lightning process/gupta training

[Frankie Dene]

Frankie, your story gives me hope! Whilst I have accepted that I will have ME for life, my aim is to suppress the disease some how and be able to live an almost normal life. It sounds like imunovir did that for you. I am imagining that it is quite expensive? What dose were you taking that put you into remission?. I guess it really needs to be a lifetime drug, by the sounds of it?.

Yes it costs me - NZ$376 for 200tabs. I take 6 per day with a break often over the weekend. Nancy klimas says it is good to have a break, pulsing I think they call it. I do know other people have got it cheaper - a friend got some in France a lot cheaper and over the internet - however I've stuck with the Newport Pharmaceuticals, Ireland (license holder) ones as they were the ones recommended. Nancy talked at length about how the dose is different for different people - one patient she had did fine on just 2 per day. That was the dose I was taking when I had the big relapse, so it wouldn't have worked for me, but I had been taking it for 5 years, at the lower does for the last 2 years, every day. However it does seem as if she thinks that the body gets used to it so you need a holiday from it periodically. I felt no different taking it so even though lots of people try it for 3-6 months to see if it works and are disappointed, I just kept taking it as I thought the science evidence was important - and was amazed and delighted to be back to normal for those 5 years. It was a slow progression over those 18months from relapsing after exercise to normal. However it appears that we have to be careful about stress etc for the rest of our lives - and still listen to our bodies - all of which I ignored! at my cost. I do know of people who don't seem to have been made normal by it - so it is each to try it and hope you are one of the lucky ones. I have been taking it now again for 2 years again at the 6 per day - so it is once again a slow improvement - I'm not yet able to say I'm 100% but have been able to do more and more without a relapse for 5 months - but I'm continuing to pace myself as I can't bear the thought of causing a big relapse if the imunovir is not the reason I got so well. - We just don't know - but I feel it works for me. Best of luck hope it works for you

 

[Snow Leopard]

Lastly, I think some people get turned around in a three-day workshop because while they have the physiological anxiety problem, it is being caused purely by chronic psychological anxiety, and they have no underlying physical problem.

LOL. I'm willing to bet that there have been no such cases.
There is no scientific theory that explains how any substantive physical symptoms are caused purely due to psychological anxiety. Not to say that there aren't any people who exaggerate any symptoms that they may have (Hypochondriacs and the like).

Lightning therapy success is a case of wishful thinking in the case of physical symptoms. Patients are merely trained to tell themselves that they are better/getting better even when they are not. As you can imagine, this is not a state that can last in the long term.

PS, did you know that many studies have found that CFS patients consistently have lower cortisol levels than healthy working controls, which suggests that biochemically their mood is in a low stress/anxiety state. This is likely due to the adoption of a low stress, low activity lifestyle. Psychological stress may be part of the initial trigger, but this suggests it is not likely to prolong the disease.

 

[moblet]

There is no scientific theory that explains how any substantive physical symptoms are caused purely due to psychological anxiety.

There is. It's called the Sympathetic Nervous System. It's taken for granted by biologists and some complementary medical modalities (not least osteopathy), but is regarded as insignificant by the medical establishment.

did you know that many studies have found that CFS patients consistently have lower cortisol levels than healthy working controls, which suggests that biochemically their body is in a low stress/anxiety state. Stress may be part of the initial trigger, but this suggests it is not likely to prolong the disease.

This is not the only logical conclusion from that evidence. What if the body's endocrine system only had the capacity to maintain the sympathetic state for short periods of time? E.g. it could not sustain cortisol production at a high rate, but could store enough of it to fulfil requirements for the duration of a "fight or flight" response; glycogen production and storage is an unrelated example of this. Then if the sympathetic state was prolonged, once cortisol stocks were exhausted, the nervous system could still be stimulating release of cortisol but it will only enter the bloodstream at the rate it is being produced. Blood cortisol is neither a direct nor immediate measure of what the nervous system is doing.

 

[Snow Leopard]

What evidence though?
Right now, ideas such as cases of chronic pain or fatigue being due to psychological anxiety mediated through the SNS is merely a speculative hypothesis. Certain symptoms might be temporarily enhanced by anxiety/stress, but this is not the same thing.

Likewise, the evidence on the HPA axis merely show that these pathways are mildly down-regulated compared to controls (see the Jason et al. Psych. 2010 study) for a majority of patients (excluding Addison's-like pathology). However I agree that cortisol is not an immediate measure of the nervous system state.
The problem is that a large majority of healthy subjects are working and subject to higher daily stressors and therefore this higher requirement is to be expected. Weekend cortisol response is significantly reduced in healthy subjects, the question is what would you see in terms of the HPA pathways if they took a month off, to relax (low activity levels)?

