ME/CFS, MCS/TILT, HRS/EI, Alternative Health, and Networking Resources in Scotland, UK
 

           

 
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GP with ME/CFS Speaks Out

"They told me it was all in my head."

[ Article: me-001 ]

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Introduction
Thank you for coming
Hi      Hmm, "They told me it was all in my head".  To all you guys out there that suffer from ME/CFS [or MCS/EI/CI/TILT,HRS,GS] how many times have we all heard that!  And how many times [if we are ruthlessly honest] have we secretly wished our that GP [or whoever] could experience a damn good dose of our true medical reality themselves - right there and right then - just so they could finally understand something "real" about what life is actually like with these devastating, stealth-like illnesses. And then, hopefully, having finally experienced the undisputable reality of our lot firsthand for themselves, to witness them officially give these illnesses the proper medical street-cred they deserve as real physiological illnesses? Well? I know I have and, I freely confess, not just the once either!      Below, launching Satori-5's first online "Article", we have just such a GP. As a result of his own personal encounter with ME it seems that this doctor eventually had his whole conventional medical reality stood on its rather outdated and lethally commercialized head.  This is because ME, MCS, and HRS are "old-paradigm" breaking and "new-paradigm" making illnesses.  Of course when this GP then tries to tell his fellow fundamentalist Newtonians about his ME and its realities - guess what they have to say to him in return?  Yip!  You guessed it: "Its all in your head".      In their orthodox eyes this previously respected GP has now suddenly and mysteriously become "one of them".  Consequently he is suddenly out of the loop - no longer a member of the club - the level of professional credibility he previously enjoyed is now kaput and henceforth the vast majority of his peers will no longer take anything he has to say on the matter seriously.  Sounds soooo familiar doesn't it?  You'd think they could at least manage to come up with something a bit different and a bit more original for one of their own.  Wouldn't you?  But then again, if they had any imagination at all they would already have woken up, promptly stopped being little more than a glorified pill-pushing salesperson for the pharmaceutical industry, and would have immediately started being a REAL doctor again. Wouldn't they?      Anyway, I'll leave you to read the article now - and catch up with you below in "The Last Word". Namaste Yours Sincerely Gordon D McHendry
September 2003

