Mental Contrasting: A Smart Alternative to Positive Thinking

Studies are showing that when people limit their thinking to imagining positive outcomes, they tend not to put forth the effort to make those outcomes come about.

It’s as if we assume that we can ride the wave of positive thinking all the way to the shore without putting in any effort.

By contrast, when people balance positive thinking about a desired outcome with a realistic look at the challenges and obstacles that might arise, they are much more likely to achieve their goals.

Mental Contrasting: A Smart Alternative to Positive Thinking

Mental Contrasting: A Smart Alternative to Positive Thinking

Studies are showing that when people limit their thinking to imagining positive outcomes, they tend not to put forth the effort to make those outcomes come about.

It’s as if we assume that we can ride the wave of positive thinking all the way to the shore without putting in any effort.

By contrast, when people balance positive thinking about a desired outcome with a realistic look at the challenges and obstacles that might arise, they are much more likely to achieve their goals.

Mental Contrasting: A Smart Alternative to Positive Thinking

“Pharmaceutical Grade” Low Dose Naltrexone Now Available for ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia Patients

Immune Therapeutics has the exclusive rights to develop LDN for a wide variety of disorders including Crohn’s Disease, IBS, prostate cancer, lymphomas,  infectious diseases such as chronic herpes virus infections, Fibromyalgia, Parkinson, chronic infections due to the Epstein-Barr virus, and chronic inflammatory conditions including chronic fatigue syndrome.

"Pharmaceutical Grade" Low Dose Naltrexone Now Available for ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia Patients

PACE trials Professor Peter White: exercise causes immunological damage in ME

"Finally, we found that exercise induced a sustained elevation in the concentration of TNF-α, which was still present three days later, and this only occurred in CFS patients."

PACE trials Professor Peter White: exercise causes immunological damage in ME

Have you tried the full English breakfast detox?

With celebrity advocates from Gwyneth Paltrow to Oprah Winfrey, detoxing has become big business – even though many doctors claim the only thing really getting cleansed is our wallets. Rich Peppiatt thinks he's found the solution to our detoxing obsession … and it tastes a bit like liquified animal.

Have you tried the full English breakfast detox?

The Myth of a Perfect Drug for Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: the NNT Dilemma

The fact is that treating illnesses – even well characterized, heavily studied illnesses – can still be something of a crap shoot. Lots of times drugs don’t work. In fact, many drugs in common use don’t work the majority of the time. Many don’t even work ten percent of the time. Some that don’t work at all are in common use.

The Myth of a Perfect Drug for Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: the NNT Dilemma

Knowing M.E, Knowing You

This week in your town or city someone rather lovely and nice will be diagnosed with this illness. They'll be scared and confused and far too exhausted to do anything but absorb that fear and confusion. Statistically they will probably have a relative or close friend who gets up for work at 5am and fails to hide their repulsion at seeing this person stricken in a warm, comfy bed. They'll also have a friend who will say "I know what you mean. I've been feeling tired all the time lately". Lastly, they will have a GP who will either apologetically shrug their shoulders in immediate defeat or be quite mean to them.

If you should encounter this person please understand that they're struggling and maybe ask how they're doing. We should be past this point. We really should.

Knowing M.E, Knowing You | Stephen Tudor

Claimants Vow To Topple Coalition

Claimants are angry – not cowed - and they are planning to turn out in huge numbers to vote in May.

That’s the message from almost 6,000 readers who responded to the Benefits and Work General Election Survey, conducted over the last fortnight.

Of course, this was a self-selecting group of people. It represents those who feel most strongly about the issue of voting. It may not be a representative sample of the views of all claimants.

But there are lessons that politicians should, nonetheless, take from this poll.

One is that any assumption that claimants have been beaten into weary despair and will not turn out on May 7th is almost certainly wrong – many feel that their lives depend on voting.

28 January 2015 newsletter

Invisible illness - 'I'm fed up of having to perform my disability'

I can stand, just not for long, and I can walk, just not very far. I need to use my wheelchair in order to have a hope of going anywhere beyond my own home. Limited as my mobility is, though, I am still made to feel like a con artist for using a wheelchair. You see, society says that to use a wheelchair you must have paralysis. The only exceptions to this rule are people with broken limbs and the elderly. The movement of limbs is a way to sort the inspirational cripple from the thieving scrounger.

