I am writing this blog having completed my report entitled “Nonlinear Systems Framework for Medical Research: Why Linear Thinking Fails Patients”, which is a technical report supporting a soon to be written policy report related to the same. Both reports are intending to be submitted to the UK Parliament Health and Social Care Committee and otherwise distributed. The technical report identifies that medicine is using a limited and out of date form of the scientific method and this is the reason why medicine cannot explain ME/CFS and a host of other common diseases. A detailed and novel explanation for epilepsy is provided in the report and from this an outline explanation for ME/CFS is given; ME/CFS being proposed as similar to epilepsy except confined to the noradrenaline system only. These are all summarised in this blog.
Also in this blog, cures for ME/CFS – including cures that worked for me – are proposed based on these explanations. I am sure those with ME/CFS will be reading this with some scepticism but I had ME/CFS since 2011 and now I do not. I can of course also explain why people may go into remission and then become unwell again because – and as you will see – recovery is a two-step process. Those who go into remission may complete the first step but fail to complete the second meaning they are far too easily susceptible to becoming unwell again.
So basically medicine is doing science wrong and their mistake relates to a lack of appreciation of nonlinear systems. This is the same mistake that nuclear safety engineering made historically and was the reason why the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island occurred (the worst nuclear accident in North America). This accident was a type of emergent failure mode, i.e. there was no direct failure rather the accident arose out of normal deviations in plant interacting adversely to cause an accident. The concept of ‘emergent failure modes’ is well-established in engineering but does not exist in medicine, which (wrongly) assumes all diseases arise out of some direct biological malfunction. A hypothetical example of an emergent failure mode is provided in the Johnny and Susie example below as illustration.
| EXAMPLE BOX 1 Emergent Failure Mode 1 Johnny and Susie go for a drive in freezing conditions to buy some sweets. Johnny travels at below the speed limit but hits black ice and starts to spin. He tries to correct repeatedly but keeps making the situation worse. The car spins off the road and hits a tree. Thankfully both Johnny and Susie are unhurt, if a little shaken. A police investigation finds nothing wrong with the car and nothing wrong with Johnny, either physically or psychologically. Cold does not cause accidents otherwise everyone would have an accident when they drove in the cold. The police therefore accepted the accident was not Johnny’s fault. |
Example Box 1 provides an example in the form of a person driving a car when ice is present. The accident occurred because Johnny interacted with his car, which interacted with the environment dynamically and adversely. The accident is a type of control system or feedback loop instability and occurred because of real-world limitations in responses and response times of Johnny and his car due to real-world physical constraints. There was no direct or identifiable failure that caused the accident, rather it emerged from the system, and is an example of an emergent failure mode occurring on a control system.
The mechanism for ME/CFS is therefore proposed to arise from an emergent failure mode in noradrenaline neurons in the form of two gene-protein control systems oscillating about each other as self-reinforcing oscillations. These oscillations are a type of control system instability and are well-understood and recognised in engineering but do not exist as pathologies in medicine. These systems oscillating cause havoc on neurobiological and other systems within the body. The constant abnormal motion of these systems combined with circadian rhythms is proposed to cause the neurological symptoms such as malaise, brain fog, neurological pain, and autonomic dysfunctions.
The body symptoms of ME/CFS are proposed to be caused by the oscillations on noradrenaline neurons causing oscillations on the body via an enzyme called Dopamine-β-Hydroxylase (DbH). This enzyme synthesises noradrenaline and the oscillations are proposed to cause an acquired DbH deficiency. DbH deficiency (hereditary) causes symptoms such as orthostatic intolerance, exercise intolerance, POTS, inflammation, asthma, and gastrointestinal dysfunctions. These are of course all potential symptoms of ME/CFS.
The noradrenaline system oscillates for various technical reasons but principally because noradrenaline neuron autoreceptor signalling has downregulated too far. Autoreceptors on neurons are analogous to the brakes on a car and prevent the system from overreacting. With autoreceptor signalling too low then the system can too easily become overwhelmed leading to the “triggering” of PEM (and later worsening of symptoms). Unfortunately signalling takes a very long time to recover and this is the reason why people might go into remission and then become unwell again because all they have done is stop the oscillations not recovered autoreceptor signalling.
The proposed cure for ME/CFS is therefore to stop the oscillations and then allow or encourage autoreceptor signalling to upregulate to normal.
Glitter Resist 