M.E. in the Media: A Little Nut Who Held its Ground (Irony Intended!)

Wessely's "Mind the Gap" article in 'The Spectator' 27th August 2011 with many interesting comments

This was the upsetting, quite devastating article we woke up to yesterday. Just in time to celebrate a peaceful Bank Holiday weekend in the UK. More of Professor Simon justifying his position and earlier high-profile articles in the UK press.

August has been quite a month. It's often called "the silly season", isn't it? The summer news-slump when all sorts of wacky, weird and wonderful stories hit the headlines while the world is on holiday and needs a break from the heavy stuff?

For us who are genuinely sick with M.E.,who don't ever get a holiday from its devastating effects, this proved to be a bouncing bomb of a story, frisking along gaining momentum through August with poisonous and dispiriting ripples spreading out beyond the visible horizon. Some of us were reduced to tears. Positive, witty, resilient souls reduced to sobs of despairing shock. Not again? No more surely? Where will this all end?

On Twitter, on Facebook, and other social internet outlets, M.E. patients kept each others' spirits up and found ways, by humour or by putting together responses to the half-truths being perpetuated here and elsewhere, of seeing a way forward together. I am so thankful for the strength and gracious, clear-sightedness of other M.E. bloggers, Tweeters and like minded friends on the Internet. 


Some of the responses to Wessely's latest oh-so-reasonable, avuncular cant gave me solace. If you click the link above, there is even a measured response from another psychologist who has personally felt the sting of a backlash (Wessely's amorphous "death threats") from activists who themselves haven't got M.E. but use the frustration of M.E. patients abandoned by the medical establishment, as an excuse for unleashing their vitriol. Yet she still sees that Wessely's psychogenic aetiology model for M.E./CFS is essentially flawed from a scientific point of view.

Other comments bear witness to the professor's shortness of memory on treatments he authorised a quarter of a century ago, but in the article distances himself. Treatments to expose the "playacting" of a child with M.E. and the role his concerned parents allegedly played in perpetuating his illness. We are all aware that 'sectioning' of M.E, sufferers still occurs throughout the 'civilised' world.

Many of us have respectfully tweeted journalists jumping on the bandwagon. Pointing out inaccuracies. Pointing out poor logic. Begging for a bit of integrity and balance in these articles. I had no sooner tweeted Max Pemberton about his own deeply insulting and truth-bypassed article in the Telegraph:

@MaxPemberton: 'Many claim that their condition is the result of..' Patients make no claims.They're diagnosed! Shockingly inaccurate #mecfs

than the said article seemed to have been withdrawn. [Update: the article WAS published in the Telegraph on Bank Holiday Monday 29th August 2011]. Others within the M.E. community were also pointing out the factual errors in many of his words.

It was then that I learnt that a link is only good while the newspaper involved has the linked article available! Someone else on Twitter asked if I could point them in the direction of the Pemberton diatribe. I couldn't find it when I clicked my saved link to the Telegraph again! A bit like Orwell's Big Brother in '1984' rewriting history to suit the powers that be and leaving us wondering helplessly if we were just hallucinating. We can't afford, in the current hostile climate, to be tricked into thinking it's us who don't know what we're talking about! It's really NOT all in our minds!

We can be thankful, at least, that the Pemberton hackery stayed in cyberspace and did not go to print. [Update: Sadly, it did - Telegraph 29th August 2011]. For those who blinked and missed it, the wonderful team behind XMRV Global Action was clever enough to transcribe the article, before it was snatched from scrutiny, here:


XMRV Global Action's note of the text of Max Pemberton's article in The Telegraph "Protesters have got it all wrong on ME"

Maybe this isn't the best quote about our need for patient, dogged perseverance in holding out for a turn in the tide of true M.E. Awareness. 'Nut' is an emotive term, if anywhere near the Wesselyan lips! But through this long month of buffetings from the media, it made me smile and be even more determined to go on chipping away towards better awareness and better science for M.E.:

"The greatest oak was once a little nut who held its ground." ~Author Unknown

We must hold our ground. Peacefully. But with the most stubborn, unwavering determination and persistence. Nothing Wessely, or his sycophantic nay-saying echoes, can ever say or write will change the fact that M.E is a neurological, multi-systemic illness, needing much more of an organic scientific cure than a sticking plaster of CBT/GET.

We have truth on our side, and need to pull together with the little sparks of strength we can muster, against all these odds.

Lucretius puts it another way:

'The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by oft falling.'

I feel like a drip or a nut this weekend. Don't we all? But the stone is not impenetrable and this little oak's still willing to struggle its way towards the clearing above. 

Links to various other responses to the articles:
 
The big issue: Extremism has no place in the quest to find a cure for ME

Professor Malcolm Hooper's full response to Observer reported in Dancing with the Sandman's blog today

The Truth Is Out There!

