You might have heard on the news about how Long-Covid is similar to the illness M.E (Myalgicencephalomyeltis)? But that unfortunately is where the similarity ends. For decades the hundreds of thousands of people living with M.E in the UK alone, have been forgotten. Despite M.E being listed by the World Health Organisation as a neurological illness as early as 1969, there has shockingly been no Government funding for any research other than psychiatry, in fact in most cases M.E sufferers were wrongly made to believe it was all in their heads. Thank goodness for charities such as Invest In ME Research https://www.investinme.org/index.shtml , a small charity doing BIG things. With the generosity of the public and supporters they continue to fund projects in the hope of there being a diagnostic test, treatment and eventual cure. The rare thing about this Charity is that it is unwaged, those who run it have day jobs to support themselves, meaning that every penny of your donation goes where it’s supposed to go, in making a real difference.

My sister has had M.E for 30 years, so we've seen first-hand the devastation this complex chronic illness can and has caused. Symptoms include: chronic exhaustion, cardiac and cardiovascular problems, chronic pain and inflammation in muscles and joints, flu type symptoms, sensitivity to light and sound, bowel and bladder problems, memory loss and other cognitive problems to name just a few.

I have been training hard with my mum (Kate Hart) to complete the Royal Parks Half Marathon on Sunday 10th October 2021. I started running before lockdown and have kept it going. We are going to walk the Royal Parks as my mum is 75 but no stranger to challenges as she walked/climbed Kilimanjaro in 2015. I ran the Stevenage 10K on Sunday 19 September in a time of 49:26.

Invest in ME Research is an independent UK charity finding, funding and facilitating a strategy of biomedical research into Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME or ME/CFS).The charity is run by volunteers - patients or parents of children with ME - with no paid staff.Overheads are kept to a minimum and all funds raised to go to promoting education of, and funding for biomedical research into, ME.Our efforts are focused on setting up a UK Centre of Excellence for ME which will provide proper examinations, diagnosis and in time treatment(s)/cure(s).