Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the Gut, 3

Continuing from my last blog:

Well, there are a number of illnesses that are easy victim to medical abuse. We have mentioned just two here, but it is an age-old tactic to use psychiatry/"insanity" to hide guilt in every social sphere.
In very general terms we can see this at work when we observe people in our everyday lives trying to refute accusations against them by suggesting that the person making the accusation is in some way mentally unstable. We have seen the phenomenon at work where a country wishes to prevent political opposition... in the old Soviet Union, for example, and we even see it at play in our own courts. In basic terms it`s the age old, "I am not guilty, so you must be mad to accuse me" ! It`s an easy dupe!

So why do people use it? Well, simple, if someone is guilty of something, and they can show that a witness to this fact is insane, this makes the witness non-credible. It`s the sort of device we saw in my blog where I examined victimhood: people who are weak, old, vulnerable and mentally ill lose their power because in their weakness they have become less credible.

A patient with M.E. who has a "psychiatric disorder" (diagnosed or hinted at) is instantly less of a guilt-threat to the medical profession because they are seen as suffering from a mental illness and are thereby diminished in status. Similarly, a child with a gut dysbiosis caused by vaccination, who is seen as needing psychiatric medication, also loses the rights they would assume as a patient with a physical health problem. If you are reading this and are thinking that it is too incredible to be true, I would ask you, please, to ask yourself this question: If there is a direct link between vaccinations and A.D.H.D, vaccinations-antibiotics and M.E., is it not just too coincidental that both find themselves within the province of psychiatry?

We see all around us examples of the people who are most likely to be victims and, as sure as night follows day, where there is greater weakness and greater guilt to be hidden, we see a greater use of psychiatry and psychiatric medication. In the U.K., G.Ps have been giving dumbing-down medication to hundreds of thousands of old people in Care Homes, just so that they could be kept quiet. And why? Yes, yes, we know the presented reason(!), to make it "easy for staff to manage people"(!), but the real underlying reason, I believe, is that old people, in their very vulnerableness, make people feel guilty. The fact that old people are generally treated so badly within the health service, adds to the guilt that staff carry and increases the psychological need for them and their group to use the chemical cosh. The compartmental conscience says, "they need to be medicated for their own good." In basic terms, when we abuse people, we want and need to see them as things that we need to suppress and control and in this guilt-shift device we get rid of our guilt. Make no mistake about this, old people in Care Homes receiving psychiatric medication has everything to do with shutting up the guilt of staff and little to do with caring.




More on this subject very soon...........

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the Gut, 1

Mainstream medicine is extremely unwilling to recognise M.E./Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as most often a gut condition. This begs the question, why? I come to this subject with experience of M.E. myself and a long struggle to find the cause of the symptoms. I contribute to forums and try to support friends who have this chronic illness...and have been delighted to see many people find ways to manage their illness and many to be near enough "cured" (please see notes below).

In this blog though, I want to think about both the causes of M.E. and the long-standing medical abuse of patients with this illness. I also, in my inimitable fashion (!), want to look at the psychological factors that place M.E. sufferers in a place somewhere between the legitimacy of a physical illness and the disrespect of a psychological one. Let`s ask what it really means to have a physical illness that is still in the dark ages of medical recognition and treatment, and why there should be a medical establishment blunt-headedness that prevents proper research into the real causes of M.E.
As usual, I am very much interested in how our social groups, with their inbuilt survival mechanisms, figure in the status, and consequent treatment, of an illness, and if it all sounds a bit too intellectual to be worth much to those who suffer, I would argue that it is only when we see the bigger picture can we understand and maybe, just maybe, influence the medical profession to change.Much of this will be in the second part of this blog.


Okay, so here goes:

Firstly, why should doctors be happy to shunt off people with M.E into a place where their symptoms aren`t recognised as a gut disorder? Well, funny things happen where there is guilt involved, and judging by just how many folks come down with M.E after taking a antibiotic, there is ample reason for doctors to avoid any attribution to gut issues. Still further, when one goes to one of an increasing number of physicians, usually outside the N.H.S., the question they ask is, "how many antibiotics have you taken?" The reason why many doctors believe that M.E. is a gut disorder, or more precisely, a gut dysbiosis, is that antibiotics can knock out the good flora in our guts, allowing the proliferation of harmful flora that take over, damage the gut lining and produce a whole range of symptoms from fatigue to allergies, to the neurological. In very simple terms, when a gut dysbiosis is caused, toxins are produced that leak out of a damaged gut wall into the bloodstream.

Of course antibiotic triggers for M.E. are direct cause and effect indicators of exactly what is underlying Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but the history of the patient, too, can make them at greater risk from antibiotic use.

You will notice, above, that I said that antibiotics can knock out good gut flora..Well,the reason that some people can go on taking antibiotics till the cows come home with no apparent ill effect, is that the consequence of taking this drug is dependent upon what sort of state our gut (and our general health) is in when we take it..... It`s rather like the case that most babies don`t get allergies or eczema or autism after vaccinations, most are fine, but an infant who has compromised gut flora at the time of vaccination is at greater risk. It is not really so arbitrary as we might imagine.

This latter example also bears relevance to what happens to some people`s health after taking antibiotics, namely that the symptoms they exhibit, in babies asthma, for example, is manifested damage to gut flora. Babies inherit flora from their parents, so a baby with good flora will be less susceptible to vaccinations compared to a baby who has not such good flora at the time of vaccination. But let`s also be aware that babies are future parents, who in their turn pass on their flora to their own children, and a baby with compromised flora will likely pass on that gut ecology to their offspring.
In the end, babies struggling with allergies or A.D.H.D. or any gut-related condition, will carry a less that adequate gut flora into their adulthood and will, therefore, be at greater risk from antibiotics than the greater population.

To be continued..........................

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N.B. For those of you with C.F.S., please check out the Specific Carbohydrate diet, S.C.D.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_Carbohydrate_Diet
www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/

and Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride`s treatment protocol.

Parents with concerns about A.D.H.D.or autism please see:

www.gutandpsychologysyndrome.com/

www.gapsdiet.com