All this getting out of your normal context and our brain doing predictive coding is just psychobabble. Think about telling a diabetic that their sugar went up after eating too man sweets because their brain had coded that based on input from tastebuds.
I think this strikes the fundamental difference and belies people's insistence that they believe that ME/CFS is a real physical illness.
If you look at DNRS programs, none promise to treat HIV. They don't promise to fix septic shock by changing your predictive coding. They aren't suggested as a way to get out of your comfort zone and resolve bacterial pneumonia.
They all advertise that they can treat every ailment…that doesn't have other treatments or clear bio markers. ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, etc. Because there's no way to prove they're ineffective if there are no accepted metrics or even diagnostics for the ailments they treat. If they promised to treat ventricular arrythmia, they'd get sued out of existence in a heartbeat.
If ME/CFS is a psychiatric illness, maybe these programs are useful. I've also stated that I don't think ME/CFS is one disease. It's a symptom cluster that might have many different etiologies. In Gupta, most of the people giving testimonials seemed very tentative and seemed quite anxious to me.
Personally, I'm quite extroverted and led an active and somewhat unusual life before ME/CFS eventually stopped me from pursuing it. I traveled extensively, moved frequently, and never really had a 'comfort zone' the way it's described here. That's also why I probably dismissed people who were more severe as I thought they were indulging illness. I was too busy traveling. I crashed, but always recovered. Until I didn't.
Another thing is age. If you've had ME/CFS symptoms for less than 5 years and you're under 40, your chance of recovery seems to be much higher. I recovered many times - never to 'healthy' but to vaguely functional. Now I'm in my late 40's and had these symptoms for about 25 years. My biggest crash (to more severe) was over five years ago. So when someone in their 20's tells us how to recover, you may get some push back as we've likely already tried that and had it work…until it didn't.
I love talking on the phone, having friends come visit, etc. I still do that to the best of my ability, but I still seem to be unable to avoid the crash after those activities. I tried a DNRS program because why not - seemed quite low risk. I didn't find any benefit, but if it works for someone else - that's great for them. I tried various forms of physical therapy, the Medical Medium protocols (a friend swore by it), lyme treatments, antibiotics, anti-parasitics, the entire Amazon supplement section, TCM, acupuncture, and so forth.
So I would just caution people from assuming (and proselytizing) that something that worked in their own n=1 is the solution for everyone. There's a reason that medicine doesn't work that way.
Again I'll use
@Wishful as an example because his solution is crazy simple - eat cumin. It seems to help some people, but doesn't work the same way as it did for him and some it doesn't help at all. He doesn't say they're doing it wrong or that it truly is the answer if they just did it like he did it. I've tried many things that helped other people and will continue to do so.
