Modern Maladies

The medical profession has scored some astonishing successes in the last 150 years with the eradication of many deadly diseases, and advances in treatments which save lives everyday - one of the main things, of course, was hygiene and especially hand washing, but I don't want to be too cynical about that because I'd be dead without it.

However alongside this amazing success in treating pathogenic or physically-traumatic problems they have been abject failures to treat the so-called modern maladies: depression, anxiety, psychosis, chronic fatigue/ME, and my own malady fibromyalgia. Many more 'syndromes' which are simply poorly understood vaguely defined collections of apparently unrelated symptoms have been named. About the medical profession's ability to deal with these I think we should be profoundly sceptical and even cynical. They are floundering. Part of the problem is that doctors have become enmeshed in the net of big pharma and often seem unable to think beyond the possibilities of offering some drug or other. Not only are the drugs for modern maladies frequently entirely ineffective at treating the malady, they cause side-effects which themselves can be debilitating and must often be treated with more drugs. At best we get some little relief from our symptoms that outweighs the short-term side-effects, but often the long-term side-effects are more serious (like kidney damage for me)

If you suffer from chronic fatigue, from fibromyalgia or even chronic anxiety or depression then I would recommend taking a look at the website of Ashok Gupta - a medical researcher, not a new-age snake oil seller. He has some very interesting insights into our problems, having suffered and recovered chronic-fatigue himself. I'd recommend signing up for his free introductory video series and taking an hour to watch the first series. If you don't think it's useful after that then you haven't lost anything.

Personally he had me weeping copiously to hear my difficulties described in such accurate detail, but for the first time accompanied by a rational explanation based on solid research. He offers a non-drug program of treatment which is not free, but it is something you can do yourself at home if you buy the DVD. I haven't started it yet, but his insight into the problem has given me more hope than years of doctors, drugs and psychotherapy and I'm excited about getting started on it.

Perhaps there is hope of a normal life after all. I'd given up.