*permission to repost*
Zoltan Rona M.D. recently released a book called: Vitamin D: The Sunshine
Vitamin.
This is an excerpt of my review of the book, reproduced for the benefit of
anyone supporting and promoting the use of the Marshall Protocol for M.E.
(or any disease):
'The best part of this book, for me, was his two page section talking about
the unscientific nature of the 'Marshall Protocol.'
Zoltan Rona M.D. writes, 'I have witnessed a lot of crazy treatments over the past 30 years, but none are as abusive as the Marshall Protocol. This protocol is not only illogical but also downright dangerous. At best, it can be labelled as a pretence of scientific thought.'
Rona goes on to talk about the fact that 'Dr' Marshall is in fact NOT a
medical doctor, but is an electrical engineer! He explains that the
protocol, which promotes attaining very, very low vitamin D levels and
taking antibiotic drugs long-term, is
'damaging to one's health and can lead to death.'
He advises anyone that is currently following this dangerous and illogical
protocol to 'get off it immediately.'
The Marshall Protocol has given so many very ill patients false hope and
left them even sicker than when they began it, and also risked their lives.
So three cheers to Rona for including some serious warnings about it in his
book. I hope so much they will be heeded by those following the protocol and
those aggressively promoting it to others.This pseudo-scientific 'treatment'
has caused ENOUGH harm.'
Read the full review here:
http://www.hfme.org/booksonhealthvitamins.htm Read more about vitamin D and M.E., here:
http://www.hfme.org/researchvitamindandme.htm Read more warnings from HFME (and others) about the Marshall Protocol in the
'Treating M.E.' paper:
http://www.hfme.org/treatingmethebasics.htm Best wishes everyone,
Jodi Bassett
--
The Hummingbirds' Foundation
for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis:
www.hfme.org --
We estimate that vitamin D deficiency is the most common medical condition
in the world. Dr Michael F. Holick, Vitamin D expert.
Vitamin D is cholecalciferol, a hormone. Deficiencies of hormones can have catastrophic consequences. Dr William Davis, cardiologist.Vitamin D deficiency is an unrecognized, emerging cardiovascular risk
factor, which should be screened for and treated. Vitamin D is easy to
assess, and supplementation is simple, safe, and inexpensive. James H.
O'Keefe MD, cardiologist and Director of Preventive Cardiology, Mid America
Heart Institute, Kansas City, Missouri.
* * *
And therein lies the problem with many CFS "treatments" -- they're conceived by people who don't know what they're doing and can be dangerous, if not fatal.
There's some concern that the "Lightning Process" being offered in the UK is little more than hypnosis. Convince the patient she's not really sick, and ... well, we all know the consequences of ignoring our body's signals and overdoing.
I once did it intentionally. A doctor had been urging me to exercise my way to health, which I knew was bad advice, but I also knew that he was not going to take my word for it, that I was going to have to prove it in the here and now, not "when I tried that 15 years ago". So I waited till I felt half-decent, and followed to the letter doctor's orders to take a walk every day, no matter how bad I felt. Every day I felt worse. By the end of the first week, I couldn't even get out of bed. And documented that instead of making me feel better, as he assured me it would, each day of overdoing cost me even more physically than the day before.
Because the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way of differentiating between depression and CFS is to send the patient out to exercise. A depressive will return energized, enough to start cleaning the house; the PWC will return exhausted and collapse into bed.
I saw this in my own home. A friend who had alternate Fridays off would take my depressed spouse out for a long walk or a bike ride or something, and Spouse would return chipper and ready to do something productive. It was suggested that I take Spouse out for a long walk every night after dinner. Ha! By the time I had walked the mile home from the bus stop after work, it was all I could do to make it to a chair. But without a companion, Spouse wouldn't budge off the couch where he'd spent the day watching TV. (And, no, he saw no reason to walk to the bus stop to walk home with me; I was a big girl, and I didn't need him to safely walk me home. He would not get off the couch unless someone physically dragged him, and if I was a mile away at the bus stop, I wasn't at home to pull him up and out the door.)
I could go on at great length describing the differences between what he has (depression) and what I have (CFS), all those things that the average PCP doesn't know about, and therefore conflates the two diseases. Anyone who's seen them both up close knows they're not the same. Everyone else hears "fatigue" and assumes they are the same, thus prescribes the same treatments for CFS as for depression, which are detrimental to CFS patients who absolutely positively should not do aerobic exercise, nor "push through the pain".
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