Jay Goldstein

Dr. Jay A. Goldstein (1943 – 2021) was a prominent ME/CFS clinician and researcher located in southern California, USA. Trained as a psychiatrist, he taught at the University of California, Irvine. He was director of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Institutes of Anaheim Hills and Beverly Hills. He organized a symposium in Los Angeles on CFIDS and fibromyalgia. When Stephen Straus, in 1989, published that CFS was likely a psychiatric illness, Jay Goldstein vehemently criticized Straus's work, saying "To be quite frank, I could not believe a research paper could be this bad and be published."

In 1993, Goldstein published a book Chronic Fatigue Syndromes: The Limbic Hypothesis stating that, in his opinion, chronic fatigue syndrome was a limbic encephalopathy in a dysregulated psychoneuroimmunologic network. Goldstein's limbic hypothesis does not suggest a specific treatment to address the root causes or CFS. Goldstein's book on his limbic hypothesis makes no mention of "fight or flight" responses or the body's "alarm system" responses and does not support claims that "fight or flight" or brain inflammation is the cause of CFS symptoms; Goldstein does not suggest using "brain retraining", self-help "brain rewiring" programs or relying on "neuroplasticity" to treat CFS despite the fact that such self-help programs claim their treatments are based on a limbic or amygdala dysfunction hypothesis.

Goldstein died in March 2021. He was 78.

Books

 * 1992, The Clinical and Scientific Basis of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome edited by Byron Hyde, Jay Goldstein, and Paul Levine
 * 1993, Chronic Fatigue Syndromes: The Limbic Hypothesis
 * 1996, Betrayal by the Brain: The Neurologic Basis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia Syndrome, and Related Neural Network Disorders
 * 2004, Tuning the Brain: Principles and Practice of Neurosomatic Medicine
 * 2020, Chronic Fatigue Syndromes: The Limbic Hypothesis

Notable studies

 * 1995, The Assessment of Vascular Abnormalities in Late Life Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by Brain SPECT: Comparison with Late Life Major Depressive Disorder (Abstract)
 * 2000, The Pathophysiology of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Related Neurosomatic Disorders

Learn more

 * Jay A. Goldstein, M.D.’S Unique Treatment Protocol For Chronic Fatigue Syndrome & Fibromyalgia (from ProHealth)
 * Dr. Jay Goldstein: A-Z Treatments (from CFSTreatmentGuide)
 * Jay Goldstein's Treatment Protocol for Physicians (from National CFIDS Foundation)