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Article ME-001
GP With ME/CFS Speaks Out
By Jean West
Source: The Herald Date: June 19, 2003 Author: Jean West They told me it was all in my head.        When GP David Mason Brown developed chronic fatigue, his fellow professionals didn't want to know. So he cured himself. Now he is just one of a growing number of doctors using alternative remedies.        The whole experience had a huge effect on his life. He had spent years working as a hospital doctor and GP, for up to 100 hours a week, but suddenly he found himself on his own. "I had to look for the answers myself," he says.        That search eventually led him away from his conventional training and down a distinctly alternative route. Now he is a leading figure among a growing number of medics recognising the limitations of modern medicine and embracing complementary healing. For this new generation, hypnosis, energy healing, optimum nutrition, and mind control can be as restorative to the body as a bottle of penicillin.        "I used to get frustrated when other doctors would not only not listen to me about my illness but would not even look at textbooks," he says. "I get even more frustrated when patients are abused and ill-treated. A doctor can stand up for himself, but a patient is vulnerable."        Mason's ultimate recovery and research to help others with chronic fatigue syndrome - or ME as it is known in its extreme form - involved 30,000 pounds of his own money and 6000 hours of study. He discovered a drug, used for cerebral circulation in the United States but only for a certain type of stroke in the UK, that improved his brain circulation. The dosage was minute but he combined this approach with naturopathic medicine. The amino-acid glutamine was helpful along with hefty doses of other nutrients dismissed as ineffectual over here by most medics.        Mason Brown, who trained at the universities of Edinburgh and Ohio state, and whose father before him was president of the Royal College of Surgeons in the Scottish capital, admits many of us would not be alive it is weren't for drugs and surgery. On the other hand, he is still convinced the real route to good health involves uniting body, mind, and spirit to find the right balance.        Mason Brown has now moved on from general practice. He still sees the odd private patient, but much of his work now is for the organisation called In Equilibrium which provides businesses and individuals with advice on coping with stress.        A particular area of interest for Mason Brown is medical hypnotherapy and autogenic training to elicit relaxation. After reading how patients could stem heavy blood loss under hypnosis and even undergo surgery, Mason Brown controlled his own high blood pressure without drugs. Indeed, he has seen spectacular results in his patients using hypnosis: "I helped a patient originally referred for terminal care with inoperable carcinoma of the head of the pancreas, diagnosed by biopsy, to get rid of the tumour within six weeks and live another 15 years. He died of heart failure at 85 with no recurrence of the tumour."        The huge impact of thought - positive and negative - on health also animates him. He quotes a study by academics from Harvard University of Tibetan monks in the Himalayas who used meditation to raise their body temperatures by 17 F.        A team under cardiologist Dr Herbert Benson trekked to the monastery at 1500ft to observe monks with icy sheets soaked in melted snow wrapped around their naked shoulders in a freezing-cold room. Within three minutes the sheets began to steam and eventually dried completely.        The exercise illustrated the power of the mind over the body - something further illustrated for Mason Brown by the Himalayan Hunza tribe. They still don't have the benefits of western medicine, but clean living, an organic, vegetarian diet, and glacial waters containing essential minerals mean most live to their upper nineties and some to 120.        Mason Brown is not, of course, alone among his colleagues and contemporaries in believing in an alternative approach to medicine. A survey in Doctor magazine found 80% of GPs believed homeopathy was effective, 21% of whom felt, in certain circumstances, it was more effective than conventional medicine. While in France some 2500 doctors practise dowsing and German physicians regularly reach for herbs instead of pharmaceuticals.        But Mason Brown is angry that so many medics still reject alternative approaches to illness. "It is an emotional and fear-driven rejection. It is like a religious dogma, the dogma of Newtonian science that does not understand quantum physics and sees the world as only physical. Limited beliefs limit the individual, organisation, or particular societies from moving forward."        Mason Brown feels part of the problem with existing medical care is that over-stretched doctors don't have the time to research new developments. If they don't understand a particular system he believes it is often easier for them to say "that cannot be" than to inquire about it.        Moreover, he is concerned that modern medicine remains a knee-jerk response to bodies already gone wrong. "The NHS is really the National Sickness Service," he says. "It is about treating symptoms rather than causes. Unfortunately, doctors are not trained to understand that even a bacterial infection is a secondary effect. Someone only becomes infected when their immune system cannot prevent infection, and all psychosomatic and long-term conditions such as heart disease and cancer are secondary conditions." He believes it is the duty of doctors to step in earlier. (c) 2003 The Herald www.thehearld.co.uk
End of Article ME-001

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The Last Word
Hello again        Before saying goodnight to ME-001 I would just like to end with a few positive observations about it - and perhaps scatter a few [hopefully fertile] thought seeds. First up, I deeply appreciated Dr Browns angry response to his own professions rejection of alternative approaches to medicine. He calls this rejection "emotional and fear driven". I also particularly appreciated it when he compared that rejection to "a religeous dogma, the dogma of Newtonian science that does not understand quantum physics...". Well said that man! I've been banging on about that for years here at Satori-5 and I can't tell you how gratifying it is to hear of a GP going public just recently saying pretty much the same thing. His sheer courage too in publically redefining our NHS as the National Sickness Service is worthy of our deepest thought and respect.        What you have to keep remembering folks is that health for us today means no staggering profits for the medical mafia tomorrow. Ask yourslef this: given such staggering [and seemingly everlasting] profits that are being made from illnesses of every kind what possible incentive can they possibly have to REALLY help us all to actually get well and healthy? And then stay well and healthy? A pure and altruistic love of humanity perhaps? Well, I don't know about you - but I am not even beginning to buy into that one. Call me Mr Cynical if you like but I reckon that "they" are in it, first and foremost, for the unbelievably vast and truly staggering amounts of money that are, as I have already said, to be so easilly made out of illnesses of all kinds.        Isn't it at least likely that this is the reason why "they" have the lions share of our dedicated medical professionals focus endlessly on treating mere symptoms - without ever even really looking for [let alone attempting to actually heal] the true causes of our illnesses? Thankfully, however, more and more medical professionals, like the enlightened Dr Brown above, are waking up to that shocking obscenity - and speaking out loud and clear about it. Medicine, science, and society need legions more like him. From such men [and women] as these will come a much truer science and a much truer medicine - and from the fruits of those will finally spring a truly healthy society. Dr David Mason Brown - Satori-5 salutes you.
Namaste

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