{"id":16541,"date":"2018-05-11T09:47:47","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T09:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/?p=16541"},"modified":"2018-05-11T09:47:47","modified_gmt":"2018-05-11T09:47:47","slug":"cfs-treatment-should-be-withdrawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/cfs-treatment-should-be-withdrawn\/","title":{"rendered":"CFS treatment ‘should be withdrawn’"},"content":{"rendered":"

BBC newsbeat<\/strong> report, 8 May 2019: Chronic fatigue syndrome treatment ‘should be withdrawn’<\/a><\/h3>\n

A common treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome should be scrapped immediately, according to one of the UK’s leading experts in the illness.<\/p>\n

\"\"Dr Charles Shepherd says graded exercise therapy (GET) can actually be harmful to some people.<\/p>\n

He argues the idea of getting patients to do increasing amounts of exercise can lead to serious relapses.<\/p>\n

The long-term illness affects around 250,000 people in the UK. It’s more common in women and the NHS says it tends to develop between your mid-20s and mid-40s. It can develop in your teens.<\/p>\n

The effects can be totally devastating, leaving people bedbound for years. Despite its severity, the illness is still not well understood.<\/p>\n

As well as fatigue, it can affect your brain and digestion as well as leading to extreme allergies.<\/p>\n

Chronic fatigue: ‘Held hostage by ME’<\/a>
\nChronic fatigue trial results ‘not robust’, new study says<\/a><\/p>\n

At the moment, the health watchdog NICE is updating its guidelines for treatment in England.<\/p>\n

Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are all waiting to see what the recommendations are.<\/p>\n

Other health experts disagree and say GET is both proven and a safe method of treatment.<\/p>\n

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME.<\/p>\n

But they won’t be published until 2020 and Dr Shepherd – who’s the medical advisor to the ME Association – believes that’s too long to wait before GET is withdrawn.<\/p>\n

GET is a treatment that encourages patients to do increasing amounts of physical activity day by day, month by month. The idea is to get the person used to being active again.<\/p>\n

But Dr Shepherd argues it can actually do serious harm.<\/p>\n

“Some people’s muscles are not capable of doing this type of exercise programme,” he tells Newsbeat.<\/p>\n

“If they try and do too much physically, they make themselves more weak, more fatigued and can plunge themselves back into a relapse of all their symptoms.”<\/p>\n

Those relapses can last for months.<\/p>\n

In March this year, fresh questions were raised about the effectiveness of GET – after new analysis of the study that suggested it back in 2007.<\/p>\n

Dr Shepherd says the problem with GET is that it’s too rigid and pushes patients too far.<\/p>\n

“You can’t just exercise your way back to health.<\/p>\n

“If graded exercise was a drug treatment doing this much harm, it would be withdrawn. But because it’s a physical activity intervention, it seems to have a different status with NICE.”<\/p>\n

Read the full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BBC newsbeat report, 8 May 2019: Chronic fatigue syndrome treatment ‘should be withdrawn’ A common treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome should be scrapped immediately, according to one of the UK’s leading experts in the illness. Dr Charles Shepherd says graded … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[2396,239,10,481,303],"class_list":["post-16541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-bbc-newsbeat","tag-dr-charles-shepherd","tag-get","tag-graded-exercise-therapy","tag-nice-guidelines"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5qkYK-4iN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16542,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16541\/revisions\/16542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}