Hi Marianne,

Your website provides great support and advice for CFS/ME sufferers such as myself.

Can I ask for your advice? I have been doing reverse therapy for over a year and have had some success with it but I’ve read your article on the Perrin Technique and I have studied the Perrin Technique website and it sounds very effective for CFS. How effective is the Perrin Technique on CFS and is it worth participating with? Also what do you believe is the most effective treatment to help reduce symptoms and pains of CFS?

Thank you for your help

Kind Regards

Hi
Thank you for your email.
For me and we are all different but this is what helps me and my symptoms:

• Avoiding all suspected allergens and foods and supplements produced in or near factories that also process the allergens.
• Gentle stretches.
• Calcium, magnesium and zinc supplement by Solgar.
• A strong quality assured fish oil or flaxseed oil.
• Raw fruit and veg – for me – organic apples and organic carrots plus all the others but it is apples and carrots that make me feel good!!
• Deep Sea Salt bath with olive oil and eucalyptus scrub – NOT for the faint hearted as this will make one feel extremely drained and needing to rest. Not something I could consider before the Perrin Technique and now I can. This bath soak, helps the drainage of toxins from the body, but I would only do it once a fortnight if that. I do feel good the next day or for some it may be a few days later. Please do not do this soak if you are in bed more often than not, you will make yourself very ill.
• Proper coffee brew every morning to kick start my day! (I tried giving up coffee for years but it made no difference to my symptoms)
• Maintaining Positivity in the face of adversity, tricky to do at the best of times but so easy to slip when feeling under par and then a downward spiral occurs. When I am feeling ME tired, I have to concentrate and remind myself of good things while I rest.
• Singing when I have the energy (we have a local singing group) because this forces more air into the lungs and so oxygenates the blood.
• Prayer and chats about worries and woes with my Christian friends

The above is what helps my symptoms.

What is helping the CAUSE of the CFS/ME problem is the Perrin Technique – I feel sure.

I cannot say that the Perrin Technique is the definitive answer. The theory certainly makes a lot of sense. I have high hopes with it and certainly I feel more able than I did at this time last year but I am still not 100% and perhaps 80% well is not good enough for me! Ray Perrin aims to get most people 80% well after 2 years with some attaining 100% health.
It isn’t just me noticing that I feel better, my family and friends do too.

(An effect since the Perrin is able to tolerate a slice of bread about once a month whereas before Perrin treatments, I was very ill immediately if I had bread. I do find that once I have eaten some bread the tendency is to assume I can eat more the next day and that is fatal, and then I am ill. But if I take a small slice of bread once a month I find I am not ill. I still can’t tolerate finely ground powdered grains, the tiny speck of allergen seems to get to my blood stream quicker in its minute state and I am quite ill then.)

I hope this answers your queries, please email again if you need to ask anymore questions.
with very good wishes for your health
Marianne

Hi Marianne,

Thank you for your e-mail below, it was very helpful.

Can I just ask a couple of questions:

Although I live in London, do you feel it would be beneficial to travel to Bushey to see Dr Perrin or put my trust in a Perrin technique practioner in London? How much does it cost to see Dr Perrin per session?

I know this is a hard question to answer but what type of treatment do you feel is more effective, the Perrin technique or Reverse therapy?

Thank you for your help

Kind Regards

Hi

Lovely to hear from you again. I apologise that this email is so long. Not good at brief!!

In theory every Perrin practitioner should be as good as Perrin himself and maybe even better! I have not been to see Ray Perrin as a practitioner myself so I wouldn’t know if he is better, the same or indifferent. I think that you need to like your practitioner and have a rapport with them because however they apply the treatment protocol, they will apply their own individuality to it and it is this that you need to like or not.
My Perrin practitioner is very good because I feel I can say for example: “My neck is really hurting and I feel so brain fogged.” And he will look at me and examine me and plot the possible cause and apply certain techniques to help. One day I said: “My sleeping is appalling.” After treatment he said: “You will sleep better now.” and I must say I felt deliciously relaxed and after a day or two my sleep improved.

