Hi,
I see some people call rsd/crps a disease. My neighbor asked her doctor about rsd to see if she could get more info for me and he said that it is not a disease and that is so rare and that alot of dr's mis diagnose it. Syndrome, Disease whats the difference???? Any thoughts????????
Eileen :

Hi Eileen,

(from the Oxford dictionary)
- definition of syndrome is a group of symptoms which consistently occur together.
(Sounds better than "a bunch of symptoms we *can't* put a name to"..)
- definition of disease is a disorder of structure or function in a human, animal, or plant, especially one that produces specific symptoms.
(Sounds better than "a bunch of symptoms we *can* put a name to"..)

Since all diseases produce a bunch of specific symptoms...

The medical naming seems to depend on whether they can identify an originating cause. Notice how many names RSD/CRPS/Causalgia etc has... but I expect that if tomorrow some Doctor Smith produced definitive research proving that it was caused by eating too many Hershey bars it would instantly become "Smith Syndrome" or "Hershey's Disease".

Doctors shmoctors...I think it's just code for the medics: disease = we know something about it; syndrome = we don't.

Cynical? Moi?
all the best!

LMAO artist!! Too good!! You cynical, never!!! Sounds just like me.

So, no for my humble opinion on the whole thing. I consider it a disorder rather than a disease. I've always equated disease with something like cancer. So I consider this a disorder like fibro and things like that. It just seems to make more sense to me anyway.

Hugs,
Karen

I got curious about the differences so looked them up-
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/mplusdictionary.html

dis·ease
Function: noun
: an impairment of the normal state of the living animal or plant body or one of its parts that interrupts or modifies the performance of the vital functions, is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms, and is a response to environmental factors (as malnutrition, industrial hazards, or climate), to specific infective agents (as worms, bacteria, or viruses), to inherent defects of the organism (as genetic anomalies), or to combinations of these factors : SICKNESS : ILLNESS -- called also morbus -- compare HEALTH 1

syn·drome
Function: noun
: a group of signs and symptoms that occur together and characterize a particular abnormality

con·di·tion
Function: noun
: a usually defective state of health <a serious heart condition> b : a state of physical fitness <exercising to get into condition>

we have a neighbor who's a retired professor of medicine and i asked him about this.....is it a disease or a condition or a syndrome......his answer?..."actually, it's a dystrophy".

well, that sure clears things up for me!

A Dystrophy too! Boy now we all should be really confused! LOL

Article by Jose Ochoa:
http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.com...?AID=4043&UID=

This is great !
And according to this article we are also an entity-or not

next?

Jasmine

Just a quick note:

Dr Jose Ochoa was once a highly respected writer and researcher who focused his work almost entirely on RSD. Then one day he saw the light: RSD is not a neurological disorder; try as he might, he was never going to be able to prove the unproveable.

Actually, the light he saw was a dollar sign. He was getting older and it was time to think of his golden years. He figured out that he could make a lot more money working for work comp lawyers and descredtiting RSD than by trying to prove it is something he knows it isn't.

He did the work. He was, and is, familiar with those who are still trying to prove RSD is what it isn't. He can go into a court room and advise work comp lawyers which questions they should ask, and he can testify knowledgeably about this disease.

By the time he and the lawyers are finished, they have made the doc testifying for the RSD patient look like either an idiot or a liar. It's easy, one simple question will do the job, it is the same thing I have challenged Forum members with for five years:

"Doctor, you say this is a neurological disorder. Can you provide this court with one example of scientific research - not an opinion you want us to believe - that even suggests that there is evidence of nerve damage in the etiology of RSD?"

He may try to duck and weave. He may try to tell the jury that nerve dysfunction is obvious in RSD. But in the end, he will have to answer that question. He will have to say; "No, there is no research showing that any nerve injury has ever been shown to cause RSD".

By the time they have reworded that question in a dozen different ways, and the doctor has had to admit a dozen different times that even though "everyone knows" RSD is caused by a nerve injury, no one can prove it. No one can even prove it is possible.

The doctor's credibility has been completely destroyed. The record has been filled with uncontradicted testimony that RSD isn't what the experts say it is. They haven't proved RSD isn't real; they didn't have to. Dr Ochoa is ready to testify that he studied RSD for years and in his expert opinion patients are either psychologically unbalanced or just plain liars.

By the end of the hearing, the RSD patient is sitting there in total shock. He or she has just seen any chance for compensation or treatment blown out of the water. She/he has just been described as a nutcase or a liar, and the expert as even worse. she/he is going to have to try to survive for the rest of his/her life disabled, in terrible pain, and without hope.

Is it any wonder that this this is called the "suicide disease"?

Do you Forum members who have been here or in other sites for very long ever ask yourself why any number of people suddenly stopped posting? There are names I still think about. Names that creep into my mind after I have turned the light out and prayed I would be able to sleep this time: Names and more names. Are they still alive? Did they turn out their light one night and then decide they could not face another morning?

I think about SamYamin. He wrote a goodbye post. Some concerned members started sharing bits of information and came up with enough to call the police. A few days after that goodbye post, Sam posted again: he thanked everyone for their concern and for saving his life, then told us he would be going into therapy and would not have access to the Internet for a while, but not to worry.

I didn't worry. I knew Sam had learned his lesson: Don't tell anyone. I knew Sam was dead.

I didn't pray for him anymore, you don't pray for the dead; you hope they knew Jesus and had asked Him to forgive their sins. If they did, there is no need for prayer, they are happier than I have ever been. If they did, I will meet them face to face in a little while.

And there is Andi; and Meg; and sunshine; and Heatherdawn. We rarely hear about those who committed suicide. RSD didn't kill them. They died of hopelessness. I miss them. We all do. And we all look at every detail; trying to find that one clue that should have alerted us. That something we should have seen; that if we had seen might have made the difference.

It won't do any good to say it; it hasn't helped me and it probably won't help you, but that clue probably wasn't there. If it was, it probably wouldn't have changed anything, nor will it be of much use the next time.

Hope is the last thing to go. Once it is gone, there is no reason to live. By the time we learn someone has lost all hope, it is too late. If we are to take any small bit of comfort from these tragedies, and it is too small to measure, it is that people who decide to die don't tell anyone. You tell someone while the hope is still dying, when you want someone to give you some reason to hope. Most of the time it works.

When I began this post I would never have suspected where it would lead. It went in an unexpected direction when I used the word suicide, and after rereading it, I see that if I can't understand why I wrote these words on this post, you probably can't either.

I delete a lot more than I post, and I would delete this; but something is stopping me. Something...something that outweighs the fear that some will think my words are out of line. That this isn't the right place or the right time.

I want to ignore that something, but I can't. All I can do is hope there is a reason that I don't understand now but may become evident later...Vic

Thank you, Vicc, for telling more about Dr. Ochoa. Your post was very informative and I found that interesting.

I added the link since I had recently read the article, and found he spoke about what RSD is... a syndrome? a disease? or what?

Thanks again!