 

[Angela Kennedy]

What evidence though?
Right now, ideas such as cases of chronic pain or fatigue being due to psychological anxiety mediated through the SNS is merely a speculative hypothesis. Certain symptoms might be temporarily enhanced by anxiety/stress, but this is not the same thing.

Exactly. These 'stress/anxiety/negativity' models of permanent and/or substantive somatic illness (that means bodily, not mind) are indeed speculative, and have much wrong with them as theories.

 

[moblet]

What evidence though?

If you're not prepared to believe what you can find online, pick up any 1st year biology textbook and look up the references. Wikipedia gives a good summary of the physiological changes that occur temporarily in a functional sympathetic response. I'm not aware of any research specifically looking at the effects of a prolonged sympathetic response; I get the impression that scientists have always assumed that it was always a short-term response and the body never failed to switch it off when it was no longer required. I can very easily describe a set of my physiological difficulties in terms of the SNS - it would get activated in the absence of appropriate stimulus, and not switch itself off afterwards (these problems are now easing). Cranial and biodynamic osteopaths can distinctly recognise the sympathetic state via palpation and have techniques for switching it off.

Right now, ideas such as cases of chronic pain or fatigue being due to psychological anxiety mediated through the SNS is merely a speculative hypothesis.

That's different to, and more specific than, the statement you made in your previous post, and I'm not going to try to unpack it in this thread as we'll go way off-topic. rubens asked for opinions on Gupta/LP, I gave mine.

These 'stress/anxiety/negativity' models of permanent and/or substantive somatic illness are indeed speculative, and have much wrong with them as theories.

No argument there. I wasn't proposing this as a generalised model of ME/CFS/FMS, quite the opposite. However I do currently believe that it's possible for this to occur - something that helps to keep researchers, practitioners and patients confused - and that this could explain those minority cases of instant recovery.

 

[Sandy1]

Lightning Process and Full Time Work

high there this is my first post. does anyone think it's possible to be in full-time work and still have enough time each day to get to grips with the lightning process or similar training techniques. i look forward to anyones opinions

Hi Ruben, I think that's an excellent question and one I have 1st hand experience of. I was diagnosed in 2007 with ME/CFS by a leading neurologist in the field, Prof Findley. Initially I could walk 5 mins a day, converse for less than 10 and spent much of my time in between meditating. After 18 months of graded activity with the Prof I could walk 25 mins and read for about 30 - Still couldn't have more than 1 other person in the same room though. Like many I doubted the LP but gave it a go out of desperation (however Findley had always said it would help me). I made a full and fast recovery. However, going back to work was a shock in many ways, not least because a lot of the symptoms came back. The LP is a neuro-retraining tool you have to apply to environmental triggers. With repetition you retrain your neurology not to respond to those triggers with the stress response and you will live life fully again. You need privacy to do it (at least at work), so with hindsight I would have entered work more cautiously and put time aside to LP on each work related trigger (I think much of my ME was work related and built up over a few years) and returned to full time work more slowly. I'm glad to say I got there after 6 months but it does need co-operation with your employers - make sure you keep HR, OH and your managers fully informed. LP is a bit like Physio for the brain - you will get back what you put in, you need to carve out time for it. Fortunately the results become automated so it's not a forever thing.

 

[Mog]

Has PP got this site bugged?! Twice, I've written this post, only for my browser to crash and I lose it all!
Third time lucky...

I know the LP doesn't work, and it's dangerous and expoitative. I did it with the Chief Snake Oil Salesman himself, no less. I wasn't then so well informed, I hadn't had any tests done that showed what was actually wrong with my body, and I was desperate and prepared to give it my all. I did it faithfully for 5 weeks, over-exerting myself massively and "pretending" that I wasn't ill, that I wasn't "doing" ME, only to then have a major relapse, which lasted at least a year and a half. I sent one email of complaint and received a very nasty reply from CSOS PP himself. His answers to all my complaints and points were that I had "misunderstood the training". As it was him that did the training, I could say that maybe his training wasn't very good then. However, I was too ill to be able to reply to him then so just let it go.

