Traffic
Traffic has been good!
2014 was a very good year for Health Rising. We put out well over two hundred blogs. Web traffic went up about 70% and we’re averaging over 4,000 page views a day. Over 5,000 people now subscribe to the blog.
Without people reading and participating on the blogs this website wouldn’t exist and I couldn’t engage in this work. So thanks to everyone who through their participation and comments has supported Health Rising.
Finances
Almost all of Health Rising’s income come from donors and corporate sponsors. Financially, 2014 was very gratifying as our income rose substantially.
Thanks goes first to my father and Simmaron Research Foundation. The Simmaron Research Foundation was there for us when Health Rising was created in difficult circumstances in late December of 2012 and they’ve been there for us ever since. I can’t thank them enough.
Thanks for your financial support!
ProHealth has very helpful throughout as well, and they continued their strong support. We also welcomed our third and fourth corporate donors, the Fibromyalgia Treatment Group and Hemispherx Biopharma (for a project we’ll unveil in the first third of this year.) Several other large private donors stepped forward as did many other one-time donors.
The many, many people providing from small to large recurring donations provide very important financial support for Health Rising. The saw “if everyone would just contribute or participate we could change the world” has been around for ages, but I can tell you that when the crowd comes – crowdfunding works; the many people who have stepped forward to regularly contribute small and larger amounts to Health Rising have made a major difference in the health and growth of this site.
Our Amazon.com sales increased about 50% as well.
Thank you all very much.
The Health Rising Team
Our small Health Rising team consists of myself and three other people, and our unpaid bloggers.
Thanks to the Health Rising team
I can’t thank Jim Wright enough for his impeccable editing — and his continuing efforts to teach me the basics of grammar and punctuation :). Jim’s willingness to tolerate my itchy trigger finger for publication, and again and again quickly jump on and put his final touches on the blogs has been very gratifying.
Tech support is vital for any website and Stavya Grover’s help from India, as he manages his own up and down case of ME/CFS, has been key for Health Rising. Just how key you will see in the next year as Health Rising undergoes some fundamental changes.
Dennis’s long term support in providing research papers has, of course, absolutely critical. Thank you, Dennis!
The Next Year
At the beginning of last year I promised Health Rising was going to unveil several new programs. I was a year off. We did start off an ME/CFS physicians panel section which sputtered (but is coming back) and our ME/CFS/FM short reports section, but our major goals (forums, reviews, a different take on ME/CFS experts and an advocacy project) were not met.
This was largely because of a series of unforseen financial setbacks (dental work, car accident, dog injury, theft) that ate up a significant portion of the increased financial support HR received. That monetary backlog has been mostly cleared, though, and in the first couple of months of this year Health Rising will have a new website and unveil several new programs that will enhance our ability to communicate, get access to good knowledge, and get across the personal costs of disorders like ME/CFS and FM.
2015 will see a substantial expansion of Health Rising
With the P2P and IOM reports coming out and some major studies underway, I suspect 2015 will end up being a very important year for ME/CFS as well– perhaps even a year in which we’ll see a sea change in how it is perceived and funded. I suspect significant progress will be made in understanding what’s going on in fibromyalgia as well. That will be covered in a Looking Ahead blog coming up shortly.
For myself, I’ve spent much of the last year trekking between coffee shops and libraries and campsites on an extended camping trip across the western United States. Immersing myself in the clean air and beauty of nature, doing stress reduction exercises and continuing to improve my diet has produced dividends. While my ability to exercise is still nothing to write home about, it and my health has improved. I look forward to future improvements.
New Address – Health Rising also has a new address: Cort Johnson, 2555 Hampton Road – Unit 6308, Henderson, NV 89052
Cort,
This is probably a dumb question but with 5000 readers maybe another person is also wondering. :-). If donations are made through this site is a percentage taken out like other fund raising sites or since it’s your own site do you get 100%?
I for one hope Cort makes a very comfortable living from HealthRising. He clearly works hard at it, is very good at it, is doing something of great value, and something that no one else is doing.
Thank you, Cort!
Hope you have a happy, healthy and prosperous new year!
