This will be my last post in this thread. Promise. But I feel compelled to to address some things.
ointing out that his cure for his condition -- clearly not ME/CFS -- is highly unlikely to be a cure for OUR condition is now some kind of a sin? I'm glad for him, and said so. It's great that he figured out his fatigue from obesity and other metabolic syndrome symptoms can be cured by diet. Good for him.
For heaven's sake, SOC. Why use a loaded word like "sin"? You specifically said you thought he was advertising he cured his ME/CFS. But he clearly never said he had! Frankly, I'm not even really sure why the fact that diet isn't a cure for CFS was even brought into it. So no, your remarks aren't a "sin", just a little confusing.
...these simple solutions that cure some of the symptoms we have in common with other illnesses are not cures, or even significant QOL improvements, for ME/CFS?
First off, there's nothing *simple* about curing any type of long-standing metabolic problem. Let's be clear about that. It may be simpler than overcoming CFS, but overcoming almost anything seems to be simpler than overcoming some cases of CFS, so saying it's "simpler" doesn't mean much.
Anyway, diet may not have made any significant different in your case. But I've seen plenty of anecdotes on this board where diet and nutritional interventions *do* result in significant QOL improvements for some people with diagnosed CFS. As we know well, not every ME/CFS case is the same. And as we also know well, militantly insisting they are is counter-productive. Every case is different; some things seem to work for some people and not so well for others. However, I do stand by my assertion that regardless of our morbitiies, we're all still human, and instituting the dietary guidelines in the OP to the extent tolerable to the individual will probably benefit everyone. Slamming the door shut on that notion by insisting it can't possibly result in anything but marginal improvements in someone with CFS is IMO counterproductive.
f ME/CFS only, or overwhelmingly, occurred in people who were obese, didn't exercise, and ate exclusively highly processed foods, before getting sick, then you may have a point.
But there are way too many counterexamples to that set of pre-conditions for it to hold any serious water as a primary causal explanation or therapeutic possibility.
First of all, the OP said that exercise was the *cause* of his problem, not the cure. Why does everyone keep missing that? That's a rhetorical question, BTW.
Second, we can't really know what people's diet was before they got sick. People may say they ate healthy before getting sick, but a couple/few years of healthy eating right before getting sick may not be enough to counter the lifetime of poor or marginal eating habits before that. We frequently don't take childhood patterns, habits, or happenings into account when we get sick in our 30's and beyond. But for all we know our childhood/adolescent nutritional foundation may play the biggest part in our adult health or even our longevity. (God help me if that is so.)
Or maybe people may have eaten a lot of a "healthy" food they were allergic/addicted to, which helped precipitate ME/CFS.
Also we should remember that "eating healthy" is a very subjective term. I know people who say they eat healthy because they eat frozen meals with vegetables instead of McDonald's or Burger King. I also know people who say they eat healthy because they have salad with dinner just a couple times per week.
I also know people who cook everything in vegetable oil or margarine, and slather their salads and veggies with vegetable oil and margarine, who say they eat healthy.
Point being, the perception of healthy eating is subjective and we can't necessarily rely on it when people say they ate healthy before getting sick with ME/CFS
Further, poor eating habits do not automatically correlate to obesity. Most of those people I referenced above (who think they eat healthy but don't) are not obese. Many are not overweight at all.
And as we well know, trying to get healthy can actually precipitate some health problems, due to immune stimulation or whatever.
Until someone does a rigidly controlled, long-term study on the effects of diet and nutritional status on a large number ME/CFS patients, we can't know for sure.
I guess my biggest problem with some of the comments in this thread is the sweeping generalizations that are being made about what can and cannot help ME/CFS in every single case. Because we can't possibly know what's going to help or hurt any single individual.
Therefore, my contention is that any positive anecdotes about alleviating any long-standing symptoms of ME/CFS might be helpful to someone and have a valid place on the board, and people shouldn't have to worry that their anecdotes aren't going to get marginalized or devalued somehow because they're not legitmate because they've never been diagnosed with ME/CFS.
Do we need a new forum for the "Hey guys, I cured my XYZ -- not ME -- by exercising/eating right/the LP process/CBT/GET/jumping in the cold ocean" threads? We have one for non-ME (but somehow related) research, and non-me (but somehow related) news, so why not one for non-ME (but somehow related) cures?
Could be. The OP specifically states he wasn't sure if this was the correct place to post this anecdote. However, the proliferation of subforums on PR already makes it hard to find stuff. It's kind of like bureaucratic rules...there is a tipping point at which more is not necessarily productive.
