Fibromyalgia and Me

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Fibromyalgia Exercise is one of the most powerful natural remedies in the treatment of fibromyalgia. Increasing scientific evidence has shown that exercising for a minimum of 20 minutes per day will help fibromyalgia patients as a natural fibromyalgia treatment. Exercise becomes a key component in healing FM Syndrome patients because a properly designed routine will improve the body tissues, decrease pain, and increase mobility. The fibromyalgia exercise program must be slow and gradual. The goal is to improve overall health while decreasing FM symptoms

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An overview of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and how clinical nutrition can be used to address the problem. symptoms: difficulty with sleeping, muscle and/or joint pain at multiple sites without evidence of inflammation, headaches, painful lymph nodes

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If you have fibromyalgia pain, you’re likely clenching right now.

“Clenching is an involuntary reaction to stress,” says Doris Cope, MD, director of Pain Management at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “People tense their muscles, and probably don’t even realize they’re doing it. That reduces blood flow to the muscles, which causes pain.”

That’s why a stressful lifestyle — plus too much couch time — is a double-whammy for conditions like fibromyalgia. Too little exercise slows blood flow to muscles, so fibromyalgia pain just gets worse.

Exercise Helps Fibromyalgia Pain

Revving your pulse is one remedy, Cope says. “Running, walking, having sex with your husband — these increase your pulse rate so you’re getting more blood to muscles. That will reduce pain in muscles. The worst thing [for pain] is to lie there, because then it will only hurt more.”

Studies show that walking, stretching, and strength training all help control fibromyalgia pain and muscle tenderness.

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Fatigue may be defined as a subjective state in which one feels tired or exhausted, and in which the capacity for normal work or activity is reduced. There is, however, no commonly accepted definition of fatigue when it is considered in the context of health and illness. This lack of definition results from the fact that a person’s experience of fatigue depends on a variety of factors. These factors include culture; personality; the physical environment (light, noise, vibration); availability of social support through networks of family members and friends; the nature of a particular fatiguing disease or disorder; and the type and duration of work or exercise. For example, the experience of fatigue associated with disease will be different for someone who is clinically depressed, is socially isolated, and is out of shape, as compared to another person who is not depressed, has many friends, and is aerobically fit.

Fatigue is sometimes characterized as normal or abnormal. For example, the feeling of tiredness or even exhaustion after exercising is a normal response and is relieved by resting; many people report that the experience of ordinary tiredness after exercise is pleasant. Moreover, this type of fatigue is called acute.

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I get it now!  I understand why the airlines are going broke.  It has nothing to do with gas prices - okay, they do play a part.  But it has more to do with poor management and 19th century planning in the 21st century.

You might wonder how I came to this conclusion.  Relax - I’ll fill you in.  It has to do with a vacation we have planned in October.  We’re leaving from T F Greene Airport near Providence, RI and our ultimate destination is Denver, CO.  There are no longer any non-stops so we go for as few changes as possible.  In this case, our itinerary will be Providence, RI to Cincinnati, OH to Denver, CO (reverse order on the way home, of course).

My husband plans our trips well ahead of leaving because he’s found it’s usually less expensive that way.  Now that we’re dealing with Delta Airlines in this day of diminishing airline satisfaction, I’m not certain he’s happy about that.  Oh, it’s definitely been cost effective in dollars.  But I think the cost in aggravation and stress should be factored in as well!

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There is a lot of debate as to whether there is such a thing as “secondary” fibromyalgia due to some sort of trauma. Often, the trauma is the result of a fall, or a car accident. Such “post-traumatic” fibromyalgia patients are more severely affected, with more pain, and are therefore more difficult to treat.

Fibromyalgia may take many weeks to fully develop after a trauma. One theory holds that pain spreads from one region (for example, the shoulder after a fall) to the rest of the body. In fact, this post-traumatic fibromyalgia phenomenon can be seen as starting as a myofascial pain problem which over weeks to months spreads throughout the body, resulting in the total body pain seen in fibromyalgia.

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The NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptor is thought to play a part in mood, cognition, memory and learning. Overactivity of the receptor resulting in central sensitization has been implicated in chronic pain, including fibromyalgia and migraines. It could also explain other symptoms of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME).

Excessive activation of the NMDA receptors can lead to a phenomenon called excitotoxicity, which destroys brain cells. This can happen in epilepsy and some neurodegenerative illnesses. NMDA antagonists (blockers) are neuroprotective, but they may adversely affect memory in healthy people. On the other hand, if the receptor is overactive, blocking it can alleviate cognitive problems.

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The line in the graph shows the decreases in a fibromyalgia patient’s pain distribution during treatment. The pain distribution is the percentage of 36 body divisions containing pain, indicated by her on her pain drawing. Her pain distribution decreased during metabolic (i.e. thyroid) treatment, during the first six weekly evaluations. However the pain did not decrease further until soft tissue treatment was begun, at the time of the tenth evaluation, to desensitize several myofascial trigger points.

John Lowe is a Chiropractic Physician who has done an enormous amount of valuable work in researching and treating hormonal imbalances, particularly relating to the thyroid. To this end he has produced a huge volume of work, the most notable being his book The Metabolic Treatment of Fibromyalgia.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a serious illness and poses a dilemma for patients, their families, and health care providers.

The CDC says “a variety of studies by CDC and others have shown that between 1 and 4 million Americans suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). They are seriously impaired, at
least a quarter are unemployed or on disability because of CFS.” People who suffer from CFS have unrelenting fatigue severe enough to limit the most basic daily living tasks of bathing, cleaning, and dressing.

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