Thanks. One of the reasons of many that I left Phoenix Rising was that my salary – $7200 a year – was going to be reduced significantly at a time when I needed it to increase significantly…in order in part to reduce the support my father was giving me and to have more income myself.
Creating Health Rising resulted in my income increasing significantly. I am still getting support from my father but it has been cut back quite a bit and I hope to end it this year.
Thanks for your good wishes.
Thanks not only to you Cort but a huge thanks to your father!
You have no idea. I am so lucky to have had him around….
Never a question about ME/CFS – never a disparaging comment – just loads of help – for decades! It’s an amazing thing…
Except for Paypal fees – which range from 3-5% it all goes to Health Rising and to support me.
Thanks Cort and everyone else who contributes to making this site happen. It has been important to me to have a place I can go to and expect to learn of anything important happening regarding this illness. I look forward to the progress of your plans for this site. All the best in 2015!
Thanks Greg 🙂
Cort,
Thank you so much for your overview of 2014. I can’t personally thank you enough for this web site, (Health Rising). It’s informative & balanced reporting has made it one of the best resources I have found on ME/CFS. Your engaging nature, has kept this site alive & relevant.
After 10 years with ME, my health has now improved so much that I have been able to move back to the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. I am also able to participate in life again with careful Pacing & Support.
Your site has provide me with some of these tools along the way as well as keping me up to date with the latest ME/CFS developments too!
Regards Howard
Thanks Howard and congratulations on your success with what I imagine has been a quite rigorous pacing program. 🙂
Yes, you are right to some extent Cort.
Pacing, Mindfulness, as well as other self-help techniques were very important in managing the effects of my condition, while, I worked on my physical health with supplements & practitioners.
I have recommended your site to anyone interested in ME/CFS or suffers from it.
It is a shining light in an otherwise dark ME/CFS environment.
Thanks you again for your great commencement to the cause, from a fellow suffer.
🙂
Thanks for all your efforts Cort! This blog is one of the best sources of info I’ve found so far, and really depend on it.
Thanks also to Jim Wright….it’s really nice to read good copy! Typos and grammar errors are one of those things that always trip me up, but don’t notice when they’re not there. I didn’t think about how improved the blog is until you mentioned it! Well done to you both, for good content and good presentation.
All the best in your journeys and blessings on you in the coming year.
Anne
Thanks! I will pass that onto Jim. Typo’s and grammar errors are my Achilles heel…
Thanks Cort
I’m very grateful for all the information you fossick out and transmit.
Thanks beaverfury – I appreciate it. 🙂
Health Rising was an amazingly helpful discovery for me a few months ago, I have learned more helpful stuff in just a few months, than ever before and am taking my Fibro coping to a new level.
It is exciting to see that there is planned expansion of an already great web concept, and I wish you the best success, Cort.
CFS and fibro sufferers have the inherent disadvantage of loss of drive and “the death of aspiration”, so we all owe a lot to the rare minority who break out into effective public advocacy.
“Public” projects are seldom these days driven by an omnipresent look down at society to see where the needs are – it is always about lobbying and influence. CFS and fibro sufferers need to get far better organised to stop being ignored and short-changed, and it is a forum like this one that is going to be the magnet for that.
I think one of the biggest breakthroughs if we can make it happen, is for health providers, especially public ones, to be obliged to fund treatments that are known to aid continued function in society, the workforce and life. Massage therapy is something that has cost me tens of thousands of dollars so far in my lifetime, all for the privilege of being able to keep working and hence paying tax. Why is “keeping people in the workforce” regarded as a net benefit over cost of public funding of treatment for so many other conditions, but not my one?
The eagerness of the health system to actually find a cure for anything, will be partly driven by the costs averted thereby. The health system, both public and private, is getting away with far too much rationing of the care deserved by CFS and fibro sufferers, and therefore has far too little incentive to invest in finding an actual cure. I note particularly that globally, the “private health care” system is pretty much synonymous with the private health care system in the USA. There is not much anywhere else doing the research and investment into treatments and cures; the “public” systems everywhere are mostly just late adopters of whatever the USA’s private system comes up with; if they adopt it at all. Rationing is all-pervasive in public-system-dominated nations.
