We live in a society which increasingly values individuality: “What can I do about it?”; “How will this help me?”. It’s only natural that once we take personal responsibility for our health and recovery, we think that it’s all down to us.   But no person is an island, and we believe recovery works best in community. In today’s episode, we discuss the important lessons about community we’ve learned from being ill and how our environment directly impacts our health. We also discuss dogs,...

How do you learn to stop people pleasing? Understand your values and introduce some boundaries! In this episode, we discuss how understanding what's important to you (your values) is helpful to make positive changes for your health (boundaries!). The life you were living pre-chronic fatigue may not have been conducive to good health moving forward, and you may value different things now. But putting into place new boundaries that reflect these changes isn't always easy. In today's episode,...

Lightning Process, DNRS, Gupta Method… chances are if you have chronic fatigue syndrome you may have come across one of the many ‘Brain retraining’ programmes that claim to help people heal. But can changing the brain really heal the body from a physical ailment? In today’s epsiode, we delve into some of the science that supports brain retraining methods, the impact an impaired limbic system can have on the body and our own experiences with brain retraining. As always, these are purely our...

In this episode, we dive deep into the ‘emotionally repressed’ personality trait from our previous conversation, how it links to chronic fatigue and which strategies may help us regulate and process our emotions better. We discuss how we’ve historically avoided our emotions and where that’s led healthwise, and the techniques of Dr Sarno, Tara Brach, Emily and Amelia Nagoski and Dr Gabor Mate have all helped us process unresolved trauma and day to day emotions which arise. All views are just...

In this episode, we assess what many doctors, psychologists and authors have found - that particular personality traits can lead to chronic illnesses. Alex Howard, Gabor Mate, Dr Sarno and others suggest that people pleasers, those who suppress their emotions and individuals with harsh inner critics,  may come to suffer chronic  ailments. While you may not see yourself in all these characteristics (as we don’t!) and the degree to which these factors have affected our health is debatable, we...

If you've been in the fatigue community a while, you'll have noticed there’s a lot of opinions when it comes to diet and nutrition. Low FODMAPs, Histamine-free, GAPs protocol, Paleo-Keto... there's no end to the protocols you can try. But when food is one of the last great comforts in life, it can be pretty gruelling and intimidating to give these up.  In this episode, we speak through our experiences with nutrition fuelling our health, our four key learnings when it comes to nutrition and...

When you have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, New Year's Resolutions can feel overwhelming and intimidating. But having a vision and goals for your life, no matter how small, can be incredibly valuable in: 1) Adding a sense of purpose, 2) Helping you measure progress, and 3) Building trust with yourself In this episode, we introduce a framework that may help you approach your life's vision and goals, built around your daily routine, based upon James Clear's Atomic Habits, Gemma Hanley's...

As we head towards the end of the year, we discuss another fundamental part of recovery from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - learning how to pace yourself.  When your health is so up and down, it can be easy to push hard on the days you're feeling a little better; to crack through your to-do list, catch up with as many friends as possible, and push yourself just that little bit harder. Especially at this festive time of year. We've been there! Believe us... Unfortunately though, overdoing it and...

"Sleep is so essential but often so elusive..."  In Episode 3, we continue the conversation on the importance of rest in our recovery journeys from chronic fatigue syndrome, focussing on how to achieve good, restorative sleep. We delve into the science behind that 'wired and tired' feeling that often accompanies chronic fatigue (..or at least as we understand it), our top tips for good sleep, and the sleep hacks we've tried in a game of 'thumbs up, thumbs down'.  Can you beat Stu's score in...

We know what you're thinking: you’ve mentioned to someone that you have Chronic Fatigue and they say...”just rest!”. If only it were that simple...  In our second episode, we begin the conversation on rest and sleep; how our relationship with rest has changed over the course of our illnesses, why real rest is so crucial at all stages of recovery, and how we deal with the inevitable boredom that comes from spending so much time lying down! All with a little help from our hairy bear-y friends,...

Living with a chronic illness is hard, which is why in our first topic, we discuss the 5 stages of Acceptance, and why they are important for healing. It’s a bit heavy on the theory side (sorry!), as we explore the sum of what we’ve learnt about acceptance over the combined 8 years we've struggled with this illness. It will all get broken down in future episodes! Look no further for the first instalment of Lindsay’s top tips from the animal world and Stu’s own poem ’The Unlearning’. Just a...

Welcome to Post Viral. We're Lindsay Vine and Stuart Bryan and in this episode, we share our journeys recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (so far!).  Wherever you are on your healing journey, our hope is that this podcast helps you feel less alone, inspired, and ready to take control of your health. We know how cruel and confusing this illness can be, with endless sources of advice and health hacks demanding your energy, time and money, so while this podcast is not medical advice, we'll...