginess everywhere imo - it's hard to concentrate on one's priorities.
 

Firestormm

Senior Member
Messages
5,055
Location
Cornwall England
That looks well worth a thread. Extra CBT vs just usual medical care in a non-blinded trial, and they get only an extra 7% of hypochondrpriorities's reporting 'normal' levels of anxiety? If that was self-reported, it looks like another poor result being hyped as a success.

Maybe it's because I was being educated during the peak of the CBT/bio psychosocial/psych bubble, but I'm just amazed at how little value there is in these interventions. That result is being used to argue that more money needs to go into training people for CBT?

So many thing I want to take the time to read closely and think about. Dodginess everywhere imo - it's hard to concentrate on one's priorities.

New thread here :)
 

Firestormm

Senior Member
Messages
5,055
Location
Cornwall England
ME / CFS Research Newcastle · 1,088 like this 10 hours ago ·

Team meeting today so very exciting. When the team meet up we all discuss the various aspects of the recruitment - how this is going (which is very well at the moment we have almost 50 patients included in the study and 30 who have completed all the assessments ( which are numerous) and the plan for 45 to have completed by Christmas.

Our only problem at the moment is that we only have one control subject - so we need to recruit more controls (something that is proving more difficult than we had expected as we need our controls to be sedentary I.e. fairly inactive).

Today we discussed how we are securing the data we are collecting (there is nothing worse than collecting lots of wonderful data to find you haven't saved it correctly !) and what data we are data basing (this helps with the subsequent analysis - getting everything correctly nd accurately entered onto a database can save hours of analysis time in the future).

We also looked at the preliminary data from some of the MRI scans (which are using new ways of looking at things) to decide how best to interpret the result.
 

Battery Muncher

Senior Member
Messages
620
@chris.88

I think Julia Newton and her group are doing some great work on figuring out just what our fatigue and OI are, and where they originate.Look up their essay on "Abnormalities in pH handling by peripheral muscle and potential regulation by the autonomic nervous system in chronic fatigue syndrome, 2009--I put "mitochondria" for "peripheral muscle". And then this one: "Home orthostatic training in chronic fatigue syndrome--a randomized, placebo-controlled feasibility study," 2010. I have been doing the exercise described there for about 3 months now, and it has significantly improved my OI, and is, I think, beginning to improve my exercise tolerance. And remember Nancy Klimas' comment on a gene expression study that first the ANS tanks, and then brings down the immune system with it. Since the HHS is obviously aiming to trash us, it will be up to us to try to improve our own state. Try it! Chris

Hi, very interesting post. Unfortunately, I am unable to access the second paper - is there any way to get hold of it? Thanks!
 

Firestormm

Senior Member
Messages
5,055
Location
Cornwall England
Rather an interesting blog attached to the latest post from Newcastle. The blog can be found here (link in article don't work Capt'n :))

There is an interview with Gina Rutherford and a presentation (she is part of Team Newton) now on the AfME YouTube page:



I haven't watched either yet - be interested to hear what y'all think :)
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
Does anybody find youtube video presentations easy to watch, listen to and understand?
I most certainly don't.
I normally ignore anything presented in this way, no matter how useful it might be.

The first one is giving me a link to a 1.75 hour lecture on finding allah and presenting jesus......I'm not watching that!
 

Firestormm

Senior Member
Messages
5,055
Location
Cornwall England
Does anybody find youtube video presentations easy to watch, listen to and understand?
I most certainly don't.
I normally ignore anything presented in this way, no matter how useful it might be.

The first one is giving me a link to a 1.75 hour lecture on finding allah and presenting jesus......I'm not watching that!

Eh? You just press play on the graphic above. Where's the link to allah?! :)

Nice to see you back x
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
The links to allah and jesus came up after I closed it, giving up on the poor sound quality echoing everywhere and I can't make out a word she says.

Then I decided to try giving it another go, so I clicked on the screen again, but it had turned into a patchwork of images and I couldn't find the right thing again.

I know you just click on them and they play - I just hate watching and trying to listen to them.
In general, (not referring to these in particular)

The sound quality is poor, the picture quailty is poor. There's a lot of stuff to endure that isn't remotely interesting, then they skip quickly past the stuff I want to hear and I miss it.


If it's in print, I can skip the introductions and fluff and get down to the important bits and concentrate on them.
I don't want to waste valuable effort listening intently to the fluff and introductions!
I don't do passive tv watching very well. I get bored and fidgetty and give up.
I do not watch anything on the computer, ever.



I'm not completely sure I am back. I know my body's here, but my brain is all over the place, Russ!
I had a wonderful time. :thumbsup:
 

Battery Muncher

Senior Member
Messages
620
The second video seems to have been taken down?

I'm also struggling to hear, but from what I understand from the first video:

-she basically says that her PhD is about looking at muscle dysfunction in CFS (+ developing a drug pre-testing system - not sure what that means).

-Aims to be able to reverse muscular acidosis with a drug tolerable by the human body. (I assume she means the excess build up of lactic acid etc during activity)

-So patients can take a drug in tablet form and reduce the symptoms of muscular acidosis when they exercise.

-Research is going in the right direction and starting to get the attention it deserves

That's pretty much all I got!


Anyway her research profile here:

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/icm/research/project/4553

Project:
Understanding Muscle Dysfunction in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

From April 2013 to March 2015
Project Leader(s): Dr Phillip Manning, Professor Julia Newton
Staff: Gina Rutherford
Contact: Dr Phillip Manning
Sponsors: Action for ME. NIHR Biomedical Research Centre in Ageing and Age-Related Disease.

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome [ME/CFS] sufferers frequently describe a sense of muscle energy depletion after exercise often accompanied by muscle pain. This project will use state-of-the-art techniques to grow muscle cells in the laboratory, measure metabolism of these cells and explore why muscle cells from ME/CFS patients have problems with muscle energetics. This will help us understand why ME/CFS patients have muscle energy handling problems, why this makes them fatigued and how we can improve this to reduce fatigue. Development of this laboratory system will also provide an experimental system to allow us to test drugs potentially able to alter metabolism in ME/CFS and to treat fatigue.