I've just watched the program from last night.
There were two patients treated,
One with stress from doing too much and pre-diabetic blood sugar and fatigue. Her cortisol was heading up instead of down in the evenings, indicating stress and making her sleep badly.
The treatments were - diet change for the pre-diabetes, and yoga for the stress and yellow clip ons for her glasses so she didn't get blue light from TV and phone screens in the evenings to help her sleep. Results - a lot of improvement on all fronts - sleep, stress, fatigue and blood sugar.
..........................................
The other had diagnoses of ME, fibromyalgia, sciatica etc. She was on lots of pain killers and clearly unwell, suffering a lot of fatigue and pain and nausea, but able to struggle through the day looking after her family and going for an hour's walk in the evenings, with difficulty and a lot of pain. Her level of activity would, I think be described as equivalent of mild ME, though the fact that she was able to do the walk every day, albeit with difficulty, suggest to me that she may have had fibromyalgia, not ME.
Her blood tests showed low vitamin D and B12, and a test showed she had SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth). He did say SIBO is under-diagnosed and can cause whole body inflammation as well as gut problems including nausea.
Treatments:
Diet change - gluten and dairy free and no junk food and cutting back on carbohydrates.
Reduction of pain killers to cut back on side effects.
Antibiotics for SIBO.
Injection of vitamins B12 and vitamin D.
Mindfulness/ breathing / relaxation techniques.
...
She improved significantly, lost a lot of weight, was practically pain free and able to do the evening 1 hour walk much more easily, and her score on a questionnaire had dropped from 90 to 53 (I need to watch that bit again - I'm not clear which questionnaire it was, and what a health score would be).
He said at one stage that the labels - fibro, ME etc that she had been given were holding her back, making her fearful of trying to help herself get better, or words to that effect - she objected quite strongly and I think rightly to that.
I think it was much more a case of the FM/ME labels having held her doctors back - giving them the excuse not to look further, and just dismiss her with more pain killers.
Doctors in the UK stick a label like fibro or ME on us and think it's okay never to look deeper. It was her doctors being held back by those labels, not her. Why had they not tested her for vitamin deficiencies or SIBO. This makes me angry - on her behalf and my own. Next time I see a doctor I'm going to ask for those tests!
In summing up at the end, the doctor attributed the improvement to the lifestyle changes - diet and mindfulness. This seemed a little odd to me, as it could just as easily have been down to the vitamin D, vitamin B12 and antibiotics for SIBO, or a combination of everything.