Invisible illness - 'I'm fed up of having to perform my disability'

The Unique Difficulties that Women Face with Weight Loss

If you are a woman, highlighting these challenges isn't meant to discourage you, but to empower you. Knowing the magnitude of this battle will allow you to be kinder to yourself when you stumble.

The Unique Difficulties that Women Face with Weight Loss

Exercise will never improve my health or halt the progress of this illness

It's absolutely both ridiculous and infuriating that in 2015 there are supposed experts who are still "debating" whether or not sufferers of ME/CFS/FMS should consider exercise as a way to improving their health. 

As a long term sufferer of these conditions for the past 20 years, I have attempted all kinds of things to improve my health (including pacing, GET, etc) and the only thing that I can say with absolute clarity is that nothing has made any difference at all. 

Exercise will never improve my health or halt the progress of this illness

(ED: Pacing may well make it easier to have some semblance of a life, but I agree that it certainly doesn't do anything to improve the underlying chronic illness. The only thing exercise - or any activity that involves any measure of effort - has ever done for me has been to push me back into bed for yet another extended recovery period. And every time takes me to a lower new baseline.)

Detoxes: an undefined scam

Any diet promising a quick fix is always too good to be true. Good health takes time and dedication. Still, that doesn’t stop fad diets and their marketers from gumming up the airways with advertisements. One kind of fad diet always makes the rounds this time of year: the cleanse, or “detox” diet.

Detoxes: an undefined scam

“I’m Scared” Benefits And Work Survey Reveals How Sick And Disabled People Feel About Coalition

Benefits and Work had almost 6,000 responses to our survey, launched in the last newsletter, asking readers about how life had changed under the coalition and whether you intend to vote at the next election.

We’ll be publishing the full results of the survey on Wednesday.  But in the meantime, we can reveal that in response to the question:

“Overall, has the Coalition government made your life: Much better; Better; No different; Worse; Much worse?

... an overwhelming 84% feel that the coalition has made their life worse or much worse.

“I’m Scared” Benefits And Work Survey Reveals How Sick And Disabled People Feel About Coalition

​Juicing Unlocks More Vitamins, But Also Calories and Sugar

Proponents of juicing say it's a great way to stuff more vitamins and phytonutrients into your diet. Fruit juice has also been criticized as a sugary, fiberless drink no better for you than cola. What's the truth? A new study shows that orange juice does make certain nutrients more accessible to your body, but not enough to recommend juice over whole fruit.

​Juicing Unlocks More Vitamins, But Also Calories and Sugar

Telomere extension turns back aging clock in cultured human cells, study finds

"Telomere". Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

This study from Stanford University Medical Center, reported by Science Daily, looks potentially interesting: 

"A new procedure can quickly and efficiently increase the length of human telomeres, the protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that are linked to aging and disease, according to scientists."

Have they discovered the elixir of (long) life?

Who knows, but I recognised the word Telomere with relation to a report from a couple of years ago: Telomere Length Linked to Fibromyalgia Pain (see also Pain is associated with short leukocyte telomere length in women with fibromyalgia.)

Could increasing the length of telomeres therefore perhaps lead to an effective, permanent treatment for fibromyalgia? Far too early to tell yet, but this may offer us a glimmer of hope.

Telomere extension turns back aging clock in cultured human cells, study finds

This Homeless Man Fell Down And EVERYONE Ignored Him. Until Finally…

Appearance certainly does have a very strong bearing on how one is treated and I think anything that singles one out as different from what society thinks of as "normal" in that particular locality will negatively impact on the treatment you recieve from it.

It is always downright wrong, but it probably has a lot to do with empathy and maybe it's logical that it's easier to empathise with people who we percieve as being similar to ourselves and thus part of our own group. Hence the homeless man in this video helped the "homeless" faller.

We see this being played out in the city of New York and are probably not shocked about the location. What you probably won't have thought is that I have personally experienced this very phenomena right here in a "nice middle-class white neighbourhood" of the south of England.

Dressing "a bit goth", not being and old person ("normal" for here), being (at the time) relatively poor, may all have had an effect on how I was percieved and thus how I was treated. On more than one ocassion, when I fell, stumbled and virtually crawled along the pavement utterly exhausted - I might add I was using a stick and walking home from a doctor's appointment - people didn't help. They walked around me, they gave me a wide berth and looked at me disapprovingly, probably believing that I was drunk. I was too ill to verbalise a cry for help. I was focussed on staying safe and getting home, because I certainly didn't feel safe. And it definately made me feel less than human.

