Brain retraining

Brain training is a proposed treatment approach advanced by a group of former patients and researchers who believe that ME/CFS--due to its complexity, the multiplicity of symptoms involved and systems affected, and the diverse ways that some people eventually recover while others do not--that the illness is a result of the dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, because the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is associated with the digestive, endocrine, circulatory and other systems that tend to be involved with ME/CFS.

This is not to imply that symptoms are imagined by patients, but that the nervous system is at the heart of the diverse manifestations of symptoms that show up physically. There are several voices in the brain training movement, such as Ashok Gupta and Dan Neuffer, that believe that the disease begins and perpetuates itself through a series of complex reactions involving the amygdala and other parts of the brain, where the brain and nervous system become sensitized to certain triggers resulting in a variety of symptoms, which themselves become triggers for symptoms, resulting in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Brain training proposes that the way beyond this ANS dysfunction involves rewiring the nervous system through simple interventions, like breathing exercises, that assist the patient in lowering their ANS arousal while also deliberately freeing up their attention to other sensations other than their symptoms.

To date there is no published research on brain training and ME/CFS. There is research on similar interventions for other conditions, such as PTSD. Researchers have published studies of heart rate variability (HRV, one indicator of autonomic function) in ME/CFS, but not whether it is possible to affect the HRV of ME/CFS patients through interventions like the ones brain training proposes; nor, even if it were possible, whether it would improve ME/CFS symptoms.

Learn more

 * André, Christophe. "Proper Breathing Brings Better Health" Scientific American, January 15, 2019
 * McCraty, Rollin and Maria A. Zayas. "Cardiac coherence, self-regulation, autonomic stability, and psychosocial well-being" Frontiers in Psychology, September 29, 2014
 * Tiller, William (Stanford University), et al. "Cardiac Coherence: A New Non-Invasive Measure of Autonomic Nervous System Order" Alternative Therapies, January 1996