Blogging about Gulf War illnesses

Written by Anthony Hardie

(91outcomes.com) – As a disabled Gulf War veteran myself, I’m going to try something new for 91outcomes.com – blogging in the first person about my own experiences related to Gulf War illnesses, the various treatments I’ve tried, about which I’ve read studies for or against, what seems to help, and what seems to make things worse.

Please take what I write with a grain of salt.  While I’m well read and active in the Gulf War illnesses scientific research community, I remain a lay person who is neither a medical doctor nor a Ph.D. 

That said, here goes.  And for the readers of 91outcomes, your feedback is most welcome.

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It seems like discussions among most of us veterans of the 1991 Gulf War who have had health issues ever since 1991 revolve around a few main topics: 

• Exposures during the Gulf war, including those that are known, probable and possible
• Symptoms we have experienced ever since;
• Diagnosed health conditions that we now have and that we believe are related in one way or another to our Gulf War service (whether they really are or not);
• Treatments that we have tried, including those that help with one or more symptoms, those that didn’t work or made things worse, and those that seemed to help for a while and then suddenly didn’t anymore; and
• What the future might hold for us, health-wise.

Sound familiar?  I know I’ve had these conversations many times over the years.

I’ll try to talk a little about each of these in the upcoming weeks, and what I’ve learned either for myself (“anecdotally”) or from peer-reviewed scientific research studies. 

And please, feel free to comment and let me know what you think, or if you’ve had experiences of your own that are similar or different than mine. 

From here and over the next few weeks, I guess we’ll see how this experiment progresses.   

Thanks!

-Anthony