The Posture Theory Controversy

When I was 25 years old I had to make a serious decision about continuing to consult my doctor who was unable to explain or relieve my health problems, or to study the medical literature to determine the cause myself. I had numerous symptoms which had persisted for many years, and were getting worse to the point of being intolerable. During the previous few years I had many x-rays and blood tests which were all negative (i.e. they didn't reveal anything), and I had been told that there was no scientific way of explaining a physical cause for such a diverse range of ailments. Of course, it was suggested that they may have been due to psychological factors because the brain is connected to the nervous system which is connected to all parts of the body.

My reasons for disagreeing with that idea was simply related to the fact that many things, unrelated to my mind, were obviously aggravating the symptoms. For example, I would get chest pains while jogging up and down on beach sand, and dizzy if I bent down to tie up my shoe laces, or abdominal pain if I leaned toward a desk, or I would feel faint if I was the passenger in a car which sped around a curve in the road, and of course, I had never been afraid of tying up my shoelaces or driving, and none of the other passengers were feeling faint.

I therefore decided that I had no other practical choice but to start reading medical and anatomy books, and try to find, or develop some methods of relieving the symptoms.

During the next five years I kept detailed notes on everything that aggravated any of the symptoms, and was eventually able to determine that they all had one thing in common. When I examined and re-examined all of the details I saw a definite tendency for the symptoms being aggravated by leaning forward. I also concluded that leaning forward was putting pressure on my heart and lungs, and on the air in my chest, and on my stomach and abdomen, so it became obvious that leaning forward was the common factor.

However, I couldn't explain why I was getting those problems and other people weren't, until much later when I realised that I had a very bad posture which was due to an abnormal curve in my upper spine. I was eventually able to conclude that people with poor posture, who lean forward repeatedly for many years would be prone to those health problems, whereas people with straight spines would not. Many more years went by and then I finally noticed that chest shape was also a major factor, where a broad and deep chest would protect the internal structure from damage, and a long, narrow chest would make the mechanical pressures on leaning much worse.

As you can appreciate the idea is perfectly matter of fact and logical in every way, and can be summed up as "The Posture Theory".

The controversy began: Unfortunately, in the very early stages of my study, I found that patients who have a large number of symptoms which are not evident on x-rays, are diagnosed as having the 'imaginary' symptoms of hypochondria, The cause of the symptoms had been attributed to a lot of different psychological factors such as the morbid preoccupation with imaginary or trivial illness, the fear of disease, laziness and the need for sympathy and attention, and anxiety, depression, or insanity.

It was obvious to me that my posture theory would never be popular with people who held those views, and that they would do everything they could to discredit me. As you can appreciate, I didn't want to be controversial, and I didn't want to offend or argue with anyone who had different ideas to mine, but it was essentially impossible to avoid.

I decided to try and avoid controversy by only discussing my ideas with very close friends and not mention them in public unless the situation was anonymous. For example, I would discuss them on talk back radio, or have articles published in newspapers. I asked a science magazine to publish my ideas without mentioning my sir name, and all of the newspaper articles and my books were published without my photo.

I was skeptical of anyone in conventional science ever accepting such a controversial idea, so In about 1982, when I was introduced to the head of the South Australian Institute for Fitness Research and Training, I was surprised to see that he was a friendly agreeable person who was always casual and frank and asked me to run a research programme based on my ideas about fatigue.

I didn't want to do the programme because I was getting quite severe abdominal pain within a short time of sitting at a desk and reading or writing, but I managed to get the study done when it involved data on 20 patients. The problem got worse on the next three monthly group which took it to 40, and the next which involved summarising the data of 80 volunteers.

I then left the programme without saying why, because mentioning health problems always sounds like an excuse, even if it is a valid reason.

I later completed a summary of the data and sent it off to The Australian Medical Journal, which replied with a standard rejection, and to the New Guinea Medical Journal where the editor sent me a reply explaining that the study was valuable but not accepted because it hadn't been written in the standard research article style.

I also contacted a freelance journalist who did a summary of the project which was published in major state newspapers in Western Australia, Brisbane, and Sydney.

About a week later the head of the institute called me in for a meeting and explained that one of his research cardiologists had moved to Sydney and saw the article in the Sydney Morning Herald, and rang to suggest not using the word 'hypochondria' in any future articles. It was a casual comment without any tone of force, but I understood that the Institute would rather not get involved in controversy.

I had scientifically proved that chronic fatigue was a real physical ailment, and that it wasn't trivial, or imaginary, and was different from normal tiredness.

