Here's Why

Tuning The Brain by Jay Goldstein released

Dr Jay Goldstein of the Chronic Fatigue Sydrome Institute has finally released his new book on how to treat the illness.

The online extract has a very bleak, but accurate view of CFS treatment available in Australia:

"My patients from Australia described the medical environment for
CFS as a “vast wasteland,” although some progress was being made in
educating individual physicians."

"The situation in Australia is tragic. Many patients with CFS are derided
by their physicians, unlike in the United States, where they are treated by at
least a few establishment physicians with benign condescension. Because in
Australia few treatments are known, few are offered. Offices that provide vitamins,
colonics, and other holistic therapies are swamped as a result."

His description of his model of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome treatment is tantalizingly fascinating, because it seems to be an accurate description of my experience of "immediate neural reintegration" with Ventolin and Symbicort in January 2004.

"In CFS and related disorders the brain does not handle information properly. As a result, a
patient experiences sensations and cognitions that are not appropriate to his
or her stimulus environment. If the input is incorrect, so is the output (“garbage
in, garbage out”), and physiology regulated above the level of the
brainstem may be dysfunctional.

The corollary to this theorem, which is not as self-evident, is that the brain can be tuned to enhance the signal (salient information) and eliminate the noise (irrelevant stimuli), much like tuning a radio to hear the music and not the static. This process can often occur immediately
—some researchers use the word instantaneously, but I have been advised not to (yet)—with the proper intervention. A few papers in scientific journals are beginning to address this common phenomenon, such as
Marder E (1997), Computational dynamics in rhythmic neural circuits.
The Neuroscientist 3(5):295-302.
Nicolelis MAL (1997), Dynamic and distributed somatosensory representations
as the substrate for cortical and subcortical plasticity.
Seminars in Neuroscience 9:24-33.
Glanz J (1997), Mastering the nonlinear brain. Science 277:1758-
1760."

I'm very keen to review a copy, ASAP. My experiences with Ventolin and Symbicort lead me to believe that he's the researcher thats on to the solutions I need. The web page for the Institute is dead, so they're a little hard to contact. I've heard Dr Goldstein is no longer in clinical practice so I can't go and get help from him directly. The one Canadian doctor we were able to find will not take new patients, but is happy to advise other doctors.

I just need to find a specialist that will help me follow the treatment protocols. Time to rejoin the CFS support comminity.

About the author: Ian Woolf lives in Sydney, has a degree in Applied Science, worked as a solar astronomer, software engineer, systems programmer, webmaster, research assistant, Cisco CCNA tutor, Physics laboratory demonstrator, Computational Theory lecturer, and subject coordinator; while changing his career to freelance writing and broadcasting. Listen to Ian on the Diffusion radio science show on radio 2SER 107.3FM Monday at 6:30pm in Sydney or streaming audio on www.2ser.com, or listen to the Diffusion podcasts. You should follow me on twitter, here