The one time I did get help, compassion, hugs, a listening ear - on this ocassion I'd had a mental breakdown under severe stress - it was a homeless girl who stopped to help me, talk to me and get me to the doctor.

There is nowhere in the universe where this situation is acceptable.

Share to spread awareness, you can be the change!

Does Appearance Change How People Are Treated?

Pain Patients Treated by ‘Dysfunctional’ Health Care System

An independent panel convened by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has concluded that individualized patient care is needed to better treat the estimated 100 million Americans who suffer from chronic pain. The panel recommends more research and development of multidisciplinary treatments for pain patients, who are being treated by a “dysfunctional” health care system.

Pain Patients Treated by ‘Dysfunctional’ Health Care System - National Pain Report

Study finds reason why patients with chronic pain often suffer from impaired short-term memory

A group of Portuguese researchers from IBMC and FMUP at the University of Porto has found the reason why patients with chronic pain often suffer from impaired short -term memory. The study, to be published in the Journal of Neuroscience, shows how persistent pain disrupts the flow of information between two brain regions crucial to retain temporary memories.

Study finds reason why patients with chronic pain often suffer from impaired short-term memory

Consultant Dr Weir: a study of which I was a co-author explicitly disproved exercise phobia in ME

Most recently “exercise phobia” has been proposed as part of the problem, although a study of which I was a co-author in 2005 explicitly disproved this proposition (J Psychosom Res 58 (2005): 367-373). This paradigm has no plausible scientific basis and can only be described as a doctrine whose adherents continue to ignore the biomedical evidence which amply confirms the organic basis of the condition.

Consultant Dr Weir: a study of which I was a co-author explicitly disproved exercise phobia in ME

Benefit Cuts for People with Depression Who Refuse Treatment Are Barbaric and Misunderstand the Problem

This is a policy that is not only wrong-headed, it risks doing further harm to people who are already vulnerable. Cutting someone's financial lifeline because they can't bear to try yet another tablet or because they're scared to undergo counselling after their last counsellor was transphobic or tried to cure them of their gayness, or simply because they don't feel ready to face the issues that trouble them, is barbaric. 

Where's the Benefit?: Benefit Cuts for People with Depression Who Refuse Treatment Are Barbaric and Misunderstand the Problem

Work Programme A Waste Of Time For Long-Term Sickness Benefit Claimants

Official data from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), released in response to a Freedom of Information Request (FOI), show that Iain Duncan Smith’s flagship back-to-work programme is dramatically failing long-term sick and disabled people.

Work Programme A Waste Of Time For Long-Term Sickness Benefit Claimants

Prof Edwards: an unblinded trial such as PACE simply does not provide useful information

There appear to have been a number of additional methodological problems with the trial, but those aside, the basic design does not allow of sufficient scientific rigour. A large number of patients are concerned that the trial should be used as a basis for recommending treatment and I think they are right to be concerned.

Prof Edwards: an unblinded trial such as PACE simply does not provide useful information

Revealed: thousands of Britons on benefits across EU

The research shows more than four times as many Britons obtain unemployment benefits in Germany as Germans do in the UK, while the number of jobless Britons receiving benefits in Ireland exceeds their Irish counterparts in the UK by a rate of five to one.

There are not only far more Britons drawing benefits in these countries than vice versa, but frequently the benefits elsewhere in Europe are much more generous than in the UK. A Briton in France receives more than three times as much as a jobless French person in the UK.

Revealed: thousands of Britons on benefits across EU

Life is hard for us ME sufferers – and simplistic news reports don’t help

Am I fearful of exercising? Yes, if I am honest. But it’s not that I am afraid of doing the exercises: I WANT to be able to walk and to go shopping. But I also know the physical suffering I feel after pushing myself too hard. It’s hard not to be afraid of feeling so ill that you can’t raise your head off the pillow for days on end. Reports like those seen this week do nothing other than belittle the battle we go through every day, and make people question us and our commitment to getting better.

Life is hard for us ME sufferers – and simplistic news reports don’t help

Exercise physiologist Prof VanNess responds to the preposterous idea that ME patients remain severely, physically debilitated due to an irrational 'fear of exercise'

The lives of patients could be so dramatically improved and even saved if some very powerful psychiatrists would just end their agenda to literally crucify us and sit down to study the biomedical evidence. This post contains just one example, there are thousands more.