I then went off to try other forms of employment but sooner or later I would have to stop for health reasons, so I went back to reading and studying to find out more about the problems and how to refine the methods of managing the symptoms.

I maintained my general anonymity to avoid prejudice, so that I didn't become a victim of it, and I knew that conventional journals and major newspapers were unlikely to publish my ideas so I sent them to natural health magazines or new or radical newspapers.

I also knew that people would be stealing my ideas and trying to pass them off as their own, which is one of the main reasons I had mine published, either in magazines or my own self-published books.

Wikipedia: Many years went by and I kept being told about Wikipedia, a new online encyclopedia that anyone could contribute to, so eventually I joined.

However I learned of a policy that recommends that you don't write about your own theories, so I started adding information to other pages. Soon after that I received an email from a woman who had seen my book and wrote to say how impressed she was with it's accuracy and usefulness, and after a few weeks I got the idea of asking her to do an article on my theory. She agreed so I provided her of a draft summary of my 1000 page book to be rewritten in her own words, if, of course, she agreed with the information.

Everything was going smoothly, and I had sent amendments for her to make, so within a short time it was almost the perfect, small, but complete article called The Posture theory. None of the other editors had anything to say about it. I was beginning to think that Wikipedia really was open to all members of the public to provide all of the ideas in the community, so I asked her to add the word 'hypochondria'to the text. That one small word made the difference between an article about "poor posture causing a large number of undetectable symptoms", and "poor posture is the real cause of the symptoms of hypochondria which were previously considered to be imaginary'.

The instant response: This is what happened - Within seven hours, seven different editorswanted it deleted for six entirely different reasons, namely - copyright violation, original research policy and single purpose account, copyright violation again, Non-notable topic, WP:Fringe and WP:OR, and "one guys theory". Those comments were made between 21:35 on 28-11-07 and 4:50 on 29-11-07 here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/The_posture_theory

It was immediately obvious to me that they were seven different editors who were personally offended by the theory, and didn't want to give their real reasons for deleting it so they just hurried in with the first policy objection that they could use as their excuse.

That article was soon deleted despite me giving the editors virtually all of the evidence and proof of publication that they asked for.

As you can appreciate from my thirty years of experience that was 'not surprising', and was, more the to point - 'TYPICAL'.

The Posture Theory is an excellent idea, but when some people learn that it was written by an ordinary person, and not a doctor, and that it proves the symptoms of hypochondria are real, and not imaginary, they want to delete it and hide it from public view, and do everything they can to insult, discourage, and discredit me.

My email correspondent left Wikipedia, and soon after that I looked through some pages to find other topics to contribute to, and then i saw "Da Costa's syndrome" so I started adding to it, and included a small amount of information about my theory and research because it was relevant.

Within a short time I had two critics who made it perfectly clear to me that they were going to brand me with as many psychiatric traits or labels as possible if I didn't leave the page. They put my personal Sir name at the top of the topics discussion page and then my personal name in the first few paragraphs, and continued to describe me as a person who had stupid, non-notable, nonsense ideas, and argued that I was having 'difficulty' understanding simple concepts. After deliberately ignoring, disrupting, or deleting everything I wrote they told the other editors that I had an inability to co-operate with others in a collaborative environment, and that I needed to be banned for 'disruptive behaviour'. They also filled the topic page with psychiatric explanations for everything, and saturated it with comments, references, and links to several hundred different psychiatric labels which included anxiety, depression, mental disorders, cowardice, and of course the new jargon for hypochondria - Somatization autonomic dysfunction' with the acronym of SAD, and the general inference that the symptoms were trivial, imaginary and caused by psychological factors.

I could write more here, but if you agree that The Posture Theory is a perfectly logical, sensible, and evidence based concept, then that is good - thankyou. However, if you are filled with prejudice it won't make any difference because you will still believe, or pretend to believe whatever you want without any regard for the evidence.

I will give this comment - If you have a choice about what illnesses you get - and you won't - but if you did, remember the popular expression - break a leg - because it will show up on x-rays and be remedied in a few months, and you won't have to deal with the bullshit of controversy. M.A.Banfield 21-10-10

The start of the Da Costa's talk page where they added my Sir name in bold print can be seen here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Da_Costa%27s_syndrome/Archive_1

The topic page has many psychiatric labels in the text, reference list, and reference notes, and in the two links at the top right side of the page - ICD-9 and ICD-10, and the two links at the bottom of the page "Somatoform disorders" and "Anxiety disorders", can be seen here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Da_Costa%27s_syndrome&diff=200626664&oldid=200493334

Typical examples of their editing style of deleting scientific evidence of physical cause, and replacing it with psychiatric labels, can be seen here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Da_Costa%27s_syndrome&diff=178805024&oldid=178801481

and here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Da_Costa%27s_syndrome&diff=190462118&oldid=190379699

The Worried Well - a misnomer

Within a few days of me posting this essay on my website one of my critics made the following suggestion for Wikipedia . . .

