Sam Cam’s sister stricken with M.E. for a year | Daily Mail | 27 June 2015

[Marco]

Would it be acceptable to suggest that jumping into the cold sea cured Cancer, AIDs, Alzheimer's, Autism, Diabetes etc etc etc.? If the story was about any of these illnesses, how ridiculous would it sound? "I had cancer for a year, went for a cold swim and I am cured"

Sounds to me like she recovered from

Spoiler

depression

There's also the problem of correlation and causation which not only applies to 'post viral onset' ME/CFS but equally to cures/remissions. I'm pretty sure I'd have to have been feeling pretty well already to have even contemplated diving into Galway Bay. Whatever she may or may not have had it's more than likely that she was already well on the way to recovery and the 'cure' was co-incidental.

That said I'm off now for a 'Scottish shower' (hey if it's good enough for OO7!).

 

[Snow Leopard]

Sounds to me like she recovered from

Spoiler

depression

I'm pretty sure there is no evidence to suggest that it can lead to remission of depression either. We don't have any evidence to suggest that the cold swim cured anything at all.

It is pure anecdote.

 

[Revel]

And those doctors are still running amok in the nhs

@Wildcat, my psychiatrist was so p*ssed that I had escaped his evil clutches that he demanded my surgeon give him bedside access whilst I was still in intensive care post-surgery! The surgeon showed him the door.

Doctors remind me of garden robins, extremely territorial and prone to getting their feathers ruffled when things don't go their way!

 

[Wildcat]

Doctors territorial like robins? Yeah and they believe we are worms.

 

[Valentijn]

The woman probably really believes she had ME/CFS, but I'd put my money on a misdiagnosis. It's guaranteed to happen constantly in the UK, with the Oxford criteria being used at so many clinics.

 

[user9876]

Would it be acceptable to suggest that jumping into the cold sea cured Cancer, AIDs, Alzheimer's, Autism, Diabetes etc etc etc.? If the story was about any of these illnesses, how ridiculous would it sound? "I had cancer for a year, went for a cold swim and I am cured"



Sounds to me like she recovered from

Spoiler

depression

I suspect it could be for the daily mail. I seem to remember thet used to have some pretty dodgy cancer treatment stories.

 

[Cheshire]

Well here's my experience of cold water therapy:

When I was 15, and in the grip of a ME relapse, I was admitted to the local mental hospital (I live in the UK, enough said).

Part of the 'treatment' protocol was exercise (naturally). As I was unable to comply with the physical demands that were initially recommended, I was prescribed weekly cold water swimming instead. Every Friday morning I was forced into the pool and, since I was too weak to actually swim, I was left to stand, up to my chest in cold water for 45 minutes each session.

Prior to my "swim" I was able to walk to the poolside. However, post-"swim", I had to be carried out of the pool and put to bed. I was virtually hypothermic, unable to move or speak, my heart beating on the go slow and blue from head to toe. I weighed less than 6st and yet it was deemed perfectly reasonable to subject a child to such torture - and torture it was. Despite seeing absolutely no improvement whatsoever in my condition, this regime was continued for 9 months.

Lucky for me, I was sprung from this hellhole by the need for urgent non-related surgery, otherwise I truly believe that cold water therapy would eventually have been the death of me.

That's terrible, I'm wordless...

Despite seeing absolutely no improvement whatsoever in my condition, this regime was continued for 9 months.

A similar "treatment", 'packing' (a kind of frozen straitjacket), is used by some psychoanalysts to treat autistic children in France (despite worldwide evidences, they still think it's a psychosis). Even though there has been no trial, there's no proof of its effectiveness... It lead to a huge controversy here.


I'm just shocked by the continual use of ineffective treatments in the whole history of psychiatry, which sometimes seems more close to 17th century medicine and reasoning.

 

[Snow Leopard]

The woman probably really believes she had ME/CFS, but I'd put my money on a misdiagnosis. It's guaranteed to happen constantly in the UK, with the Oxford criteria being used at so many clinics.

I think we are putting too much thought and faith into a Daily Mail article that might be complete fiction.

 

[Bob]

From the article:
‘I recovered from a year of ME by diving into the crystal sea, the cold literally shocking the sickness out of my system,’ she says.
‘You emerge from those waters with an icy clarity about your life, a pure, beautiful, brilliant adrenaline-fuelled thrill at the joy of being alive.’

People with subclinical underactive thyroid issues may respond to a dip in the sea because of the iodine content. Iodine is absorbed through the skin, and boosts natural thyroid. Underactive thyroid causes fatigue. Such issues can be transient - I had a spell of hypothyroidism which resolved itself after a year or two.

But if someone is ill for a year with a fatiguing illness, then it could have a thousand different causes. I think a lot of people experience a transient period of low vitality in their lives, without it turning into ME.

I have to admit that I thought that a dip in a cool sea was good for me once, so I bought some sea salts and had cool baths with the salts. It didn't do much for me. Then I had another dip (literally a dip - I just stood in it - not a swim) in my local sea, but it was very cold and I stayed in too long and had a mild relapse for the week after. (You'd think any sensible person would have guessed this would happen, right?)

That was when I had mild to moderate ME and I could get out and about. I can't get out at the moment, and if I managed to plunge into a cold sea, I probably wouldn't be able to get out of it again!

 

[Mij]

It seems to me that the greater proportion of our energy would be used to maintain body temperature, maybe give us an intial jolt but then exhausting us.

