Well, for completely unknown reasons the default Theme for cpnhelp, called Fancy, broke! It would no longer display the tabs at the top for the primary links. So, I've temporarily replaced it with another as the site default.

We are working on a really beautiful, easy to use new theme but it requires a lot more configuration before it's usable, and it's Saturday, and I've spent way too long in front of the computer today! 

If you can't get the links, go to 'my account/edit" and select either Marvin, Chameleon, or Blue Marine.

Well, we finally are upgraded to the newest software, better security and a cleaned up database so page loading should be much faster. And the TinyMCE rich text editor is working too! Phase Two is a complete redesign to render a much more usable and less confusing site for newbies. Since the switchover lost a lot of the work I had done to get a head start on this, it will be a while until you can test out the new design.

In the mean time, use this page to post any problems, missing pages, etc. that have come up from the upgrade.

With any luck we should be switched over to the new upgraded software in the next day or so. You shouldn't notice any differences really, although the signatures on the blogs may start to appear. Hopefully we'll be better protected from spammers and have some speed improvements. Then over the next month or so some of us will be putting together a new design for the site which will present a clearer format for new folks, more familiar looking forum formating, and some other improvements.

But if you find the site off line for a couple hours, you'll know what's up! Keep your fingers crossed. 

Some of you, reading the article in the Handbook I wrote on CFSi/ME & Cpni, know that I'm not a fan of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) for fibromyalgiai and chronic fatigue/ME. I believe that what originally began as trying to provide better coping tools has been coopted by the medical establishment's tendency to blame the victims of disease for their own disease when medicine is impotent in helping these serious disorders.

So, on seeing Dr. Teitelbaum's report of a study in the Netherlands exposing the harm created by CBT for CFS/ME patients, I had to bring it to our readers attention. Below Dr. Teitelbaum's summary and the link to his excerpt from the research report translated from the Dutch.

Reactivation of Chlamydia pneumoniae infection in mice by cortisone treatment.
K Laitinen, A L Laurila, M Leinonen, and P Saikku
National Public Health Institute, Helsinki, Finland.

Infect Immun. 1996 April; 64(4): 1488–1490

Reactivation of Chlamydia pneumoniae infection was studied by inducing immunosuppression by cortisone acetate treatment given every other day for 14 days in intranasally infected NIH/s mice. The treatment started 2 or 4 weeks after primary infection, when no C. pneumoniae was detected. C. pneumoniae could be recovered from the lung cultures on days 7 and 9 in 10 and 60% of the mice, respectively, when cortisone treatment was begun 30 days after infection. These results confirm the persistent nature of C. pneumoniae infection.

I've made most of the sidebar blocks like the poll, new comments, etc. hidden unless you select them yourself to show them. Trying to help clean up the confusng page elements for new folks to the site.

If you want them back, just go to 'my account/edit' and check which ones you want to show up. No worries! 

New folks here to Cpnhelp, we need your help.

This site is full of wonderful, generous folks, who are sick too, who spend a lot of time seeing to questions and making sure people get the help they need. We will do our best to help you through the confusion. I've seen few community websites like it.

But for some miraculous reason we have had a huge influx of new people lately, and we are getting swamped, especially with having to answer the same questions over and over again with each new person posting. We are glad you've found us. We are a bit overwhelmed with the bounty.

With any luck, we will be getting a site upgrade sometime in the next couple days. So there may be a time when you can't log in or find the site for a couple hours. Don't panic, we'll be back.

We are badly in need of updating to the current Drupal system, enhancing security, getting functions to work as they should, and even adding a few extras (I'm hopeful we'll get a chat system going again). Those of you who have donated $, this is where a chunk is going! Thanks! 

Trying to sort out what reactions might be due to for Daisy's husband in a recent thread made me think: "We've never gathered any data for reactions from time of dosing."

So I threw together a quick survey to see if we get any patterns.

Click on the Reactions By Hour survey.

It asks that you have observed for two days, so take a look at what's being asked but don't fill out the survey until you have your 2 days of observations!

Yes, yes, I know that there will be things wrong with it, and some questions missing, etc., etc.. Just do it to the best of your ability.

I've had a few questions and concerns raised lately about some of the recommendations made to people asking for help with protocolsi, treatment reactions, and other questions. This suggests it is time to restate some of the "rules of the road" here. Old-timers may drift in recalling the need for more cautious or measured tone, and newer members may not be familiar with the care we need in responding with our own impressions.

We have a lot of new members here. This is great, as it means we are reaching more people. We also have a wider variety of illnesses and co-conditions being represented here than ever before. Some people may be using protocols which are different than typical CAPi treatments, and there may be important reasons for those differences.

Although this news item is not specifically about Cpni, it certainly is in the ball park. Most of us are focused on getting help via the antibiotic protocol for one disease or another, but it may turn out that we are nipping some other problems in the bud...

This may have been noted before, but a nice summary of Balin's work on Chlamydia pneumoniae and Alzheimer's. Note his discussion of the need for using multple measures (up to 15) and different methodologies in trying to detect a very difficult to detect organism:

http://www.tangledneuron.info/the_tangled_neuron/2007/06/chlamydia-pneum.html

The same thing for MSi CAPi users. Please don't take the survey if you have not been diagnosed with MS, and only take once!

http://www.cpnhelp.org/UCCASSv1.8.1/index.php

It's #7 on the list.

Results are public, and can be filtered to see responses of subsets of users. No personal identifying info is taken or required.

Direct link to current results.