"Worried well seems to be a redlink. It looks like the old code was "2008 ICD-9-CM Diagnosis Code V65.5, Person with feared complaint in whom no diagnosis was made". Is there a new name for it? Is there anything much to be said about it, beyond that it exists?" WhatamIdoing 20:51, 22 October 2010. See here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine&diff=prev&oldid=392713289#Worried_well

This is my response: When I began studying my own health problems it was due to the necessity of having to determine the cause. It had absolutely nothing to do with "worry". My approach was patient, calm, objective, methodical, and successful.

I established that the supposedly unexplainable symptoms had a real physical cause, namely poor posture. I also established that previous theories about trivial or imaginary symptoms, which had been diagnosed as hypochondria, were wrong in many, if not all cases.

My main critic is fully aware of the new labels for hypochondria which include the term "MUPS" (Medically unexplained physical symptoms) because that individual edited the following section of that topic page in Wikipedia on 18-12-08 shortly before I was banned.

"MUPS is not synonymous with somatization disorder or psychosomatic illness where the cause or perception of symptoms is mental in origin. Instead, MUPS refers to the clinical situation where the cause of the symptoms cannot be determined, but might include psychiatric, physical and/or environmental causes.[citation needed]"

See 18:29 on 18-12-08 here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Medically_unexplained_physical_symptoms&diff=prev&oldid=258819089

and a few minutes later here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Medically_unexplained_physical_symptoms&diff=next&oldid=258819089

Here is a definition of the Worried Well - people like my two critics who are well, but get easily frustrated and are on the verge of tearing their hair out. See here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Moreschi&diff=prev&oldid=288770661

If my main critic wants to stop worrying they should stop claiming to have an annoyingly high IQ while playing dumb. That editor also needs to learn the difference between "is" and "might", and "opinion" and "proof", and stop messing around with the English language as if it is a childrens toy.

The name of the condition: The Posture Syndrome
which includes The Posture Fatigue Syndrome
More commonly known as Da Costa's syndrome, neurocirculatory asthenia, the chronic fatigue syndrome, and nowadays 'orthostatic intolerance"

The number of symptoms which can be caused by poor posture is reflected in the fact that more than one hundred different medical labels have been given to the collection. Perhaps the most appropriate is Da Costa's Syndrome. The condition derived that title because it was described by Dr. J.M.DaCosta who observed it in soldiers in 1871 during the American Civil War, and a syndrome is a collection of symptoms occurring in the same patient, where the cause of the symptoms and the reason they occur as a definable set is usually a mystery. Since Da Costa first described the syndrome it has also been observed that the problem is common in civilian life, but the person is often able to adjust their lifestyle to keep the symptoms under control, and it is not until they join the army, and start running along obstacle courses at training camps, or participate in long marches that they start having problems. Since then it has been observed that the typical patient has a thin and stooped physique, with a long narrow or flat chest, and an abnormal aerobic capacity, and the relationship between physical exertion and symptoms was referred to in 1919 by T.Lewis who called it The Effort Syndrome. Nowadays the condition is likely to be diagnosed as The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but some patients who suffer from chronic fatigue have normal physiques, and don't have other symptoms,. or problems with exertion. Therefore it seems likely that several differnt disorders involve chronic fatigue and are being confused together, and need to be distinguished. In that regard the term The Posture Syndrome could be applied to an individual who has a the particular physique, multiple aches and pains, and a form of fatigue which is related to various factors which include exertion. M.B.   Pictured above A Life-sized portrait painted by Ian Tillard features the typical face, build, and posture of a patient with Da Costa's Syndrome. It was displayed in the library of the Post-Graduate Medical School of London. Reference: Diseases of the Heart and Circulation 2nd edition (1956) p. 941. The photograph has been outlined to enhance the painting and highlight the postural aspect (but the actual photo doesn't show on this scan) . The reference above refers to the typical clinical features of breathlessness on effort, a sense of suffocation, difficulty with breath holding, dizziness due to vasoconstriction in the brain, palpitations of the heart, excessive fatigue in response to effort, tiredness during the day, stabbing or cramping pain in the lower left side of the chest, sometimes occurring during or after muscular exertion, or at night in a manner which prevents the patient from sleeping on the left side, and that pain is relieved by intramuscular analgesics (novocaine). The chest pain may also be due to "faulty posture". There is also dizziness which occurs with sudden movement of the head, or by effort, or by standing up suddenly "and is due to inadequate circulatory adjustments on assuming the erect posture". 20 -30% of of patients occasionally experience temporary loss of consciousness due to the reduced blood flow to the brain. In a second reference "Where are the Diseases of Yesteryear" published in "Circulation" the official journal of the American Heart Association in May 1976, the author C.F. Wooley M.D. wrote about the palpitations, giddiness and fatigue of Da Costa's Syndrome that T.Lewis commented "it is because these symptoms and signs are largely, in some cases wholly, the exaggerated physiological responses to exercise . . . that I term the whole the 'effort syndrome'." and when he describes the physique of the typical patient he writes "in some the chest is long and narrow, or flattened and associated with a kyphotic curve" (a hunchback stoop). and most have sedentary occupations. Another label used in this reference is "Neurocirculatory Asthenia", and other articles use "Vasoregulatory Asthenia" which reflects the concept that there is an impairment of blood flow throughout the body, presumably because of the effects of long term postural disruption of blood flow through the chest which damages the blood vessels or the mechanisms which regulate blood flow. Inefficient blood flow to the heart would effect the response to vigorous exertion, and inefficient blood flow to the brain would influence tiredness and fatigue. That would explain why sprinting for only twenty yards could cause pounding of the heart for fifteen minutes and fatigue for a week. M.B.

