Long Covid und ME/CFS: Heilung in drei Tagen? https://www.woz.ch/!4C332NV50EHR
Expensive miracle cures that sound like snake oil are aggressively being pushed in Switzerland, for instance in the podcast So Long COVID. When in fact they can do more harm than good.
The longer i think about this article, the more i think of it as a cheap shot. If someone gets better by saying stop to symptoms, visualizing a time before the illness and circling around a piece of paper with symbols printed on it, i may have questions, but ultimately good for them. If it works, it works. Belief and autosuggestion can help in healing. I would be too sceptical for this. But who am i to criticize someone who succeeds like that. The one problem i have is that it costs money.
Similarly, i would never make fun of someone who gets better through homeopathy. It's not for me. But again, if it works, it works. Another problematic aspect above is activation therapy. As we know, from a number of studies, this can make symptoms worse. But the article remains vague on exactly how this is done in this treatment. On the other hand, we have the case of Marlen Reusser, who had #ME type #LongCOVID, but got better using this method & went on to win races again in elite cycling.
Which does sound like a miracle and i can only hope for Reusser, that she does not damage her body in some long-term way.
In short, there are problematic aspects to this treatment. Yet it seems to help certain people. But maybe only in certain sub-types of Long COVID? And what happens, if it does not help? Will people blame themself for failing? That's why it should be free of charge and people should stop preaching about it in silly podcasts.
“Some part of me never forgets that medicine became a modern institution on both sides of the Atlantic because it repressed women scientists, healers, physicians, philosophers, herbalists, midwives, abortionists, mystics. Tens of thousands were exterminated; the rest relegated to the realms of the superstitious, irrational, aberrant, criminal.”
~ Eleni Stecopoulos - Dreaming in the Fault Zone
Article in Der Bund, newspaper from Bern, Switzerland, about how #LongCOVID can get cured through a neuroplasticity approach, in other words, "it's just in your head".
This is so dangerous and might have huge negative repercussions for patients needing support.
This article is in reference to the podcast mentioned above. I wrote them an email with these critiques, they have not responded.
[paywalled: https://www.derbund.ch/long-covid-neuroplastische-methode-hilft-patienten-989792021268]
Here's a screenshot of the article (in German, sorry).
Journalists always went for stories that went, i used to run marathons, and then i got #LongCOVID. So of course now they love stories that claim, i used to run marathons, then got Long COVID, and now i run marathons again.
But to those people who had spontaneous remissions: Good for you. You got lucky. Now count yourself lucky and enjoy it. But please shut the fuck up about it. Or at the very least don't make things worse for those of us who can't clear this forsaken illness.
In the article above (sorry, it's behind a paywall, in German and i don't have the spoons to translate it) one woman claims that she had a remission from ME-type Long COVID by doing a brief session of mindfulness meditation every day and by telling herself "i am not sick" all day long.
Well, i have been meditating every day for more than six years and tried every possible thing to get better, including positive affirmations
But it's still there.
She just got lucky.
@antiaall3s The first thing I was told about affirmations was "they can't be negative", by my school psychologist. I tried "I am not bothered by noise" when I was 12 or so. Of course it didn't work. Now I see affirmations as self-gaslighting.
On the other hand, mindfulness can be harmful. When someone is in a terrible situation, war, abusive relationship, guess chronic illness as well, escapism helps and being mindful about it can harm. And they taught us mindfulness in my previous workplace which (at least my department) was abusive.
@rhelune Auto-suggestion can work, in certain people, i suppose (not for me). But i agree that there might be an element of self-gaslighting involved.
And i also agree that mindfulness can be harmful, especially when it is taught or even imposed by the abusers. I choose to do it and do find it helpful in some situations. But to practice it in order to achieve something, like you describe, feels very wrong.
The real problem with all this is that politicians and policy makers at say health insurance companies will read remission reports like these with an ongoing agenda to cut costs.
Both people mentioned in the article are in privileged situations, both are medical doctors, one a famous road cyclist.
By running their victory lap so publicly they might make the situation for the rest of us, who maybe can't get better through esoteric woo woo, much much worse.
@antiaall3s I only got my capacity for full-speed mental reasoning back by literally visualizing myself carving new pathways in my brain, to "re-route" the wiring in my head around the parts that didn't feel like there were working. Absolute bullshit? Maybe, but that's what worked for me and I spent a couple years NOT getting better until I broke down and tried it. Did it for months, and eventually, things stopped being so hard and I could think faster again.
@AnarchoNinaWrites I think it is fantastic that it worked for you and helped you to get better. I often curse myself for having such a hypercritical, skeptical mind. The book i just read by Eleni Stecopoulos contains many wonderful reflections on different pathways to healing, while also never forgetting the political and economic realities.
@antiaall3s I mean I am the worst sort of skeptic. I genuinely can't explain how it worked. Perhaps, on some level, it was like a meditation ritual and the act of forcing myself to hyperfocus on literally ANYTHING at all, is what got me back. No idea.
Somehow it worked.
But I am not a big believer in the woo, just for clarity.