Chronic Fatigue Unmasked 2000
Foreword
IN the last ten years many changes have occurred in the nature of the of the public perception of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). There has even been a certain degree of movement in the medical community itself, but most of this has been among a few physicians who have taken the time to really attempt to understand the nature of this condition and not, as the vast majority of their fellow practitioners do, attempt to squeeze CFS patients into a known condition that can be treated by tried and true drug therapy.
Whereas six years ago most CFS patients were still considered to be malingering or just downright lazy by most physicians, they are now looked upon as "depressed" and placed on a variety of antidepressants. The use of antidepressants in CFS is like the use of nsaids in arthritis. They treat the symptoms but do nothing to correct the real cause of the condition.
At least in the past doctors did little to interfere with the course of CFS, and the patient was free to seek a realistic cure, but now with the antidepressant therapy, the patient may be soothed in believing that he is being adequately treated and not seek physiological help before the condition has reached a very advanced stage. It is somewhat ironic to consider that this is an exact reflection of usual complaint of my colleagues that the alternative therapist is preventing the patient from receiving the correct treatment for various conditions as given by orthodox practitioners. Thank goodness that there are medical men like Drs. David S. Bell, Paul R. Cheny and Charles W. Lapp who do understand CFS and know that it is not just another form of depression.
At a recent seminar at which both Drs. Bell and Lapp lectured, it was obvious from the audience reaction that most of the physicians attending attempted to fit CFS into paradigms they already understood rather than were willing to gain an understanding of a new paradigm. One physician at this seminar, apparently a psychiatrist, attempted to assure the audience that all youths with CFS were in reality sexually abused as young children. Dr. Bell, who has made the most complete study of children and CFS to date, let him know in no uncertain terms that in his extensive fifteen-year study he found no child abuse in any of his young patients.
This reticence of the medical establishment to accept the true nature of CFS is understandable if we take into consideration a few salient factors:
1. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome defies the present state of medical laboratory testing. All the known tests can be run on CFS patients and most of them are normal. That is not to say that there are not tests (see the ASI test in the body of this book) that can not only diagnose CFS but also tell us the exact stage the CFS patient is in and the correct required treatment, but with rare exceptions, these definitive CFS tests are not known to the rank and file medical practitioner.
2. The proper care of CFS reverses the present trend toward hands-off treatment of the patient. CFS cannot be successfully treated at this time by "scientific" methods. CFS, more than any other common condition, requires that the physician practice the "Art" of medicine as well as the science. This is such a departure for the modern physician that it is almost impossible for him to shift gears to put himself into this mode of operation. This lack of the Art of medicine is one of the major reasons for the next factor, which is:
3. Frustration. At the end of the seminar mentioned above, the doctors were asked to express their feelings regarding CFS. The nearly universal reply was one word-frustration. The reason for this is simple and understandable. CFS is all too often the result of modern medical treatment of individuals susceptible to the condition. The more these patients are given regular drug treatment, the worse they eventually become. It is not hard to see that frustration would develop in a doctor when everything he attempts to do to help his patient seems to make the patient worse. But that is the nature of CFS, and no doctor can really help a patient with this condition if he is not aware of this fact and does not adjust his treatment accordingly.
4. As alluded to in (3), there is much evidence to support the contention that some of the methods used by the orthodox medical profession have been among the major underlying causes of CFS in those susceptible to this condition. These methods include such things as the use of multiple vaccines in children, the overuse of antibiotics in all ages, the explosion of designer pharmaceuticals (that is, drugs based on chemical structures wholly alien to both our bodies and to Nature) and the mistreatment of CFS in the early readily treated stages.
I wish I could be as optimistic about the future of the medical community and CFS as was my counterpart in the 1993 Foreword of this book, but as a medical physician myself I know how hard it is to move the profession as a whole to a position that does not agree with its present practices. We all have heard of the treatment given Dr. Semmelweis when he attempted to have his collegues wash their hands between operations. They drove him insane before they finally accepted his rather obvious suggestion.
If it took so much time and effort to move the medical community to such a simple and nonthreatening change, we can only imagine how long it will take to entice them to give up some of their well-established and lucrative practices just to help prevent and cure CFS. We, who have followed this condition with a knowledge of Dr. Poesnecker's diagnostic and treatment methods, have seen it grow from a few isolated cases into a true epidemic. In the early years these patients were relatively easy to treat, but as the condition has progressed it has become more and more serious. Dr. Poesnecker's explanation of this is that the various man-made stresses on all mankind are continuing to increase day by day, and as they increase they are able to overwhelm the immune threshold of tolerance of more and more individuals, who then begin the CFS pattern. Those individuals who were already affected advance deeper into the condition and become increasingly difficult to return to normal.
While there are good efforts going on all over the world to treat CFS, I know of none that are as advanced as the efforts of Dr. Poesnecker. His methods are rather unusual when compared with the orthodox; but then, so is CFS. He has not only developed a successful treatment for CFS, but he has actually developed an entire new paradigm of medical protocol. It is unusual, but very effective. I am reminded of the comments the conductor George Szell made about the pianist Glen Gould when he first heard him sing along as he played Bach, "This man is a nut!" After he had listened a little longer, he added, "Ah, but this nut is also a genius."
Harold E. Buttram, M.D.
August 1998