Personally I would go to the Perrin practitioner who is the easiest to travel to. If after the first treatment you find you don’t like them then you could try Perrin himself.

Many ME/CFSers have a tendency to have Inner Drivers that are mostly focussed on the BE PERFECT or TRY HARD side and maybe this is why you feel you want to go to the designer of the Perrin technique himself; it appears to be the best and therefore perfect. However bear in mind that many people are getting well through practitioners trained in the Perrin Technique so perhaps that will help your decision.

I cannot say which is better Reverse or Perrin because I have not tried the Reverse treatment, so I am biased towards the Perrin. This is based on that I think ME/CFS is a physical illness and the Perrin Technique is a physical treatment and everything he says about it makes so much sense, and he has also had clinical trials conducted, so there is good strong evidence backing up his theories. Everything he says and the treatment makes sense to me, I understand it and I can trust things that make sense, that I understand.

With all treatment protocols including Perrin, there is always a certain amount of feeling better at first and then feeling like you are going backwards and nothing is working. This is due to the layer effect of illness. And rather than going from pillar to post looking for the perfect treatment – stick it out with your practitioner and discuss the symptoms with them and see what they suggest.

I do personally feel that Reverse, Lightning, Ashok Gupta, Counselling, NLP, Pyschology and Psychiatry, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy all help MIND things. By this I mean ‘stuff’ we have taken on board since birth through anyone who has influenced us from parents to siblings to teachers and friends. So these methods are going to help ALL people and ALL personalities whether diseased or not. I do think that these therapies help cope with the changed status in our lives because of being ill with a chronic illness. So we cope with being ill better and therefore feel better. I don’t think they can cure disease.

There is a theory that sometimes we are so stuck with being ill that we don’t notice we are better and we are still applying the techniques for coping that we have subconsciously taken up. In these cases then the MIND therapies may help.

If you are still getting physical symptoms then perhaps the physical symptoms have not been dealt with and the Perrin will help with those because the technique is designed to re-align the body and allow the lymph which takes away toxins to flow and drain better. So the Perrin technique sorts out the kinks in the body, so that the body can heal itself.

After about 3 months of Perrin treatments I felt so well and there was a drip drip effect of energy that didn’t run out. This in turn helped my MIND realise that I could do things and I didn’t need to protect myself with pacing and resting so much.

So I don’t altogether subscribe to the theory that we get stuck in being ill when we are physically better. I can understand it may happen.

But having experienced an incredible sensation of energy on continual supply – I was up and doing!!! There was no worry about making myself ill again therefore I needed to continue maintaining the pacing and resting – O no, with the energy came the enthusiasm to be and do!

I have to say that at the moment I don’t feel like that, I am coping with cold and virus symptoms that are doing the rounds in our house! I do feel that the colder weather is a real nuisense because it naturally causes our muscles to tighten and our brain to direct the fluids to the internal organs to keep them at the correct temperature so reducing the blood flow and flow of lymph to and from the peripherals and in CFS/MEers makes us feel worse. So while we feel lousy we also need to push ourselves a little and MOVE our bodies with some exercises and stretches which in turn may make us feel worse so we have to rest but then after that our get up and go may be better!! We also need to look at the diet, because this changes in winter and we go for starchy food and eat less of the fresh fruits and veg and this maybe a cause of feeling worse in winter.

I hope that helps! I am off to jump up and down for a minute, have a shower, gargle with diluted tea-tree, plaster myself with diluted eucalyptus, and I may, just may do some christmas shopping! I think that all that is a sign that I am so much better than I was, because this time last year, I wouldn’t have attempted anything like that and if I did, would have to go back to bed for days.

God bless and I hope you find the practitioner to really put you on the road to recovery.
Warm wishes
Marianne

Hi Marianne,

Thank you for your e-mail. I’ve decided to proceed with the Perrin Technique.

Your advice has been a God send, thank you so much for your help!

Kind Regards and wish you a speedy recovery.

And the latest email:

Hi Marianne,

I’ve been to see a Perrin technique therapist for a couple sessions and it has been beneficial as my sleeping has drastically improved.

How are you keeping?

Take care