 

[Snowdrop]

I think we are putting too much thought and faith into a Daily Mail article that might be complete fiction.

Even if it's complete fiction how is that not bad for us? People read this and believe. Otherwise there would be no point in propagating this nonsense to begin with. But it works to keep people from understanding what ME is and believing their sick family/friend/ co-worker when the time comes. Making us easy prey for the delusional and evil BPS group.

 

[Marco]

I think we are putting too much thought and faith into a Daily Mail article that might be complete fiction.

Yeah - could have been planted by the Galway tourist board.

 

[Mij]

From Dr.Myhill's website:

Cold water therapy
This was advocated as a treatment for fatigue by Kakkar. It probably works because it gives the adrenal glands a huge "kick". However, if the adrenal glands are not working properly, as in CFS, then the patient feels awful. I don't recommend cold baths.

 

[SOC]

‘I recovered from a year of ME by diving into the crystal sea, the cold literally shocking the sickness out of my system,’ she says.
‘You emerge from those waters with an icy clarity about your life, a pure, beautiful, brilliant adrenaline-fuelled thrill at the joy of being alive.’

Yeah, because my illness is all about a lack of icy clarity, adrenaline-fueled thrills, and joy of being alive.

Did she happen to mention how it impacted her neurological, immune, autonomic, endocrine, or GI problems... or even if she had them? Or was the poor girl (loosely speaking) just tired and achy for a year or so?

The Oxford definition needs to go. I suppose defining our illness with a name other than ME, which has been contaminated by these BPS a-holes, might achieve the same goal. They can rave on about how their LP, CBT/GET, yoga, and dips in an icy sea cures their 'ME' as long as it's clear to everyone that it's not a treatment for what I have.

On the good news front, it's a lot closer than Lourdes for many of our UK cohort, and a lot less crowded, so anyone wanting to try the faith-healing route can zip over to Galway and give it a try.

 

[Hip]

Would it be acceptable to suggest that jumping into the cold sea cured Cancer, AIDs, Alzheimer's, Autism, Diabetes etc etc etc.?

These studies investigated cold therapy for cancer treatment, anti-psychosis treatment, and treatment of depression:
Possible stimulation of anti-tumor immunity using repeated cold stress: a hypothesis

Hydrotherapy as a possible neuroleptic and sedative treatment

Adapted cold shower as a potential treatment for depression


And here are articles the Daily Mail did on cold therapy for ankylosing spondylitis, and fighting winter bugs:
Can standing in a deep freeze ease arthritis? Just five minutes in an ice chamber made me feel years younger, says this sufferer

Cold showers to kill off winter bugs and icy jabs to tackle prostate cancer: Why feeling chilly can be GOOD for your health


Here is a paper offering a hypothesis on the mechanism by which cold therapy may reduce fatigue in ME/CFS:

Possible use of repeated cold stress for reducing fatigue in chronic fatigue syndrome: a hypothesis

A treatment is proposed that consists of adapted cold showers (20 degrees Celsius, 3 minutes, preceded by a 5-minute gradual adaptation to make the procedure more comfortable) used twice daily.

And this article says:

A German study indicated that gamma interferon and interleukin-4 are elevated and work more synergistically after the body was exposed to cold.

 

[SilverbladeTE]

Being hosed down by cold water was also a Big Thing for the 19th century quacks, claiming such treatments could cure all kinds of things, and some of it was of course, because it reduced "sexual desires", which were the cause of many illnesses!
yes indeedy....
Frikkin backward morons. Seriously, go read up on it, one widely held belief was that Tuberculosis was caused by masturbation! Well, jump into cold water a lot and you'll get pneumonia, jackasses!

all this is twisted crap, divide and conquer and keeping the Imperial prerogative going (uber/untermensch),
more bullsh*t to get attention/sales by a newspaper which is VILE and really should have been shut down (supported Hitler! and so many court cases etc against it)

the British tabloids were so bad there was a satire/silly version with more nude pics in it, "The Sunday Sport"
One of the all time classic so-called "news items" from that silly lot was "Wellington bomber on the moon!", like a WW2 plane had crashed on the Moon....sad thing is the amount of "5 watt light bulbs" who BELIEVED it, duh!

Said to folk elsewhere, it tells you how bad it's getting, when the satire of places like "The Onion" are more and more like fact...

 

[Helen]

In Sweden there are people that all the year around take a quick bath in the sea or in lakes. They even go down in the water through a hole in the ice to get a bath. They have been studied as they get less colds, and are healthier, than others. Several theories were presented before, but it was shown that they had much higher levels of white blood cells than others. Maybe that´s why it cured some from ME.

 

[Valentijn]

In Sweden there are people that all the year around take a quick bath in the sea or in lakes. They even go down in the water through a hole in the ice to get a bath. They have been studied as they get less colds, and are healthier, than others. Several theories were presented before, but it was shown that they had much higher levels of white blood cells than others. Maybe that´s why it cured some from ME.

Or healthier people are more inclined to jump in various bodies of water

 

[Helen]

Yes, could be, but that was considered in the study design.

 

[Keela Too]

There is a world of a difference between treating some-one under medical supervision with a cold therapy - and promoting the idea that very sick individuals should leap into the Atlantic Ocean to miraculously cure themselves.

Even diet articles usually have the disclaimer of "consult your doctor before embarking on any dietary change", so why not this "therapy" which potentially carries considerable risk!