...but I only understood Dr Bansal! The English section of the interview starts at 58 secs.
http://www.tvvest.no/en-sammensatt-og-omdiskutert-sykdom
http://www.tvvest.no/en-sammensatt-og-omdiskutert-sykdom
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"You've done a lot of research on ME. What is the main challenge in both recognising ME and treating it?"
Bansal: "The main challenge at the moment is trying to get everyone to appreciate the seriousness of the condition, and to recognise that this is not just a psychological problem.
There's a lot of misinformation amongst lay people and medical people that ME is a condition caused by psychological problems, but this is not the case. As in most illnesses it's a mixture of organic problems and when those problems become very very chronic then of course stress and other factors can come in.
But in terms of what causes ME, this is a very difficult question to answer, because I suspect that there are multiple causes including viral infections, including problems with the endocrine system, and our own work is looking at cortisol, which is secreted by the adrenal gland and is the main stress hormone.
And what it seems to be showing is that people don't respond to their own stress hormones, which compounds the whole problem, which causes further immune disturbance and which causes many of the symptoms in ME such as the weakness and feeling faint and the poor memory and concentration."
I would have to guess that he's talking about his own unpublished work because I see nothing from him on Pubmed on the subject. The way he is describing it also sounds counter to what has been found before regarding cortisol in this disease.That stress hormone thing was a new one on me.
Is that new?
What is he talking about? Glucocorticoid resistance?
I agree - his ideas give me hope, a quiet but realistic hope I think. His theory seems to draw together lots of different factors and he has a very sensible approach. He doesn't think that it's going to be any one thing (rituximab, anti-virals etc) but a combination of many and I think that is the most likely conclusion. The cortisol connection is fascinating and makes a lot of sense. I think it'll be a long slow process of increasing understanding but better this than to keep grasping on to things that promise a cure and ending up being disappointed. Very glad that Dr Bansal is working on this he seems to be a voice of reason. I wish there was a way that we could ramp up the speed of research like this ...I have watched his webinar and i must say i am very impressed by his presentation and ideas! I think his hypthesis is the best i have ever seen on the ME/CFS puzzle
Cortisol claims go back to the 80s. This refers to something else. I think it was Bansal who discussed this a few years back. This is more relevent:That stress hormone thing was a new one on me.
Is that new?
reMEmber’s donation will go towards his study of peripheral resistance to the stress hormone, cortisol, in people with ME and whether this leads to the disordered immune system from which they suffer.
I agree with you but Bansal was talking about alpha not Beta glucocorticoïd resistance if i was correct. Many receptor issues in ME/CFS/POTS have been found. Could it be that an infection (EBV?) mess up the B cells and make auto antibodies against these receptors as a cause of the whole disease?Cortisol claims go back to the 80s. This refers to something else. I think it was Bansal who discussed this a few years back. This is more relevent:
The issue here is we have cells with lots of the inactive binding receptor, which inhibits a cortisol response. It is, I think, the beta cortisol receptor. So we might make cortisol but it does not work, a lot like people with thyroid resistance might have seemingly normal thyroid ranges, and people with insulin resistance can have seemingly normal insulin. Yet it may not be all tissues that are resistant, so simply giving cortisol might cause a correction but possibly also a hyper-cortisol response, including immune suppression. It needs to be fixed on the side of the response receptor, not the hormone.
I have alluded to this research a few times, I hope we see some good science published on this in the future.