Estácio Ferreira Ramos M.D. CEO, Cytomica®, Inc. | CTO, Microbio.World® | Hematology-

If you search ME/CFS + the name of a developed country, and then others, you will find that nations with high HDI are dealing with a bizarre, chameleonic, epidemic and endemic disease, a debilitating, systemic, very serious condition in many cases, and associated to suicides – a disease that has an incredible and revealing history, and that is expanding in cities almost all over the world, especially in the West.

Although it is said that it is still not enough, there are initiatives in these countries by numerous foundations, NGOs, universities, health systems, social movements, professionals, clinics and laboratories, patient associations, and company programs, aimed at raising awareness, funding, and combating the disease. Recently ME/CFS was discussed in the German parliament, and yesterday I read that it will be part of the UK medical curriculum. Fantastic. I have been studying the disease for 18 years.

The Netherlands, Belgium, and the Scandinavian countries are also especially victimized by ME/CFS and similarly develop medical education, awareness, treatment, and prevention programs. In the highly evolved and cold Iceland, where epidemic outbreaks occurred, the disease was so prevalent that it acquired local names: neuromyasthenia, Akureyri’s disease, and later Iceland disease. In the United States, in 2008, ME/CFS was considered by the CDC as the most concerning public health problem in the country. In Canada, the prevalence is as high or greater than in the USA.

These are characteristics common to countries with a lot of ME/CFS, a high HDI, an abundance of industrialized (sterilized) food; and perhaps, very cold winters. In Oceania and Japan, the prevalence appears to be somewhat lower.

A map of ME/CFS epidemics published by Donald Acheson in 1959 already showed target countries; these have changed little, but the number of patients has exploded.

The maps in Chapter 15 of Pandemics Entangled© also lay bare this epidemiological aberration, and the website of the American Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Society brings another outdated world map of ME/CFS that confirms what this text describes: ME/CFS is a disease of rich countries.

However, in developing nations the ME/CFS story is different. Let us see.

Search now ME/CFS + the name of a tropical developing country: you find nothing or almost nothing. In these countries, the disease is practically unknown, because, in fact, the number of people affected is relatively much smaller. But not just for that.

These numbers are repeated throughout Latin America, and most of Asia: ME/CFS in these regions is almost non-existent. In African nations, the prevalence is very low, with two exceptions: South Africa (where there is a high HDI and cold winters), and Nigeria, whose high prevalence of ME/CFS is attributed to endemic malaria; but which in my opinion is due more to the excessive or preventive use of antibiotics, due to the large number of infections of the water cycle.

Let’s consider Brazil, a continental country, with 215 million inhabitants, large metropolises, 546 thousand doctors, powerful advanced medicine, hospitals among the best on the planet, a gigantic public and universal health system, legal telemedicine, and 357 medical schools – the largest number of medical schools in the world. However, searching today (June 24, 2023) on Google using Chrome: ME/CFS + Brasil; I found only one paper from 2010 that mentions CFS, nothing else. No publication in the last thirteen years even mentions the acronym ME/CFS.

Using Microsoft’s Bing, I found only a brief discussion on a Forum (February 2021) outside of Brazil Brazil: ME/CFS in Brazil | Phoenix Rising ME/CFS Forums, which reported on the lack of awareness of the disease in the country; and revealed the launch of the country’s first website about the condition.

I participate in some groups of doctors; among 800 professionals, only six knew about the disease; two of them have the condition.

And why does this happen?

I understand there are four reasons:

1) The country’s medical culture ignores the existence of ME/CFS, setting up a classic example by Claude Bernard: the doctor does not know what he is looking for, and does not value what he finds;

2) many patients with ME/CFS are labeled as having fibromyalgia, and many others remain undiagnosed;

3) because there is much less disease; restricted to classes A|B, almost three women for every man; and …

4) due to prejudice from health professionals; resulting from lack of knowledge and the unresolved problem that each patient brings or represents; and that closes the vicious circle. Just to cite one example, months ago, a renowned cardiologist colleague confessed to me among friends and other colleagues: “I hate it when the patient says he has fibromyalgia! ”… And he added: “If I could avoid it, I wouldn’t even evaluate the patient.”

So it is. For fifteen years, in order to better identify and investigate 70 patients with ME/CFS, I had to see 201 patients whose main diagnosis was fibromyalgia; another 39 were diagnosed with Lyme, viral fatigue, chronic EBV, psychosis, etc. Only 20 had the initial diagnosis of ME/CFS, formulated by me.

ME/CFS is a disease of rich countries, yes; but not only of those. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that the number of ME/CFS victims in Brazil and other developing countries is negligible; in the most privileged parts of these countries thousands live under a high HDI; and similarly develop the condition and fill the most luxurious offices and the relatively new pain clinics.

Importantly, in early 2020, long before the coexistence of ME/CFS and Covid complications now known as Covid Longa was described, I foresaw what are now facts: that the incidence of ME/CFS would explode in the post-Covid world, and that sequelae or late effects of the coronavirus would add to, or confound with ME/CFS – that the pandemics would entangle.