 

THE CAUSE: The skeleton of an adult with severe postural deformity (above)

If you want to find the cause of a problem which is obscure and mysterious, look for extreme examples of it and the answer may be obvious. e.g. why might the man with the skeleton above have had chest, stomach, and kidney pains, and breathing difficulties, and why might he have had frequent sore hips, knees, and ankles, and why would such a man have back pain, and why would he have had multiple aches and pains if there was no evidence of injury or disease on x-rays or blood tests. Would those features have started suddenly, or subtly in a manner that was so gradual as to go unnoticed, and be changeable and confusing, and could they be extrapolated and interpolated.

An Example: The famous seventeenth century hunchback poet Alexander Pope was trampled by a wild cow and developed a spinal deformity from the age of three. A stooped spine compresses the lungs and impairs breathing, and also compresses the stomach and impedes digestion which in turn stunts a childs growth. As an adult Alexander Pope was only four foot six tall and had a thin physique. He once wrote about his "headaches, indigestion, and a thousand other aches and pains". He described his life as a continuous series of illnesses and he died of a combination of respiratory and kidney disease. Nobody knew the cause.

The original posture theory was a three page essay called The Matter of Framework because it presented a framework of ideas to link a framework of symptoms to the framework of the human body.

What do you think caused Alexander Pope's health problems?

The scientific method requires absolute consistency and predictability and reproducibility of results, however The Posture Theory was derived, like the theory of evolution, by observing patterns of consistency within large volumes of inconsistencies and contradictions. M.B.

The first indication that I had that posture had anything to do with my own health problems was when I was working as a public service clerk.

I was transferred to the cash controllers office where part of my duties was to sit at a desk and count the daily take of coins into piles of twenty of their particular denomination.

I noticed that after a couple of hours of starting work at 9 a.m. that I would get a vague ache in my back at the level of my left kidney, and if I continued with that work for another hour I would also start getting the ache in the region of the right kidney.

A few months later I had some tests and was found to have a stone in my left kidney.

About a year later, when I was engaged in my usual pastime of gymnastics, I performed a handspring heels over head leap and when my feet landed on the floor with my back arched I felt a ripping sensation in my upper abdomen. I waited a few moments to see if blood would come pouring out of my belly, but nothing happened so I resumed my activities as an instructor without any further problems.

However in the next month or so, I started to notice that I would get a nagging ache in my belly about an hour after commencing my days as a clerk. I also noted that these aches were associated with leaning toward the desk to read or write, and that the longer I did that work for the worse the pain got. Hence the pain was worse on the busiest days of the week.

Within a year or two the abdominal pain was becoming more of a problem and I was beginning to feel faint, or dizzy or breathless as well, each time I leaned toward a desk.