But how does it work for some people? That's what's really bugging me at the moment. Recently I met a PWME that I know, who had done it a month before and said he was doing really well and it was marvellous and he wasn't ill anymore. And I've just been accosted by an acquaintance who'd heard I had ME and had to tell me about the LP because it had cured his brother and was telling me to do it with evangelical zeal. I said I'd done it and it hadn't worked for me and he just looked at me with great disappointment, as if I'm a failure. All this really upsets me and makes me feel like I'm inadequate and some kind of failure. I know the LP is BS and you can't "think" a physical illness better. But why am I left feeling so annoyed and upset?

 

[Bob]

I haven't read through this thread, so apologies if I'm repeating stuff...

I just want to make it clear that the Lightning Process is mainly a positive thinking course, said to be based on NLP.
My understanding is that a primary feature of the course consists of learning to repeat a mantra along the lines of "I choose to move forwards with good health and a positive attitude."
That's not the exact wording of the mantra, but it's along those lines.

There is no substantial evidence to show that the Lightning Process is helpful for ME patients, neither is it a medical treatment. It isn't a treatment, nor is it sold as a treatment. A neurological disease cannot be cured or treated with positive thinking.

Personally, I think that the Lightning Process could be counter productive for ME patients because it teaches patients to ignore their symptoms, and to push on through regardless. This, in my experience, is catastrophic for ME patients. My illness has stabilised since I learnt to listen to my body, and to rest when feeling tired, which I first started doing after reading about 'pacing'.


The Gupta Program sounds sophisticated, but it has no substantial evidence to back it up either.
It's also not a medical treatment, and has not been proven to treat ME/CFS.
Again, a self-help program cannot cure or treat a neurological disease.
I did start the Gupta course once, because it had a free trial, or a money-back guarantee.
Unlike the Lightning Process, I couldn't see any harm in trying it if it didn't cost anything, so I had a look at it, and decided it wouldn't be helpful for me.


I would recommend learning 'pacing' above anything else.
Pacing gave me some control over my illness, and brought some stability to my symptoms.
I found pacing very powerful, and extremely helpful. I can't recommend it enough.
Once I understood it, I adapted it to my own needs and life-style.
Pacing booklets are feely available, and many patients report being helped by it.
As a medical treatment, pacing might not have any substantial evidence behind it either, but it is just an intuitive extension of the body's natural protection system, which enables people to slow down and rest when tired and exhausted. So it just teaches us to tune into our bodies more carefully, and to give ourselves the space to slow down and rest when necessary, and to avoid extremes of activity. This makes sense in terms of protecting the body from the worst excesses of the symptom of 'post exertional malaise'.
For me, pacing was invaluable.

 

[heapsreal]

its psychobabble stuff, if it worked then it would cure HIV, cancer etc etc

 

[peggy-sue]

There is a study on prolonged sympathetic stimulation response!
Dietrich von Holst; "Vegetative and somatic components of tree shrews' behaviour.", in the Journal of the Autonomic Nervous System, Suppl., pp.657-670, 1986.

Basically, they died.

 

[Mog]

LP's mantras are "I don't have ME, I'm doing ME" and "Am I living a life I love?", both of which are really incredibly patronising.
The plus points of Gupta are that he does offer your money back if it doesn't work (or at least he did, and he did honour it, because I sent for it and when I realised it was similar to LP, then I sent it back, but I did get my refund), and it's cheaper and can be done at home. Also, it does include meditation and relaxation elements, which is bound to be good for you, whereas LP is all about stimulation and firing yourself up all the time and making yourself do things that you may not be physically capable of but telling yourself that of course you can do it. LP says it's about reducing adrenaline but in fact their whole process is about driving you forward on empty and relying completely on adrenaline to keep you going - until you collapse when the whole thing becomes unsustainable.

 

[moblet]

But how does it work for some people?...why am I left feeling so annoyed and upset?

Not everyone who is given the CFS or ME or FM label has the same underlying problem(s). Dxes of CFS and FM in particular are described and bestowed as symptomologies with no clue as to what's causing them, and patients are not even required to have every symptom on the list, just enough of them. It is possible (and personally, I'm in no doubt) that people with very different fundamental underlying problems could exhibit very similar complexes of symptoms. For example, some, or perhaps even most of our symptoms may not be direct expressions of our fundamental problems so much as expressions of our bodies' efforts to cope and compensate.

If much of our symptomology represents our bodies' response to illness rather than the illness itself, then we shouldn't expect the same treatment to work equally for everyone, and shouldn't be shocked if what makes one person better does nothing for another, or even makes them worse. If you read stories of recovery you'll find they're very diverse, with perhaps the only common element being that each kept looking for answers until they found theirs.

