Hi Dan,
Thank you for these recovery stories. Following a particularly stressful period I was diagnosed about 5 years ago with ME with various symptoms e.g. overwhelming tiredness, severe head pain, anxiety, fear of life, light and sound sensitivity. This led to a massive loss of confidence and my need to end my work of 18 years as a counsellor. I see myself on a ‘healing journey’ and have been helped along the way by The Optimum Health Clinic and Ashok Gupta. I applaud both of them, and with their help I have achieved 70 – 80% recovery. In addition I have read and used ACT therapy which is a mindfulness based therapy where one notices and ‘unhooks’ from negative thinking and behaviour patterns in a similar way to the ‘stop’ technique of OHC and Gupta. The thing I take away from Jenny’s story is her commitment. Setting time aside each day to do the specific practice of meditation and positive visualisation, particularly advised in Ashok Gupta’s programme. I believe these underpin the ability to have that awareness and attitude ‘in the moment’ as the day unfolds particularly if difficult moments arise. I also liked Jenny’s conviction that she is equipped now and need not fear any of life’s events that will inevitably occur. Well done Jenny! you have inspired me to commit to full recovery.
Barbara

Dan, thanks for keeping these great stories coming! They’ve really helped to turn me around. It is definitely telling how many similar elements everyone’s stories of getting sick have. I got sick after my second year of medical school when I had a number of major psychological and athletic stresses going (on top of the notable stress of school itself!) when I got a respiratory infection followed by fatigue that wouldn’t quit. The rest of my symptoms came on in fits and starts, ending with me having to leave school halfway through third year. I am a born skeptic, and I am ashamed to say I think I would have graduated and become one of the doctors who have a dismissive attitude towards CFS, had I not got sick.

I enjoyed your book as a study in the physiology of CFS, and it started me down the right path of meditation and dietary changes, from which I gained some mild benefit. But the most important and hardest part is addressing the ANS dysfunction you talk about. After seeing this particular recovery story I looked into the Gupta program and I really connected with his take on CFS, so I bought the DVDs. His program is such a complete attack on the ANS dysfunction, I love it. Within the first week of using only his Soften and Flow technique (essentially meditating with symptoms themselves as the focus) I felt a big jump in energy and the flulike sensations were almost completely gone. In 2 years of being sick before this, I had found many things which made me sicker (everything it seemed like) but nothing which made me less sick. As someone who had previously been enraged at suggestions that my thoughts and feelings impacted my illness, this was eye-opening. The main pathology in CFS is in the brain, and you can modify it yourself! I have a lot of work to do, but now I am getting healthier all the time (in fits and starts of course, the dips are part of the healing process).

To end my ramblings I just wanted to leave this comment to thank Dan for his work that started me down the right path, and to suggest to others that heeding Dan’s guidelines in the books are great, but to see the best results in my opinion you need to focus on that ANS dysfunction with additional tools! The Gupta program was a great tool for me.