Where did Dwarf Wench vanish to?

It's been years since I posted here last. For that, I make no apologies, only explanations. I decided to take my health into my own hands as the doctors were not able to give me any answers or treatments that were helping. I discovered Dr Sarah Myhill who has been working hard to advocate for ME/CFS patients in the UK and to find answers and more importantly help for them. In return, she has earned the enmity of the medical community in this country and there has been at least one attempt to stop her practising medicine. However, she seems to be one of the closest people to finding answers. I'll include a link to her site at the end of this article, so going into great detail on all her theories and inferences seems a bit pointless - if you want to read them you are better off reading them in her own words. However, the help I have taken from her site is immense, and I had to make focusing on getting well my priority.

It's amazing how much difference can be made to some illnesses by changing diet. I've rarely had any sort of bad reaction to food at all aside from a few that I didn't much care for the taste of. When I read Dr Myhill's theories about curing a lot of ME/CFS symptoms with diet and supplements I was more than a little sceptical. However, I couldn't say that it was a pointless effort until I'd tried it for a few months and could prove that it made no difference to me. I can be terribly stubborn at times, but I just can't argue against something if I haven't actually tried it. So, following Dr Myhill's suggestions laid out on her site, I switched to a Paleo diet and supplemented that with a daily multivitamin, lots of vitamin C and fish oils. There was also a mix of minerals to be added to water to help it be absorbed into the body as people with ME/CFS struggle to absorb nutrients as many of us suffer from digestive issues as well.

Within 3 months I was shocked to find it was helping. I have to say at this point that this isn't curing ME/CFS. However, it is helping to minimise a lot of my symptoms. After a few years now of working on this, I have more energy, I can think straight (brain fog is pretty much eliminated) and I am able to do things again. I have been able to slowly regain strength to my muscles and can now even walk short distances unassisted. I can join in conversations with many people in the room without exhausting myself immediately, so I am able to go along to family social gatherings again. Last year I managed to go to a funfair for an hour and even join in on a fairground ride for the first time in more than a decade.

My amazing friend who was just as surprised as I was when I managed this!

I say that it isn't curing the ME/CFS because if I get a virus or if I misjudge things and do too much then I still crash and find myself exhausted and slow to recover. These times all the brain fog and pain comes rolling back in and I struggle miserably to do anything but lie there and berate myself. But I am able to participate in life again (albeit carefully) and to start to do things like small amounts of housework or short trips to the local shop to pick up something we may have run out of to enable our lives to run smoother. Mr Wench barely has to worry about me at all now and has had no real need to consider himself a carer in at least a year. The first time I noticed him walking up the stairs ahead of me without hovering behind me in case I fell when my muscles gave out was amazing!

Dr Myhill recently changed some of her recommendations based on newer findings in her research and is now recommending a paleo-ketogenic diet, so I will soon be trying to see if I can make that switch too. I'm not going to lie, the food restrictions are annoying, inconvenient and sometimes miserable (I really miss my sugar) but for me at least, they are working. With there being so many versions of ME/CFS out there, I know this won't work for everyone. Some people will also decide that the things they would need to give up are too important to them to try. That's acceptable too. But if you are stuck for answers and reaching your breaking point, it couldn't hurt to try it for a few months and see if it helps. You have to do it properly with no cheating or the stuff that causes the issues doesn't get out of your system long enough to show improvements, but you'll know in a couple of months if you do it properly whether it would change anything for you. Given all the really expensive treatments out there professing to cure ME/CFS that usually don't work for most people, a simple diet change for a couple of months seems a small thing to do really. If it doesn't help you, you won't have lost anything really. I, however, just hold on to the image of my doctor's face when I returned to see her after six months of these changes (she didn't believe they would make any difference) and I was able to walk into her office leaning on Mr Wench's arm rather than being in the wheelchair.

Dr Myhill's site