Therefore, in mid-2020 I changed the title of the work to Outbreak 64®, and then created the new page on LinkedIn, starting Pandemics Entangled© the only editorial project on the platform, where I published the Foreword, and then the first chapters of a now completed book.

The results of the research, the experience with the patients, and data from the literature make it necessary to recognize that the fundamental etiogenic factor for ME/CFS is the hostile environmental disturbance that leads to the breakdown of the greater symbiosis; understanding the greater symbiosis as the complex and vital relationship that we need to maintain with the microbial world, and which, when broken, imposes burdens on homeostasis and leads to the state of disease.

There are many examples of our dependence on flora. Doctors are aware of the bleeding problem that stems from antibiotics. These drugs reduce the population of bacteria in the intestine that produce vitamin K, which is needed for clotting proteins. Without these bacteria, without this vitamin, we can bleed.

By way of illustration, in an elegant post by Elena Panzeri, the infographic below reveals 35 metabolites of the microbiome that participate in the development, function, and integrity of the human brain.

The list is another example of the vital principles that are provided by the microscopic creatures that surround us and that we carry along with us; whose scarcity, imbalance, or anomalous interaction in an inhospitable environment, leads to what we know as ME/CFS. It makes sense to assume that the same is true for all other organs and systems.

The paradox of a so-called incurable disease, which has a rate of 4% to 8% of spontaneous cures reinforces this conviction. These healings occur by re-establishing the great symbiosis – casual, deliberate, or professionally oriented.

Today I read an article in which the author advocates the need for caution in attempts to restore the microbiome in ME/CFS patients, with which I wholeheartedly agree; it is difficult. But I don’t agree with the viral illness that she advocates as the cause of illness.

The cause is the deprivation and destruction of beneficial microorganisms in the surroundings and in the lives of those affected. In other words, the cause is the victory of civilization in the stupid war imposed on the microorganisms on which we depend for life and health. Due to fear of infections, we resolved that we should destroy them all around us, malefic and benefic, in every way. The result is ME/CFS. Just do not see it who refuses to see.

I have already posted repeatedly here that, once installed, the ME/CFS is a heavy transatlantic that left its course carried away by a strong current; correcting its course is usually a slow, tiring, painful process.

What I call an antibiotic environment is an environment hostile to the microbiome of urban life, with a high standard of sanitation, excessive hygiene, chlorinated and fluoridated water, and reduced social contact. The antibiotic environment is in hospitals and in the lives of health professionals; it can start with surgical, aseptic birth, and expand into the lives of solitary people, small families, apartments without animals and plants; and in detergents and antiseptics in all their forms; in the excessive use of antibiotics and antifungals, deodorants, alcohol gel, mouthwashes; it is in fast food, and in sterile foods, mainly industrially processed ones, in the additives and agrochemicals added to those; in pasteurization, in UHT, in irradiated foods, in preserves, in canned goods.

There is an enormous amount of chemical and antibacterial substances in industrialized foods, and it is legitimate to believe that they damage our flora.

In human food, this friendly, green, ECO logo, with a natural, organic look, is the radura logo. It signals that your food has been irradiated.

Irradiation is the pasteurization of the 21st century.

Radiation does not remain in the product and theoretically irradiated food is not harmful; but the good it does is limited; it roasts the DNA of any form of life, it kills all fungi and bacteria; extends the validity and duration of products. Dairy products lose life (fermenters die), are plasticized, and get chemical flavorings for flavor; and the banana in the plastic wrapper lasts over a month on the shelf.

It is relevant information that ME/CFS does not exist in simple people, nor in the rural environment in Brazil.

The opposite of ME/CFS is life in the countryside, it’s in full houses, with real food, made by hands, with fresh ingredients. It is in the water of the rivers, in the garden and in the garden, in bare feet, in unprotected sex, on the beach, in craft beer, in wine, in domestic animals, in fresh milk, and in food fermented at home.

I have examples and testimonies of people who have been healed by lifestyle changes. The adoption of a probiotic lifestyle, which includes the consumption of various natural probiotics, gradually improves the clinical picture.

There is a video of the end of the pandemic, in which the famous Brazilian actor Lima Duarte recounts his childhood in which he would wake up with his father at dawn, to take the calf to the cow and be able to milk it. He says that it is the cow’s love for her calf that makes her release her milk; and prophesies that other pandemics will come because we are living wrong – that the cow’s love is missing in the milk from mechanical milking. And what is more serious, I add: cow and calf microbiomes are also missing, my dear.

ME/CFS is the apple of the eye of anyone who sells diagnoses and treatments, finances or carries out research, creates products, information, and technology to treat the symptoms of a so-called never-ending disease, which causes so much suffering – and which is also a vast and fertile ground for all kinds of quackery.

To avoid conflict of interest, all medical research work was pro bono. All patients were returned to the colleagues who referred them.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mecfs-pandemic-wealthy-est%C3%A1cio-ferreira-ramos-m-d-/