I was also getting fatigue, and one night in the gym I performed an exercise called a round off back somersault and when I landed on my feet I felt dizzy and it appeared as if a thousand stars were shooting in all directions before my eyes.

The problems were therefore beginning to have a serious effect on my occupation and my lifestyle.

Unfortunately the problems were a mystery to my doctor, and the medication that he was prescribing was not helping, as my health continued to deteriorate regardless.

At about that time I read that an organisation called The South Australian Institute For Fitness Research and Training was conducting fitness training programmes under medical supervision for various ailments. I therefore thought that I could attend such a course as treatment and that research doctors might be able to enlighten me about the nature of my ailments.

At the initial medical assessment I was required to ride an ergometric cycle while attached to electrodes which recorded pulse rate over wheel pressure and could measure aerobic capacity with scientific reliability. The result was a fitness level of zero, compared to a friend of mine who measured 900, and an Olympic athletes measurement of 1200. Another person I met was a forty year old overweight asthmatic with a measurement of 600.

At the same session my body fat was measured with calipers, and I was told that I was all skin and muscle, with virtually no body fat, and that I had the muscle, fat ratio of an athlete, probably due to ten years of sport and gymnastics.

I trained at the fitness programme for three months and achieved a level of 350 kpms, and increased the programme to four times a week and three months later was still at 350 kpm's so I concluded that I had some sort of physical impairment which was limiting my fitness capacity regardless of the amount of exercise I did. I trained more often again for another 3 months and then injured my knee cartilage while playing social volleyball with the other programme participants. My leg remained injured due to diagnosis and post operative problems for 3 years.

During all of that time I was inquiring about my health and studying it and managed to conclude that most of my ailments were aggravated by leaning forward, including the fatigue, and in 1980 wrote a three page essay called The Matter Of Framework, which I have since called The Posture Theory.

One day, while walking along the street I met a friend of mine Clive Thelning, who was blind, and who I had befriended some years earlier when I was studying group psychology at The South Australian Institute of Technology, and I asked him what he was doing. He had completed the Certificate Course, and went on to do a Psychology degree, and was working as a psychologist. I told him about my essay and he said that he knew the head of The Fitness Institute where I trained, so he suggested that I approach the head of the Institute, Tony Sedgwick, with the view to arranging some research on the subject.

At a subsequent meeting with Tony Sedgwick I outlined a potential useful training and research programme for reliably and scientifically assessing the aerobic capacity for people with persistent fatigue, and asked him to discuss it with his research staff to see if they were interested.

At a subsequent meeting he advised me that his staff were fully committed to other projects and invited me to run the programme.

I told him that my health problems would impede my capacity to do such a project properly, and added that I thought I was not able to do scientific studies unless I was a doctor, and that I didn't know how it would be funded. He then advised me that he had some medically qualified contacts and that I could approach them with the view to forming a committee to satisfy all the requirements of administering such a course, and he gave me the name of a politician who I could approach for funding.

A committee was formed and a very small government grant was obtained so the programme was established.

I then approached a journalist named Diane Beer who wrote several articles for the Adelaide "News" inviting people with persistent fatigue to attend the course.

After three years 80 people had been assessed as having aerobic capacities of 100 to 1200 kpms with variable responses to training from those who did not participate, to those who trained but did not gain much in fitness, to one who trained for nine months and participated in a small marathon.

My own health problems and conflicting data stopped me from continuing the programme, but about 5 years later I drew the conclusion that those fatigued people who had low aerobic capacity possibly had a fitness disorder, and those with a high capacity must have had a sleep disorder.

Another five years went by when I was diagnosed with cancer and given two months to live with no hope of a cure.

I did not think that I would be able to study and cure cancer in two months, so I decided to occupy my remaining time by writing about posture and health, and if sitting at a desk aggravated my health problems it wouldn't matter because I would soon be dead anyway.

The task did aggravate my health problems and caused some damage as I wrote a sentence or paragraph at a time. After about 6 years I discovered that standing and typing on a computer screen positioned at eye height caused much less problems than sitting and leaning forward to write at a desk.

The book continued to increase in size at about 150 pages per year and 8 years later in the year 2000 when my cancer was cured by a stem cell transplant, I completed it as the 1000 page 11th edition.

Over the years several editors have commented critically on my writing style as being an unusual collection of sentences, paragraphs, and illustrations, but I have noticed the advantage of spending a lot of time thinking, and a small amount of time writing. M.B.

Why I wrote this theory

(may be a bit of repetition here)