Hi Cort (still have to post another reply I am working on from last night which is more detailed. CBS I'll get to you later
)
Cort
My guess is, though, that if doctors take this course then they will finally understand how problematic exercise is for CFS patients. They will come away with a new understanding of this subject.
I don't think they will, unfortunately, and the bad ones can pick and choose.
Let's put it another way. We know that most doctors are misinformed about exercise and CFS - correct? We know that at least some doctors, hopefully fewer and fewer over time, but still a considerable number, think that CFS patients just need to start exercising again. When they hear 'exercise' they think just get on a bike and your troubles will disappear.
Do you think they would think that after reading this program?
Unfortunately yes. Some may not go as extreme as the bike for some patients, but for them the streching exercises and so on that are suggested will make them worse. It could be too late by the time they realise this.
I don't think it can be assumed that fewer and fewer doctors are misinformed about exercise and CFS. It has gotten worse in the UK recently (in general) so things can move one direction and then another. Also individual doctors an buck the trend in one direction or another.
Those of us who might have managed to weed out some idiot doctors and so on in our lives should remember not to over-generalise from our own individual experience (not sure if that is what you are doing. Sometimes people forget that they have learnt to avoid certain doctors and so on, so what seems like an overall improvement in the awareness and so on is really a reflection of us organising our lives a certain way).
There would be one way to find out how doctors are picking up what is in the material, and that would be to do a survey of them (and their patients). But that would take time and money , and may not produce totally accurate results if only the better doctors replied. I think for the moment that it would make sense just to listen to what patients like me (who have experience) are telling them about the problematic parts.
And there are some things in the document which I think are inaccurate, or misleading (one problem I have is some of the arguments, or "evidence" of the CBT school are printed as fact instead of being more questioned and crticially analysed), so these should be changed anyway.
Maybe some of the issue is that you (and others) might not have seen much better stuff on exercise, but I have. To be honest my impression was that the CDC website was even better than this stuff (though I would have to compare properly to check this).
I have found in general that the good (not the crap!) UK doctors tend to be better on the exercise issue than the US ones. The bad UK doctors are worse. I think there could be various reasons for this situation, which I don't have the energy to go into,
Orla