Teitelsham
You want to know when I saw him?
Here's the depressing part....it was my 35th Birthday. I had been sick for 7 months and attending the F&F clinics for about 2 months. I was desperate. He was speaking in Connecticut, so I spent my birthday driving to hear him lecture. At the end he sat and spoke with whoever wanted to speak with him. Basically, it was one big love fest. He throws out a library like litany of herbal remedies and the crowd swoons. I waited for a while to get him one on one, and then began questioning him on why I had not seen results yet. He said it was too soon, and then I began respectfully questioning his theory. My logic went something like this "You have said CFS represents an energy crisis in the body, which blows a fuse. And by treating all the different systems simultaneously using your SHINE protocol it turns the fuse back on. If this analogy is true, then why do people not improve 100%? IN other words, a fuse is either ON or OFF. How come people don't fully restore?"
After this and a few other pointed questions (especially pointed ones about his personal recovery of CFS)- he told me I was "Very Driven." Mind you, he looked at me like you would look at a patient in a psyche ward- with a very patronizing smile on his face- And he did this in front of 2 other patients, who were drooling all over him. He repeated it a couple times, and then they chimed in like a Greek Chorus, and said "Yeah, you do seem very driven." To which I replied- "Well all 3 of us are sick- and you both seem far from driven- so explain how my supposed "driven-ness" relates to my sore throat?"
Teitelbaum then looked at me, again with the psyche ward grin, and said "I want you to go home and examine your life issues." Then he lifted his arms up (this is no exaggeration), and said "I DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE, but go home and look into your life issues."
At this point I wanted to punch him in the face, but how does one act, when one is being called crazy? So despite my urge, I opted to get more information from Dr. T.
I asked him if he knew of Dr. Anthony Kamaroff. Kamaroff is one of the most respected researchers in CFS- and he has dismissed all of Teitelbaum's research. I wanted to see how he would react- And true to form, Teitelbaum smiled and said something along the lines of "Oh, Tony. Good old Tony. He refuses to look at my studies. But he's best friends with Dr. Weill, so go figure."
I didn't know quite what to make of this, except that he was apparently wiping out Kamaroff and Andrew Weill with one swoop. But as it turned out, Dr. Weil was ignoring Teitlebaum at the time as well. (he has since endorsed the D-ribose study)- but at that time, Weil, the most famous naturopath, was not endorsing Teitelbaum- So based on that one question- Teitelbaum took a shot at both of them- with that tell-tale Dr. T. grin.
And NO- I do not have this on tape- but he really took the wind out of my sails that day- I had believed he could make me feel "Fantastic" again. Learned a big lesson that birthday. And had a really long drive home.