Sunday, March 24, 2013

The Psychological Stress Confussion

NPR interview on the topic of GWI:
DANKOSKY: So Dr. Steele, what do we know about the causes? Because there have been a number that we've heard about over the years. Maybe we can run through a few of them. One of the things that is mentioned sometimes is stress or PTSD, something that we've heard a lot about from these last few wars, Iraq and Afghanistan. How much does stress have to do with it, do you think?

STEELE: That's a really good question. I think for many years after 1991, after the war got over, a lot of folks really didn't know what to make of Gulf War Illness or Gulf War Syndrome. But at this point, now 22 years later, we actually have a lot of students that tell us a lot about what may have caused Gulf War Illness.

Most of the studies early on looked at things like stress and post-traumatic stress disorder, but we now know very definitely that Gulf War Illness, specifically in 1991 Gulf War veterans, is not a stress-induced or trauma-induced kind of disorder. The rates of things like post-traumatic stress disorder are very low in 1991 Gulf War veterans, much lower than we're seeing in current returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, there is a long list of potential causes that different people have looked at over the years, many things like the vaccines that veterans receive, the oil well fires that many of us remember from that time, all kinds of chemical toxicants that they were exposed to.

And just looking over the broad range of studies, at the many epidemiologic studies that have been conducted in this population, we know that several of these risk factors or toxicants have risen to the top in terms of the strength of evidence that suggests that they are connected with Gulf War Illness.

And at this point we can say that the highest risk factors relate to use of prophylactic medication given to veterans to protect them from nerve agents. That pill was called pyridostigmine bromide. In addition, there was extreme overuse of pesticides in some groups of veterans during the 1991 Gulf War. And so those are also linked to higher rates of Gulf War Illness.

And then we also know that some veterans were exposed to very low levels of nerve agents during the Gulf War, and there's also some evidence supporting an association between Gulf War Illness and the nerve agent exposures that happened during and after the war.

Overall, though, the studies consistently show no link between for example serving in combat and higher rates of Gulf War Illness.
Why is it, that if someone postulate that "stress" (or "lack of resilience" or some other "psychological fault" of the patient) is causative for a (hard to grab) disease, that there is so little scepticism? Why are people not challenged more if they spread their "psycho-stress confusion"? And we are not talking here about physical stress, no here supposed psychological stress (combined with some sort of supposed defect of the patient) should be able to cause physical disease like GWI? A disease that is unique to the gulf war veterans?

I'm sure the Theologians of the Wessely School have an explanation for why there are so many gulf war veterans have GWI – this will be an explanation however that does not create clarity, but an explanation that creates confusion instead…

2 comments:

  1. If adrenaline makes the nerve gas pill (pyridostigmine bromide, PB) more toxic, and the people who took the pill were in combat and surely making excess adrenaline ("stress"), how can you say stress is not a potential explanation for the unexpected effects of PB?

    Jim Moss


    Chaney, L.A., Mozingo, J.R., Hume, A.S. & J.I. Moss. 1997. Potentiation of Pyridostigmine Bromide Toxicity in Mice by Selected Adrenergic Agents and Caffeine. Vet. Human Toxicol. 39 (9): 214-219.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So you basically say that without the nerve gas pill, people would *not* have gotten ill, when put in the same stress?

    Then stress is a trigger, and not the cause. The nerve gas pill is the cause.

    (And look at the fact that having been in combat does not make much difference. People who were deployed but not in combat gotten ill at roughly the same rate. Surely people in combat had more stress.)

    ReplyDelete

Comments are most welcome! But please:

- No SPAM whatsoever, no supplements, no pharmaceuticals, no herbs or any other advertisements

- Absolutely no quack-doctors pushing their quack-BS websites (and if you are a quack, I will call you out)

- Be critical if you want to, but try to be coherent

Comments are moderated, because I am tired of Gerwyn-V99-The-Idiot and his moronic sockpuppets, and tired of the story of the two dogs, but I will try to publish everything else.

