A controversial treatment for children with debilitating chronic fatigue can actually help in some cases, a study shows.
The Lightning Process – a course which claims to retrain the brain to improve physical health – could improve symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) or myalgic encephalitis (ME) in older children when combined with specialist medical care, research found.
Around 250,000 people in the UK have CFS or ME, which causes disabling fatigue and symptoms like headaches, muscle and joint pain and problems concentrating.
The condition, which could be triggered by a viral infection, affects children as young as five and is thought to affect up to one in 50 of secondary school-age.
There is no cure and current treatments include cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), graded exercise therapy and medications such as antidepressants.
The Lightning Process has been praised by celebrities such as Martine McCutcheon and the wife of England rugby union player Austin Healey, who said it helped his wife overcome illness.
But some experts and campaigners have condemned the £620 course – which is not available on the NHS – as pseudoscience’ and ‘quack medicine’.
