@Sirshocking - Please don't use the funny font and/or italics. It's impossible to read.
I ask myself, how did I get this? It was triggered by my first event of chicken pox in my mid thirties..nearly 20 years ago!
... Talking of toxicities...toxic elements are extremely unhealthy on the human body. This in combination with stressful lives and being fed by the food industry suspect processed foods with sugar and numbered chemicals has got me to where I am today. The food industry is failing us..all they are interested in is profit..not the health of the consumer. Similar could be said of the NHS.
Dr Myhill is much more advanced in her thinking,
I think my final rung would be to defeat EBV that most PWME have. EBV has evolved over the years to become almost undectable. Gp's must know this and they hide behind a test that is out of date because it cannot find the virus in EBV's hiding places. This will no doubt have to be defeated with a strong antiviral.
Evidence versus experience based medicine for patients.
For any patient who wants to be involved with her own life and death decisions , the EBM versus XBM problem comes down to a few simple questions: is one more valid than the other? Always?
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/06/evidence-experience-based-medicine-patients.html
This blog article is a bit weird to my mind - and all the people leaving comments seem to agree. It does not actually compare EBM and XBM, just an unfriendly and a friendly way of presenting EBM. The author seems to have forgotten what they were writing about half way through.
May i ask a question-healthy people do have viruses inside them but if a virus is detected in a person with ME symptoms, which as we know is a life denying disease, then isn't that finding potentially of greater significance? In the sense that eradicating any such virus may represent less of a burden to a diseased/malfunctioning body and greater potential recovery?
That sounds very reasonable. Chicken pox in adults can be a devastating disease. I would recognise that as a cause of long term fatigue. But what has it got to do with Dr Myhill or mitochondria?
But do we need Dr Myhill to tell us that? I have not eaten anything out of a tin or a packet since I was a student 40 years ago. My wife told me it tasted horrible and I realised she was right. We don't use sugar. Food can have a huge effect on wellbeing. But what has that got to do with mitochondria? The food industry and the NHS provide what people want to pay for. It is surely up to us to go looking for fresh vegetables rather than walnut whips.
But is she really? I cannot see what eating well has to do with mitochondria or the immune system (which is not mitochondria either). I suspect it has more to do with stopping the hypothalamus taking charge of our lives in a way it should not and making us feel dreadful.
But everybody has EBV 'almost undetectable'. Usain Bolt and Jessica Ennis almost certainly are crawling with hidden EBV virus in their B cells. The entire healthy human race has lived with EBV for millenia as far as we know. And there is already one really strong EBV anti-viral if you really want it. Rituximab is the only drug known to eradicate EBV DNA completely and is used for that purpose.
Having brilliant ideas is no good unless you can back them up in the open scientific arena. Dr Myhill's test is no use until it can be reproduced in labs all over the world. Only then could it provide any proof of a physical nature to ME that would be of service because it convinced people. The onus is on her to convince other scientists that it is worth repeating. That is the basic business of research.
I'm a little confused by the idea that we may have made ourselves sick by eating incorrectly. I don't believe this to be true. I first became ill after many years of eating a very healthy diet. I have also been a patient of Dr Myhills and tried her diet recommendations which did not improve my health in any way at all.
As I said earlier I have a LOT of respect for Dr Myhill, but @Sirshocking your post above is somewhat zealous in its tone and seems to once again blame the patients for becoming ill in the first place. Many people where eating a considerably worse diet than me when I became ill and they didn't.
Environmental medicine certainly has its place in helping people to heal from illness and keep in optimum health, but may not always be curative. Dr Myhill herself acknowledges this in her reports where she often states that in the sickest patients there is no cure and treatment is mainly supportive.
I also know of some of her patients who have had some improvements but then relapsed and one patient who completely recovered, but possibly had post viral syndrome with candida rather than entrenched long standing M.E.
I have read her first book and found it very informative - its certainly a great starting point for many patients with good advice on resting, pacing, supplements and diet.
No one is saying Dr Myhill's protocol is a cure..just as Rituximab is not guaranteed a cure, there are too many variables going on in different patients some will be lucky to get a life back, some may get part of the way and some unfortunately won't.
Some of the reviewers (see 1st page of thread) talk about recovery in ways that strongly imply that following the guidance in the book can bring about it.
This worries me. I think a lot of people will be prompted to buy the book, expecting to recover, and having their hopes dashed.
I think that Dr Myhill has a lot of good ideas that can improve the health of people with ME substantially, but don't think that people should be given such high hopes. It can lead to making plans that cannot be fulfilled, and possibly a belief that one has recovered that could lead to over-exertion and consequent crash.
I don't know of any reports of recovery from Myhill's protocol. Does anyone?
The reviewers you mention are professionals in a similar field to Dr Myhill so they know what she is practising is built on very good research and knowledge. These professionals would not be allowed to put false claims nor Dr Myhill post them without proof from patients and tests to back it up.
There is a group on Facebook that supports the followers of her protocol that is a great friendly place for advice and tips about the regime and getting towards a full recovery. There are over 900 members for which I'm one of them. There are patients with allsorts of symptoms, problems and additional diseases/autoimmune disfunctions. So I think it would be bold to say that everyone will fully recover when some have unrepairable damage but can achieve hopefully a certain amount of recovery better than they can achieve on there own. Some may crash, and as in my case, I still crash occasionally but recover much quicker. I think we still need to pace even when we are fit again. Dr Myhill states in the book it's not a cure, it maybe for some who are determined, vigilant and lucky to work to keep up the supplements and tests. Supplemental nutrition I think is vital in synergistic unison to make it work..some are unfortunate with bedbound fatigue on benefits that will struggle with the cost of buying the supplements but hopefully will get there albeit a little longer. Dr Myhill has literally saved my life..even if I don't get a 100% recovery I'm happy with the level I am at currently after 13 months on the protocol. I havnt communicated with anyone on the group that has fully recovered..when they get to that stage they usually disappear and like to put CFS behind them. There are several in the group I do know that have been very happy with there progress and wouldn't look back. Dr Myhill is always learning and comes up with new ideas for patients stuck in recovery.
She is worth every penny you spend on yourself!
The reviewers you mention are professionals in a similar field to Dr Myhill so they know what she is practising is built on very good research and knowledge.
I suspect, as does Dr Myhill that problems with energy delivery in mitochondria and a gut that does not work correctly, both from lack of healthy nutrition from a low fat high sugar western diet