A response to Paul Garner’s recovery
Recently, professor at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Paul Gardner, wrote an article which has been quite controversial in the COVID Long-Hauler community.
SUMMARY OF THE GARNER’S ARTICLE
I will breafly summarize what I think is relevant from the article. However, I recommend people reading it by themselves to get their own reaction rather than just what I am highlight (click here for the article). If you have read the article already, feel free to jump to the next section “My thoughts”.
Professor Garner initially describes his horrible experience with post-COVID symptomatology.
“I had a foggy head, acutely painful calf, upset stomach, tinnitus, aching all over, breathlessness, dizziness, arthritis in my hands, weird sensation in my skin…”
He later describes how he implemented pacing in his life. However, also mentions that he was later connected with a PhD candidate from Norway who asked him a question:
“I was asked, “are you open to the idea that you can have an impact on your symptoms with your conscious mind?” I thought back to an earlier experience in my 30s with being able regulate my tinnitus after quinine, and said yes, straight away.”
According to Professor Garner, this “opened the door” that led to his recovery. He mentions that he stopped monitoring his symptoms and stopped participating on discussions and reading by quitting Facebook groups with other patients.
“I learnt that I could change the symptoms I was experiencing with my brain, by retraining the bodily reactions with my conscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviour.”
Interestingly enough, later he mentions that on a holiday he acquired dengue fever, which while it got him ill, he was able to recover from the post-viral symptomatology as he knew what to do this time.
MY THOUGHTS
First of all, I am extremely happy that Professor Garner is feeling recovered. Certainly I don’t wish Long-Covid on anyone as I have lived this hell on my own skin.
However, I will be direct here. I think this article is potential extremely dangerous for the rest of Long-Haulers. The article is also extremely vague and can lead to different interpretations.
First, being positive and not spamming your system with negativity is obviously something that can help. Even in cancer, according to Cancer Research UK, “people with cancer are often encouraged to be positive”. Surely, as they state, positivity may help you cope with cancer, but you would never tell a cancer patient that if they stop monitoring their symptoms, stopped feeding themselves with negative comments about cancer, etc, that their cancer would disappear, it would be an insult.
Of course, cancer is a physical condition that produces organic damage. However, my interpretation from the text is that Professor Garner does not consider his previous condition as being “physically ill”. I don’t think he literally says this about post-COVID, but when his post-viral symptoms arise again from dengue fever he mentions: “I now knew that I wasn’t physically ill, and with some friendly reminders I knew what to do”.
So, if Professor Garner does not consider his condition as “being physically ill”, I will assume that he means that he is siding with the “it’s all in the head” slogan. I might be wrong with this assumption, but I can’t come up with another possible explanation, I wish this was clarified. At the end of the article he mentions “I write this to my fellow covid-19 long haulers whose tissues have healed”.
Anyway, now the issue is, if my interpretation (and the one of many) is correct, Professor Garner is committing the same sin the medical community has committed for decades on ME/CSF patients. By assuming that nothing is physically wrong with these people and sending them to a psychiatrist to be treated for depression. If long-haulers or ME/CSF patients have or not physical damage is something that nobody knows, as we still require a lot of research in the field. The research by Dr. Bruce Patterson for example suggests that biological disturbance is actually going on in COVID long-haulers (see article here).
Now, the issue becomes greater as this article has the potential to influence many clinicians (as it is published in TheBMJOpinion), who can reach the same interpretation and dismiss (as many have done for the last months) the desperate patients who urge medical help.
I am sure Professor Garner did not mean any harm nor had intentions to be dismissive towards the condition. Others have also come in his defense and have said that he just did a “poor job” at explaining the situation.
Others have said that he is referring to the “Dynamic Neural Retraining System” by Annie Hopper (who is neither a medical doctor nor a scientist). However, I am very skeptical that he was referring to this (or I hope he is not). I am not going to go in detail about DNRS as prefer treatments that have good evidence to be supported. But if you are interested in knowing about it, check David Tuller’s article (article here).
In this article I am just describing what I felt when I read and what I thought would be the response of the medical community by reading this.
Follow me on Twitter (@tschmauck), I will be posting regarding COVID-19 from now on.