You feel exploited, which is a pretty good reason to feel annoyed and upset, and it's being compounded by the inappropriate expectations of those who believe everyone labelled with CFS has the exact same illness requiring the exact same treatment. Whatever the pros and cons of the LP, there is no question that it is marketed and sold in an exploitative manner.

Basically, they died.

OK then, I'm not aware of any cheerful research specifically looking at the effects of a prolonged sympathetic response.

 

[peggy-sue]

Moblet, I'm sorry I didn't go into it a bit more yesterday! There were actually 3 types of response to prolonged social stress in the shrews. The social stress was engineered by simply putting the animals near each other - they're solitary beasts. About a third of the shrews were classed as "dominant", they thrived and improved, they were not bothered by the presence of others. Another third, described as "sub-dominant" coped, but their hormone levels showed ongoing stress, they tried to avoid the dominant animal as much as possible. The third group, called "submissives", were the ones that curled up in a corner and died.

The prolonged activation of stress leads to an increase in the release of CRH (corticotropin-releasing hormone) which stimulates release of ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone).The ACTH results in further release of of corticosteroids, which then occupy the receptor sites which exert inhibition of CRH release.
Thus it is a negative feedback system which shuts the response down in normal short-term situations.

When the stressor continues, and no behaviour can remove it, the continued release of corticosteroids will eventually "kill" the receptors which mediate the negative feedback loop and turn it into a feedfoward mechanism.

This is the point at which clinical depression arises. There is a test for it - the dexamethasone supressor test.
It's really not true that the symathetic and parasymapthetic systems haven't been studied. All the info I've summarised here is from an Open University course I did in "Biology: Brain and Behaviour" in the mid-'90s.

 

[Bob]

But how does it work for some people? That's what's really bugging me at the moment. Recently I met a PWME that I know, who had done it a month before and said he was doing really well and it was marvellous and he wasn't ill anymore. And I've just been accosted by an acquaintance who'd heard I had ME and had to tell me about the LP because it had cured his brother and was telling me to do it with evangelical zeal. I said I'd done it and it hadn't worked for me and he just looked at me with great disappointment, as if I'm a failure. All this really upsets me and makes me feel like I'm inadequate and some kind of failure. I know the LP is BS and you can't "think" a physical illness better. But why am I left feeling so annoyed and upset?

That's one of the problems with this illness, isn't it... It makes us all feel inadequate and a failure, at times.

The Lightning Process (which isn't a medical treatment) is designed to put the burden of blame of illness onto the patient. It asserts that we are at fault for our illness, and only we can make ourselves better, as if we are helpless failures, and victims of our own inadequacies. The Lightning Process exploits people when they are at their most desperate, charging huge amounts of money to people who have nowhere else to turn. Just like GET, I think it's a cruel, compassion-less and aggressive approach to medicine. Not only that, but it's not based on any proper evidence. It's a private money making enterprise.

People diagnosed with 'CFS', don't necessarily have the same condition. 'CFS' diagnoses a heterogeneous patient populations. So a few people with chronic episodes of fatigue might find a positive thinking course helpful.

Also, many people with CFS/ME can improve or stabilise naturally over time.
So if this natural improvement coincides with their LP course, then they would believe that the LP helped them.
But obviously, asserting that positive thinking will help a neurological disease, is not much different to witch craft or voodoo, and it wouldn't be allowed with other diseases, such as HIV/AIDS or MS or Parkinsons.

The PACE Trial is a good example of how natural improvements can make people believe that their therapies are helping people.
In the protocol of the PACE Trial, the authors of the PACE Trial stated that they expected about 10% of patients to improve naturally, and about 60% of patients to improve after treatment with CBT and GET.
Bit in reality, once the evidence was gathered from a medical trial, it was found to be the other way around: in the group that were receiving standard medical care (that you would expect to receive from a GP) about 60% improved (at least a little) naturally, and only 13% of CFS/ME patients improved as a result of GET or CBT. The "13%" figure would probably have been even lower, if they had only selected ME patients using an internationally recognised diagnostic criteria, and the rest of the methodology/analysis had been less manipulated for results that were more favourable towards CBT/GET.

Like the LP practicioners, the psychiatrists also blame us for our illness, saying we have a fear of exercise or deconditioning etc. But the PACE Trial utterly proved them wrong. Patients have been telling them the truth for years, but their agressive, medically ignorant, arrogence led them to believe that they were right and patients were deluded. Well, now we have the truth, but they are still promoting the same lies, telling everyone the lie that "60%" of patients improved as a result of CBT and GET in the PACE Trial. This is a lie. To be clear, only about 13% of CFS/ME patients acheived a clinically useful improvement as a result of CBT and GET, and 87% were left unhelped by CBT and GET.

