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Freedom From ME (Documentary)

Messages
41
Feature length film made by a recovered patient of Freedom From ME – The Optimum Health Clinic…includes interviews from other recovered patients and practitioners from the clinic.

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS)/ME is a condition that causes marked long-term fatigue and other symptoms which are not caused by any other known medical condition.

  • CFS stands for chronic fatigue syndrome. Chronic means persistent or long-term.
  • ME stands for myalgic encephalomyelitis. Myalgic means muscle aches or pains. Encephalomyelitis means inflammation of the brain and spinal cord.
However, there is controversy about the nature of this condition. There is no test to diagnose the condition. The diagnosis is made in people who have a certain set of symptoms (which can vary in their type and severity). There is even controversy about what to call this condition.

  • The term CFS is often used by doctors. This is because the main symptom is often fatigue and the condition is chronic (persistent). Also, there is no evidence of inflammation in the brain or spinal cord which is implied by the term encephalomyelitis.
  • The term ME is the preferred term by many people with the condition. Some people with this condition feel that the word fatigue is an everyday word which does not reflect the different and severe type of fatigue that they have. Also, although fatigue to some extent occurs in most cases, it may not be the main or only symptom.
  • Some people believe that there are two separate conditions – CFS and ME. Other people believe that the two conditions are the same – but symptoms can vary.
Watch the full documentary here - http://www.alldocumentaries.org/freedom-from-me/
 

jeffrez

Senior Member
Messages
1,112
Location
NY
Couldn't watch much more than the first few minutes of obviously scripted "interviews." What are they selling, lol.
 

Ayaju

Senior Member
Messages
160
Location
San Diego, CA
I watched the film. It was interesting and I'm curious about the clinic so I signed up to receive the 15 minute phone call consultation. I admit I am very skeptical! For one thing, we have no way of knowing if the people in the film actually were ill or not. And another thing that put me off a lot was that they were all young and attractive; even all the people shown in the closing credits! What about us middle-aged overweight folks?!

I will definitely keep you posted about what I learn. It is easy to imagine that this treatment costs an arm and a leg.

Judy
 

jeffrez

Senior Member
Messages
1,112
Location
NY
Psychological treatments aren't going to remove heavy metals or bring down high EBV or HHV titres, unfortunately, just as they won't prevent industrial poisoning or reduce HIV. It's a very strange idea to think they will - I wonder if the people putting out films like that might need psychological treatment for their strange illness beliefs and delusions?
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
I got sent their dvd, (I was curious and asked). Utter garbage. just more psych stuff.
I wrote to them to tell them to be a bit more open and honest about what they were doing on their website, because it would save them a load of money sending out stuff to folk like me who put it straight in the bin, then fume about the waste of resources.
 
Messages
41
There's been lots of discussion of this clinic on here - just search for 'Optimum Health Clinic'. It offers mainly 'psychological' treatments.

To me this sound as pure SCAM. I watched the entire documentary and carefully listened to the symptoms of the folks that were interviewed (they are no where near to what I have experienced) and many others on this forum and other forums. We can never know they were even ill, maybe they just actors, but I just thought I would post the documentary anyways...

If they're approaching ME/CFS patients with psychological treatments, then this clinic is FAR FAR away from treating this complex debilitating condition. I am diagnosed with Chronic Neurological Lyme Disease, Mycoplasma, Candida and a nice set of around 12 viruses (I fit all the symptoms of CFS/ME) I could easily get this diagnose if I would not live in a country where doctors have not even heard of CFS/ME.

What I mean with the above statement is that - CFS/ME is just a label put on someone's forehead, when doctors aren't bothered to go deeper into the real health issues of a patient. When there are a lot of infectious components to the development of ME/CFS, of course many will suffer from psychological issues along with the myriad of symptoms of a multi-systemic infection and toxicity breaking havoc in one's body. (the psychological issues IMO can range from anxiety/depression to bipolar disorder, psychosis and even schizophrenia, forgot to mention the autistic spectrum disorders). No wonder in France now they're treating autistic children with antibiotics and they're getting amazing results.

CFS/ME is just a label - It's not a psychological illness (therefore this clinic should better clean their act up) - To successfully treat a patient suffering from CFS/ME symptoms you need to find the REAL underlying cause of their symptoms.

In my case - it got to the point where I have cognitive issues, psychological issues (depression and anxiety),minor brain lesions, chronic sinusitis in all my sinuses, bone and joint involvements - sacroiliitis (possible ankylosing spondylitis) and sacral necrosis both showing on RMN. I have numerous spine issues and so on .... It all started one day out of sudden where I could no longer understand the world around me, I was dizzy and off balance out of sudden, started having panic attacks (never had anxiety before),I had severe derealization and flu like symptoms that lasted a while..... from that point on I gradually got all sorts of illneses and diagnoses ....

Made this too long, my main point is that CFS/ME is purely an infectious disease, with toxic overload and gene mutations which further on can cause literally hundreds of symptoms/disorders if it's not treated from the root cause.

Alex
 

ukxmrv

Senior Member
Messages
4,413
Location
London
I've had dealings with some of the staff and met patients at this clinic and for me, the main impression that it was mainly psychobabble wrapped up in a few ideas stolen from other sources. Personally I couldn't see anything useful here unless one has burnout or lifestyle/emotional issues as a strong feature.