Exercise physiologist Prof VanNess responds to the preposterous idea that ME patients remain severely, physically debilitated due to an irrational 'fear of exercise'

Could our brain instruct our bodies to burn more fat?

By uncovering the action of two naturally occurring hormones, scientists may have discovered a way to assist in the shedding of excess fat. Fat in adult humans is typically stored in adipocytes, specialized cells that comprise white fat. But around the neck and shoulders, there is a second form of fat made of brown adipocytes. Rather than storing fat, these cells can be induced to burn it off, experts say.

Could our brain instruct our bodies to burn more fat? -- ScienceDaily

ME patient MP Brynmor John KILLED by graded exercise therapy (GET)

Brynmor Thomas John (18 April 1934 – 13 December 1988) was a British Labour politician.

John was Member of Parliament forPontypridd in South Wales from 1970 until he died in 1988 at the age of 54. During the Labour government of 1974 to 1979, he was a junior Defence minister for the Royal Air Force (RAF) (1974–1976) and a Home Office minister (1976–1979).

The circumstances of his later life and premature death are cited by physicians who believe the overwhelming evidence for the biological etiology of chronic fatigue syndrome.

Brynmor John had been diagnosed with the illness, and died suddenly immediately after exiting the House of Commons gym. He had been following an exercise regime based on what is argued to be unfounded and unethical medical advice: that sufferers may exercise their way toward a cure for the illness.

Reblogged from: THE NICEGUIDELINES BLOG: ME patient MP Brynmor John KILLED by graded exercise therapy (GET) 

MECFS Blog: Analysis Of Today’s Update on PACE Trial for CBT and GET

The results of the first PACE trial published in March 2011 indicated that a combination of CBT and GET facilitated recovery from MECFS. There were problems though. The problems included how the trial recruited participants, the incorrect naming and diagnosis of differing conditions – ME is not CFS, the changing of clinical outcomes that were being measured during the trial (not good research practice) and the exclusion of participants with more severe MECFS thus rendering the patient group unrepresentative of many people with ME.

MECFS Blog: Analysis Of Today’s Update on PACE Trial for CBT and GET

One and a half stone loss

First evidence of neuroinflammation in brains of chronic pain patients

A new study from Massachusetts General Hospital investigators has found, for the first time, evidence of neuroinflammation in key regions of the brains of patients with chronic pain. By showing that levels of an inflammation-linked protein are elevated in regions known to be involved in pain transmission, the study paves the way for the exploration of potential new treatment strategies and possibly for biomarkers reflecting pain conditions.

First evidence of neuroinflammation in brains of chronic pain patients

DWP admits investigating 60 benefit-related deaths since 2012

DWP released the figures in response to a series of Freedom of Information Act (FoI) requests by DNS.

It said in one response that DWP had carried out “60 peer reviews following the death of a customer” since February 2012.

There have been numerous reports of disabled people whose deaths have been linked to the employment and support allowance (ESA) claim process, or the refusal or removal of ESA and other benefits, including the writer Paul Reekie, who killed himself in 2010, and the deaths of Nick Barker, Jacqueline Harris, Ms DE, and Brian McArdle.

DWP admits investigating 60 benefit-related deaths

The Countess of Mar: people with ME/CFS are treated abominably by members of supposedly caring professions

Countess of Mar tells House of Lords that people with ME/CFS are treated “abominably” by caring professions | Lords debate | 7 January 2015

The Countess of Mar, who chairs the Forward ME Group of ME charities, made the following contribution during a short debate on NHS: Medical Competence and Skill in the House of Lords yesterday evening (7 January 2014).

THE NICEGUIDELINES BLOG: The Countess of Mar: people with ME/CFS are treated abominably by members of supposedly caring professions

NHS: Medical Competence and Skill — Question for Short Debate

The NHS is excellent for acute management of illness because clear guidelines are usually followed assiduously by all staff. Chronic complex conditions are problematic because clinicians seem to deal with only one symptom at a time. Specialisation means that patients with ME/CFS are rarely looked at holistically. I have heard of one doctor’s surgery with a notice on the door which reads, “One complaint at a time”. The trouble is that frequently it is the combination of symptoms which will point to a clear diagnosis.

NHS: Medical Competence and Skill — Question for Short Debate 7 Jan 2015: House of Lords debates - TheyWorkForYou