The Truth Is Out There. The Truth About M.E./CFS/CFIDS.

But some powerful bum steers have hit the tarmac with a bigger bang, since last I wrote.


Did anybody else notice how soon after the news of Dr Myhill's exoneration of all misconduct charges by the General Medical Council, the pernicious nonsense peddled by Prof Simon Wessely hit the papers? Of course you did!


BBC News covers "victim" Wessely


Daily Mail covers "victim" Wessely


The Economist (where will this end???) covers "victim" Wessely


Top News US covers "victim" Wessely


Visit Bulgaria covers "victim" Wessely

Top News New Zealand covers "victim" Wessely 

Followed up by the slack journalism in the Times by Stephanie Marsh on Aug 6th 
Doctor's hate mail is sent by the people he tried to cure 

and the hackery of Rod Liddle on 31st July with his dismissively mocking
Shoot the medical messenger - see if that'll cure you

So that's pretty much worldwide coverage, then. Raising awareness of M.E.? Sadly, for all the wrong, mistaken reasons. How now to explain all this to friends, neighbours and strangers who have taken this new story on board over their cornflakes, I can't begin to know. 

Happily, most of them already know how little this is a state of mind, and those who knew me before I was ill, understand how the physical illness I fought for years finally took its worst toll, thriving on my opposition to lying down under its tyranny!

A few calculated words from a man who knows full well that time will prove him wrong, and has all the painful fight for M.E. research been swept away in a tide of headline-grabbing rhetoric and half-truths?

A drop of misinformation in already muddied waters. The ripples from this one have gone far indeed!

Amazing how, suddenly, all the decades of research on the physical causes and deeper understanding of this crushingly painful, debilitating neurological multi-systemic disease  (that definition's NOT coming from M.E. patients, but from scientists, researchers, doctors and the World Health Organisation who must also be insulted and mystified that Simon Wessely is now a self-proclaimed "leading expert in M.E.' ???) which rarely gets a mention in the media, has been outstripped by an outmoded and, franky, wholly incorrect analysis of the disease!



You know by now, I'm an optimist. My optimism hasn't been so sorely tried in the years since M.E. (not that woolly umbrella that lets the poison rain in, called "CFS") was diagnosed in my case. I was full of life, optimism, joy, hard work, fun, plans. I still am, ready for when M.E. ceases to pull the carpet unexpectedly from under me.

These articles have made me determined, after a period of sober reflection, that there is all the more need for those of us who can, to keep positive and do all we can to go on holding out for the day when the truth is known and the correct treatments and cures will finally come our way. Sadly for those like Sophie Mirza and Lynn Gilderdale, it will come too late.


The Truth is Out There. 

Not just on the X Files, either.

Professor Wessely knows it, and maybe that's why he has used what influence he has with the media and government to rekindle old ideas and theories about M.E. (experts have called it that, incidentally, not those of us who didn't know any name for the disease that snatched our lives and livelihoods away) that distract the eyes of the world from what is right under its nose, with horrifying sensationalism and sleight of hand.


The Truth is Out There.

We have to keep on believing that, and not letting playground bullies kick us when we are furthest down! Sticks and stones may hurt our bones (if not as much as M.E.!) but calling will not hurt us (when we've stopped weeping in disbelief at the lies levelled at derailing real scientific enquiry!)


Much has already been written to point out the glaring errors in these articles. I've been so thankful for them. We all have:


Actual BBC caller suffering from M.E. speaks the truth

Niceguidelines.blogspot.com - one of so many excellent posts 

Letter on MEA Website 


Letters responding to Rod Liddle's article in The Sunday Times


I have pushed myself to the maximun over the last few weeks. Doing a tiny part of what used to be my full-time vocation, now vountarily and with consequences that make me immobile and inarticuate now for ages afterwards. Receiving those visitors who can only get away to see me in the summer. Luckily they understand my limitations!


All in my head? I think we all know it isn't, whatever we read in the papers. Or hear from little green men.

Q10 joins the party!

Too ill to venture into town today. That would have been two bumpy bus rides too many. Not to mention all the mixed blocks of effort in between. Yesterday was worth it, though. I just can't do stuff back-to-back at the moment.


The kind person who went into town to run a couple of errands for me, brought back another related supplement from Holland and Barrett. The very helpful staff in our Rotherham branch explained that they didn't stock Enada NADH Coenzyme B3. It might be snappier to call it Niacin, for those who remember "O" level science classes? They aren't exactly the same, but very closely related in function within the human body, as I understand it. Enada was only available from their larger branch in Sheffield. But they do stock the other Coenzyme supplement Q10 so familiar to M.E./CFS patients, if only through online discussions, so I am adding this into my trial.

