Friends and Family, I watched the following ME/CFS Alert videos today and I highly recommend them for anyone who is interested in learning or understanding more about this disease. They are only about 10 minutes long.

The first video is an interview with Dr. Staci Stevens, exercise physiologist at the Workwell Foundation (formerly the Pacific Fatigue Lab). She explains post-exertional malaise ~ in my opinion, the number one most debilitating and cruel symptom of this disease ~ from a clinician’s point of view. Here is an article by Cort Johnson about Dr. Stevens’s protocol, which uses empirical testing to establish the (very low) anaerobic thresholds of ME patients. Cort says, “So emerged the ‘Stevens Protocol’ – the  only test that actually documents post-exertional  fatigue, and documents it so well that failing the test is virtually a slam-dunk for a disability evaluation.”

This interview with Dr. Kenny de Merlier, an ME/CFS expert from Belgium, is very interesting (it is listed as Episode 42, but when the video actually starts playing, it says Episode 41, fyi). Dr. de Merlier believes that in every case of ME, an infectious disease triggers an autoimmune response. I, for one, have great faith in his knowledge and the work he does. Again, I encourage everyone to watch this interview (and Episode 43, which is also with Dr. de Merlier) to get a better understanding of this baffling illness from a clinician’s viewpoint.

Here is an interview with Dr. Dan Peterson, one of the world’s foremost experts in ME/CFS. Dr. Peterson has been seeing patients for 25 years and now heads Simmeron Research in Incline Village, Nevada. The depressing reality here is he says, in his 25-year career, he has never seen a full and total recovery, he doubts he will ever see a cure, and getting governmental monetary funding or political support for Ampligen research/treatment has been “an exercise in futility” (also, he says many of his patients have developed lymphoma, which in itself is scary).

While you’re at it, you might as well watch this video interview with a patient of Dr. Peterson. She has been sick for 25 years and is now on Ampligen.

Thanks for taking the time to educate yourselves.