This comprehensive booklet covers a wide range of alternative and complementary therapies, and highlights recommended treatments where there is good quality evidence to demonstrate that they are both safe and effective.
Introduction
With orthodox medicine failing to provide any form of effective treatment aimed at the underlying disease process in ME/CFS, it’s not surprising to find that many people turn to the alternative and complementary (ACM) health sectors for help for their symptoms. The ME Association remains open-minded about alternative approaches.
But we can only recommend treatments for which there is good quality evidence to demonstrate that they are both safe and effective. So our advice tends to be very cautious about many of these alternative approaches. At the same time, there are occasions when we feel it is necessary to warn people about new forms of highly speculative treatment which are not only expensive but can sometimes turn out to be harmful.
During the preparation of the new NICE guideline on ME/ CFS, the committee considered all the evidence on efficacy and safety from clinical trials that had taken place to assess alternative and complementary therapies. Many of these trials were small and had significant defects. Consequently, the new NICE guideline does not recommend any alternative treatment.
Many people with ME/CFS find alternative approaches helpful – possibly for a number of reasons. The treatment may, of course, be having a genuine therapeutic effect. But the fact that you are paying for something you have been told will help, and at the same time being treated by a very sympathetic and understanding practitioner, can have a very positive therapeutic effect.
In the past, most doctors were either very sceptical or took a hostile view about alternative therapies. The situation is now starting to change and you may well find that an approach such as acupuncture for pain relief, for which there is some evidence of benefit, is available at your local GP surgery or NHS hospital.
