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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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However,beware of psychoneuroimmunology, it is a double-edged sword in general whenever the direction of causation is not clear. The brain-immune connection is known to be bidirectional, and biopsychosocial proponents have hypothesized that an initial infection triggers the "sickness response" (ie fatigue and other flu symptoms, poor mood and reduced motivation, etc) which is then primarily perpetuated by patients' cognitions and behaviour rather than an ongoing disease process once the "ordinary" infection resolves. And even if there is an ongoing infection, just blame "psychological factors" anyway. Sound familiar?
My guess is that Carrigon was replying to the previous poster. Although re-reading that, maybe I missed the "NOT" and it changes dramatically what the poster was saying?Carrigon, did you read the article? It was talking about the physical phenomena taking place during depressive thoughts, not saying the illness is psychological. Look again!
Can you point me in the direction of any articles that expand on this? I'm always looking for information that can clarify the larger picture, and would like to know more.
What exactly have you got in mind? Also, over the years, there have been quite a few studies that do this (although something doctors could use in their surgeries could still have a lot of value).What if using this idea, you could show there is another differance between ME patients and depressed patients. Just like Kerr did. Obviously using patients that do not have depression, anxiety, etc.