This is an opinion piece with a little attitude.
A reader forwarded me a link to the latest newsflash from Simmaron Research , with the comment “His findings validate your approach. ”
He asked me to go thru and give my perspective on their findings. IMHO, they do good work, just slow and perhaps barking up the wrong tree often because they are following their research interests.
- “Lipkin may have uncovered more potential subsets than any other researcher and has long emphasized the need to break ME/CFS up into its constituent parts.”
- For paid-researchers, that may be true — but for citizen-scientists, like this blogger, we has been making that point for years. — bacteria drives symptoms… and there are massive number of bacteria variations.
- “The large 2017 Nagy-Szakal/Lipkin gut study was notable for it’s size (n=100) and it’s breadth – it included patients from no less than six ME/CFS practitioners including Dr. Peterson.”
- OUCH — you are measuring CFS patients whose microbiome has been tuned by likely similar supplements and therapies….
- “That analysis suggested that the guts of the ME/CFS patients with and without IBS featured significantly different bacteria.”…
- Say, everyone of my readers can likely do the same using the Symptoms to Bacteria Explorer. or use the data sets at http://lassesen.com/ubiome
- “The group suggested that their findings, if validated, could present some possible treatment options. They included using SMAse blockers to reduce ceramide levels and giving carnitine supplementation to increase the low levels of metabolites in the choline-carnitine pathway. ”
- Tears — instead of addressing the gut dysfunction – the probable root cause, toss drugs at it!
- “His metabolomic study found signs of energy production problems in all ME/CFS patients, but when Lipkin separated out the ME/CFS + IBS patients, he found altered, even at times opposite metabolic findings that could suggest a different source of fatigue was present in the ME/CFS + IBS patients. His earlier study suggested more severe energy production problems may be present in ME/CFS patients with IBS.”
Wait — what is the source of this fatigue?
IMHO, the results of the majority of SPECT scans show hypoperfusion… that is poor oxygen deliver to the brain. When a person becomes active (physically or mentally), their brain will consume more oxygen — likely more than can be delivered…. so what happens after a short while — oxygen levels drops well below functioning levels, hypoxia like symptoms appear, etc. Tissue reserves of oxygen are released and consumed.
The person is totally exhausted of oxygen -the mind is not capable of dealing with mental tasks or controlling the body. With low delivery, it takes time for the oxygen level to return to normal — both circulating and reserve oxygen must be replaced. This is the infamous payback for overdoing things!
IMHO, “energy production problems” is a major red-herring.
CFS Remission 