So that's the truth, and it's very different to anecdotal reports of recovery.
It shows that practicioners' beliefs about illness and recovery are deluded, and not the patients' beliefs.

The next time someone says that LP is helpful for CFS/ME patients, ask to see the medical evidence for that.
(There isn't any, which is why it isn't a medical treament.)

 

[peggy-sue]

Not only is it not a medical treatment, the "theory" behind it is completely incompatible with the known and established scientific knowledge.

It is a wishy-washy psychological process, it may help with some psychological conditions.

There have been several reports in the uk from Esther Ranzen, whose daughter was diagnosed with "ME/CFS", and how Emily " recovered" (several times... ???) from her "ME" because of the "marvellous LP". PP got tons and tons of publicity out of her.

Eventually, poor Emily was properly diagnosed with having Chron's disease. She finally came out publicly and said what a relief it was to be able to stop pretending she was well - which was what she had been "forced" to do with LP.
The principle being that you pretend you're well until it becomes real - she just never reached the point of it becoming real. She never was "cured" by LP, just bullied.

 

[Bob]

Not only is it not a medical treatment, the "theory" behind it is completely incompatible with the known and established scientific knowledge.

It is a wishy-washy psychological process, it may help with some psychological conditions.

There have been several reports in the uk from Esther Ranzen, whose daughter was diagnosed with "ME/CFS", and how Emily " recovered" (several times... ???) from her "ME" because of the "marvellous LP". PP got tons and tons of publicity out of her.

Eventually, poor Emily was properly diagnosed with having Crohn's disease. She finally came out publicly and said what a relief it was to be able to stop pretending she was well - which was what she had been "forced" to do with LP.
The principle being that you pretend you're well until it becomes real - she just never reached the point of it becoming real. She never was "cured" by LP, just bullied.

Ah, yes, I was going to mention Esther Rantzen as well.
She is a perfect example of giving well-meaning but ignorant and misguided advice to ME patients.
Esther Rantzen enthusiastically promoted LP to CFS/ME patients for years, after her daughter tried it.
But then, years later, it turned out that her daughter had Coeliac disease, and so could not possibly have medically benefited from LP.
ME patients don't benefit medically from LP either, but we are an easy target, because so many people think it's a psychological illness.

I agree that the theory behind LP is incompatible with ME. LP is the opposite of pacing. Pacing helps patients to avoid an exacerbation of ME symptoms by tuning into our bodies to monitor our levels of symptoms, whereas LP is the opposite, and encourages patients to blindly push through a flare up, ignoring our symptoms. Such an approach is dangerously medically ignorant.

 

[Mog]

I agree that the theory behind LP is incompatible with ME. LP is the opposite of pacing. Pacing helps patients to avoid an exacerbation of ME symptoms by tuning into our bodies to monitor our levels of symptoms, whereas LP is the opposite, and encourages patients to blindly push through a flare up, ignoring our symptoms. Such an approach is dangerously medically ignorant.

Yes and unless LP has changed in the last 5 years since I did it, it takes absolutely no account of your past or current medical history. They just don't want to know. So even if you attend saying you want help with your CFS/ME, they have no idea what other medical conditions you may have as well.

On the last day of our course, one of the other attendees asked PP, "But what about my viral infection?" Presumably she had evidence of a viral infection. PP was very irritated and snapped at her "There is no virus. I told you that on day one". Nice And as you say, completely medically ignorant.​

 

[Mog]

I really shouldn't be wasting my precious energy on this anymore but just found this on the FAQs of the LP website:
"Smear Campaign - Due to our success in a field where not much helps we and our research colleagues have been under attack from a strange group of people who like to spread unpleasant rumours, and even resort to death threats (see Guardian article).

We are aware that a small group of people have launched an attack on us as a profession and at Phil personally, leading to falsehoods and inaccuracies being spread across the internet, which is incredibly upsetting for all involved."​

​

The italics are mine. So anybody that doesn't agree with PP is "strange".
And I wonder if poor Phil is as "incredibly upset" as I was when I realised he'd conned me out of £600 that I could ill afford for a bogus cure that not only didn't cure me but actually made me more ill.

They are actually claiming it works for MS now and for auto-immune diseases like Lupus.
(and something weird has happened to my formatting - must be getting bugged by PP again )