I have not noticed this site getting into the political discussion of public versus private, and the best mix and the best overall funding approaches. I am one of those who is well acquainted with the downsides of a fully taxpayer-funded “free” public system, and I see the efficiencies of privately provided health care as an inherent part of the potentially best-of-all-worlds system. The US system has some serious problems that are nothing to do with the inherent efficiency difference of “private sector versus public monopoly”.
I would be interested to know if there are any Cadillac Health Insurance policies in the USA that do cover treatments for a policy holder who succumbs to fibro while covered. I know of no public system that does anything beyond prescribe Amitriptylene and other anti-depressants and painkillers, none of which have done anything for me except harmful side-effects. The only things that have actually benefited me, are things I have incurred great expense to provide for myself.
It’s been great having you on board Phil.
I imagine that many of the helpful treatments are not covered by insurance providers. I wish I knew what to do about that.
Hi Cort,
I was talking to my doctor about the study of the patients that had the herpes simplex 1 virus in their guts that were going to be treated with a trial of antiviral drugs and Naltrexone, I think it was. He said if I brought in a certain type of paper about this study he would use it to treat me on a trial basis. I can’t remember the name of the paper he said but I think it may have been an rhetorical analysis. Are you familiar with what he may be looking for and if there is this type of information available on this study.
Thanks for your site!
It Dr. Pridgen and it’s actually Famvir and Celexicob. You can find latest news on it and more blogs on it on the Simmaron Research Foundation blog – http://simmaronresearch.com/2014/11/drug-combo-pridgen-antiviral-fibromyalgia-trial-identified-results-available/
Awesome. Thank you so much Cort. I will bring this information in for my doctor to look at, at the end of the month for my appointment. Crossing my fingers he will let me give the combo a try.
Cort,
You have singlehandedly created such an incredible shift in the intellectual climate with regards to all aspects of understanding of CFS/ME. Your work, persistence and point of view is invaluable and the whole idea of CFS research would not be where it is today had it not been for you. The contribution you have made is so immense that it would be impossible to measure.
Thank you, so very much!!
Marcie Zinn
Wow – that’s really great – particularly coming from you! Thanks so much 🙂
Thank you so much, Cort, for all your efforts on behalf of those of us who have been “marginalized” by the medical establishment in particular, and by the world, in general. I do NOT feel sorry for myself. In fact, I am grateful for each and every day, be it a painful one or a less painful one. I was diagnosed in 2004 with fibromyalgia and since then with PTSD and lumbar spinal stenosis. I’m not saying it’s been easy. This last year, I finally gave up a 30+ year career as a technical writer. I was actually forced out, but it was probably the best thing to happen to me. I do receive SSD because of my age (59) and disabilities, but even with the loss of income, I have been able to focus on my health and my flares are less frequent because I am out from under the stress of a demanding job. Finding this site, with such a wealth of information, has given me hope for the future. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I look forward to the new year knowing that the dedication of one man has and will continue to shine a light on those of us living with ME/CFS and FM and showing us a path to a better life. Blessings to you!
That’s so nice of you to say Marta – thank you very much. I hope this is a breakthrough year for us all. 🙂
am a 55 year old male with cfs had 2 surgeries 2 years ago and then got cfs the only thing we just found high Epstein bar virus am on nexavir for 2 months and just started Valtrex any help anyone am on ldn helps with sleep cant work need advice been to many doctors they don’t know what to do dizzy and fatigue any help or advice will help my phone number is 605 490 9470 if you want to call have a lot of time not much energy to go anywhere. thanks JR
I want to thank you for all your hard work, and your wonderful team. It’s been great to be able to have a blog that has SO much information packed into it, now it’s the only one I follow. It has just about everything that a person with ME/CFS & Fibromyalgia could possibly want to know about, and all the links to research and advocacy are amazing! I can’t possibly keep up with everything, but it’s a miracle to have it right at my (our) fingertips when having a good enough day to process information.