Freedom from Fibromyalgia

When you’re taking a natural route to recovery from fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, you need trusted sources of information.

One that I rely on locally (in British Columbia, Canada) is a magazine called alive, which has been keeping its readers up-to-date with natural health for more than 30 years.

For instance, here’s a comprehensive article on fibromyalgia and here’s another on Living with Fibromyalgia

As well, every issue of alive contains information on environmental concerns, holistic healing, nutrition, weight loss and more.

Every issue is searchable on site, with free access.

I was there this morning looking for information on cleansing and found this article by Brenda Watson, ND, who I’d just enjoyed watching on a PBS pledge drive.

 

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Even if you’ve decided that drugs are not the answer, and you’re ready to explore alternative medicine, you’re likely to be overwhelmed by too many choices, and too many practitioners to choose from.

As well, you may soon realize that you’re going to need multiple therapies, to repair all the systems in your body.

Now what?

That’s why it’s good to hear of services like the one offered by Oregon’s Health & Science University:

After decades of unsuccessfully managing health problems attributed by physicians to fibromyalgia, Masha Sanders, 57, found herself asking that question “I was so exhausted I would cry at work. I was seeing a doctor, taking medication, but nothing was clicking,” Sanders said. “It was scary. I was at a point of deterioration.”

Enter Oregon Health & Science University’s innovative Alternative Medicine Consultation Service. This service, which operates within the Center for Women’s Health Integrative Medicine Program, offers both men and woman a crash course in complementary and alternative treatment options.

Unfamiliar with alternative medicine, but frustrated with traditional medical care, Sanders enrolled in the consultative service and followed the personalized list of recommendations given by a team of four health professionals from varied medicinal disciplines — professionals who believed that despite Sanders’ fibromyalgia, depression was the underlying root of her health problems. “Five weeks later, my life has turned around. Now I get out of bed in the morning and I’m ready to do things,” she said.

You can read the complete article here. 

And if you’re aware of a similar service in your neck of the woods, let me know so we can start building a list of resources.

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Looking back, I now believe that my first tangle with what later came to be known as fibromyalgia came in the mid-70s, following a physical attack and its aftermath.

I used to describe my state as “feeling like I’ve been run over by a truck” and “having a fog machine in my head.” Many years later, when I read that many other fibro people used these same phrases, I was so excited I fell out of bed!

Back then, though, there seemed to be no reason for my unrelenting fatigue and other symptoms. I didn’t get a great deal of sympathy from my then-boyfriend and learned to keep my complaints to myself.

As time went on, I had good days and bad days. Good years and bad years. But it was only about five or six years ago that I was officially diagnosed.

In the beginning, I wanted a Quick Fix — either through traditional medicine or through alternative therapies. So began a journey through a variety of treatments and therapies.

What I came to realize is that — for me, at least — there is no one, single answer. Instead, I’ve gradually put together a new wellness plan that includes lifestyle changes, nutrition, supplements, fibro-friendly movement, structural therapies, and more.

When I have a temporary “relapse,” I now know exactly what lead to it. More importantly, I can draw from what I call my “Toy Box” … a variety of healing tools to get me feeling good again.

Since I don’t consider fibromyalgia a disease, I don’t speak of what I do as a cure. Rather, I believe that the many symptoms of fibro (and I’ve experienced almost all of them) are indications of a body out of balance. So my job is to do whatever it takes to restore that balance.

We’re all different. We’ll all be attracted to, and helped by, a different combination of changes and treatments. I’m excited to be sharing this journey with you.

 

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Next time someone questions whether or not the pain you experience with fibromyalgia is “real,” send them to this article.

“It is time for us to … take these patients seriously”

Doctors at the University of Michigan and elsewhere have been using neuroimaging techniques — functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) — to demonstrate that patients with fibromyalgia have a lower pain threshold than the rest of the population.

As one of the researchers, Richard E. Harris, Ph.D., comments: “It is time for us to move past the rhetoric about whether these conditions are real, and take these patients seriously….”

 

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Do you ever find yourself thinking that we are living in the most astonishing time and place?   I can remember my grandmother Jenny, born in 1890, talking about growing up in the horse-and-buggy era … and she lived to see men walking in space.

Grandma grew up at a time when doctors were just coming — reluctantly — to accept “the germ theory of disease.” In those days, up to 25% of women who delivered their babies in hospitals died from childbed fever, later found to be caused by Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria. Often, medical students would come straight from doing an autopsy into the delivery room.

But among most of the medical profession, hostility to the idea of washing their hands before surgery was fierce.

Now, not only do we accept the IDEA of bacteria, we can see them. (And be amazed at their beauty.)

Beyond that, there is now a bewildering array of healing methods to choose from. Everything from Bach Flower Remedies, to Therapeutic Touch, to Holotropic Breathwork, and much more.

This Freedom from Fibromyalgia blog will become a place for me (and I hope you, too) to explore some of the old and new therapies that are transforming our world.

Is there something you’d like to explore or contribute? Be sure to let me know…

Cheers!

Sheila

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