Q10 has been recommended for replacing the deficit in the body's naturally occuring Q10 in those taking statins. I have taken Simvastatin, a common cholesterol-busting statin prescribed in the UK, since just before my major M.E. relapse/crash in the autumn of 2005. Guilty of hastening my collapse? Or was it that flu jab again? Your guess is as good as mine.

Statins are known to inhibit and deplete vital Q10 in the body. Many M.E. patients have also been found to have a measurable Q10 deficiency. Some research has indicated that this Q10 deficiency may be causing some of our symptoms, such as profound and disabling fatigue, plus a raft of autonomic and neurocognitive symptoms. Q10 deficiency may also explain why for some severely affected M.E. patients the condition can eventually lead to heart failure at a younger than expected age.


I had heard about the link between Q10 deficiency and M.E./CFS even before I heard about NADH-Q Coenzyme of B3. Both function in a similar way within the body. Q10 is a kind of nutrient which helps to metabolise ATP in the mitochondrial cells, also acting as an antioxidant, mopping up dangerous "free radicals". So both the Enada and the Q10 are complemantary coenzymes that give a boost of energy where the body is unable, because of mitochondrial damage from diseases such as M.E., to do this without outside intervention. This is similar to the way I must inject artificially produced insulin to compensate for the hormone insulin that the "islets of Langerhans" inside my own pancreas have refused to produce naturally since at least 1984!

Since Coenzyme Q10 has found its way into mainstream pharmacies, it has been touted as the "miracle nutrient" and the "miracle antioxident". From its healing properties it has also been heralded as a treatment in Alzheimer's Disease, heart disease, cancer, immune diseases like HIV, AIDS-related complex and Hepatitis B. It is also believed to help the body fight such neurodegenerative diseases as Parkinson's Disease, Huntingdon's Disease and Friedreich's Ataxia. Gum disease, wrinkles and the whole ageing process have also come into the sphere of its influence since its discovery!

If this is all not entirely due to clever marketing techniques, it has to be worth at least a try, alongside the "pacing" through which I survive day to day! I don't consider myself especially gullible, but I'm open to what can't harm me, and might just prove useful in inching my way back to some semblance of health and fuller functioning!


The recommended dose of Coenzyme Q10 varies between 100-400mg for people with M.E., and overdose is simply impossible at such levels. Considering the tub I have just acquired at 'Holland and Barrett' cost £10.29 for 100 10mg capsules, overdose would be out of my price range, too! Ten days at just 100mg a day would see the kiddie-proof bottle empty!

The Enada NADH is best taken in the morning on an empty stomach with water, perhaps half an hour before a meal. The Q10, on the other hand, prefers to be washed down through the day, accompanied by something...erm...oily. That's a meal containing Omega-3 fatty acid type foods that are staples for me anyway. For example, fish like mackerel or failing that, a spoonful of olive oil. One of the easiest ways of getting the combined oil fix, is to take it with Vitamin E, which acts on the metabolism in the same way as an oil.


Sadly, as some of these medicines and supplements take at least a couple of weeks to have noticeable effect, my plan to stockpile such resources for days when I have extra energy needs, or greater M.E. challenges from within, may prove less than effective. I can only try.


The itching, burning and crawling all over my skin at present is apparently a known side effect of taking NADH Coenzyme B3, I now discover. I can't blame my own symptoms on it for certain, of course, as my diabetes and multiple chemical and food sensitivities from the M.E. can have exactly the same effect. At the moment I'm ready to scratch my skin right off, even though there's no visible rash. A rash that I had all over my body two years ago was never fully solved beyond a vague diagnosis of "psoriasis" by the dermatological specialist. In the end, they thought the M.E. might have caused it indirectly as my immune and neurological system struggled.


I was reading earlier about one woman with CFS who had been taking 10mg of Enada, which seemed to help her fatique for a while, but it also caused gastrointestinal problems. My own stomach feels as if it has been hollowed out from the inside, though I usually put this down to M.E. muscle discomfort and weakness. I don't know for certain either way, but am soldiering on as usual.

As soon as the woman had to discontinue the Enada NADH because of these well-reported stomach side-effects, she found she had the worst CFS crash she had suffered for ages, leaving her worse off than before. She was advised to continue with a smaller dose, say 2.5mg. I couldn't break these 5mg babies in half in any case!

I have decided that I will keep taking 10mg until the Enada runs out in the first instance, continuing after that with the Coenzyme Q10 to see how it goes for me.


Off for a proper lie down now, till my muscles settle down and stop playing pat-a-cake when I'm not intending to move them! My eyes feel as if someone has been at them with a blowtorch. They need to put that blowtorch away and give me a break!