If you are not Gerwyn (and want to tell me something other than the story of the two dogs), then relax and write something! :-)

Labels

5-AZA A. Melvin Ramsay Acne Advocacy Alan Light Alternative medicine is an untested danger Ampligen Andrew Wakefield Anecdote Anthony Komaroff Antibiotics Antibodies Anxiety Aphthous Ulcers Apnea Asthma Autism Autoimmune Disease Behçet’s Ben Katz Bertrand Russell Biology Blood sugar Bruce Carruthers Caffeine Calcium Cancer Capitalism Cardiology Carmen Scheibenbogen CBT/GET CDC Celiac Disease Cereal Grains CFIDS Chagas Charité Charles Lapp Christopher Snell Chronix Clinician Coconut Milk Cognition Common Sense and Confirmation Bias Conversion Disorder Coxiella Burnetii Coxsackie Criteria Crohn's Cushing's Syndrome Cytokine Daniel Peterson Darwinism David Bell Depression Diabetes Diagnostic Differential Disease Diseases of Affluence DNA DNA Sequencing Dog DSM5 EBV EEG Eggs Elaine DeFreitas Elimination Diet Enterovirus Epstein-Barr ERV Etiology Evolution Exercise Challenge Faecal Transplant Fame and Fraud and Medical Science Fatigue Fatty Acids Fibromyalgia Francis Ruscetti Fructose Gene Expression Genetics Giardia Gordon Broderick Gulf War Illness Gut Microbiome Harvey Alter Health Care System Hemispherx Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome Herpesviridae High Blood Pressure Historic Outbreaks HIV HPV Hyperlipid Ian Hickie Ian Lipkin Immune System Infection Intermittent Fasting It's the environment stupid Jacob Teitelbaum Jamie Deckoff-Jones Jo Nijs John Chia John Coffin John Maddox José Montoya Judy Mikovits Karl Popper Kathleen Light Kenny De Meirleir Lactose Lamb Laszlo Mechtler LCMV Lecture Leonard Jason Leukemia Life Liver Loren Cordain Low Carb Low-Dose Naltrexone (LDN) Luc Montagnier Lucinda Bateman Ludicrous Notions Lumpers and Splitters Lyme Mady Hornig Mark Hasslett Martin Lerner Mary Schweitzer MCS ME/CFS Medical Industry Medicine is not based on anecdotes Michael Maes Migraine Milk and Dairy Mitochondria MMR Money and Fame and Fraud MRI Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Multiple Sclerosis Mutton My Symptoms n-1 Nancy Klimas Narcolepsy Neurodermitis Neuroscience NK-Cell Nocebo NSAID Nutrition Obesity On Nutrition Pain Paleo Parathyroid Pathogen Paul Cheney PCR Pharmaceutical Industry Picornavirus Placebo Polio Post Exertional Malaise POTS/OI/NMH PTSD PUFA Q Fever Quote Rare Disease Research Retrovirus Rheumatoid Arthritis Rituximab RNA Robert Gallo Robert Lustig Robert Silverman Robert Suhadolnik Rosario Trifiletti Sarah Myhill Sarcasm Science Sequencing Seth Roberts Shrinks vs. Medicine Shyh-Ching Lo Simon Wessely Sinusitis Sjögren's Somnolence Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik Speculation Stanislaw Burzynski Statins Stefan Duschek Study Sucrose Sugar Supplements Symptoms T1DM T2DM There is no such thing as Chronic Lyme There is no such thing as HGRV Thyroid Tinitus To Do Toni Bernhard Tourette's Treatment Tuberculosis Vaccine Video Vincent Lombardi Vincent Racaniello Virus Vitamin B Vitamin D VP62 When Evidence Based Medicine Isn't Whooping Cough Wolfgang Lutz WPI XMRV You fail science forever