A comprehensive guide on chronic pain, its causes, symptoms, and effective management strategies to improve your quality of life.
Have you ever noticed it takes you a couple of days to recover from a stressful event or over-exertion? A 48-hour recovery period is something you commonly hear about from people with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. We don’t yet know why we need a couple of days to recover from … well, just about anything, but a lot of chronic fatigue syndrome research is focusing on post-exertional malaise—the intensified fatigue and flare of other symptoms following exercise. Several…
Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome (RSDS) and fibromyalgia are two very closely related disorders that often get mistaken for each other. RSDS is more commonly known as “complex regional pain syndrome. When the two disorders meet in one person, life can become very difficult and painful. While there are treatments for both disorders, understanding their differences is important in helping you make sure that the source of your pain is diagnosed correctly as the treatments for…
What Is Chronic Pain? Pain is a complex phenomenon made up of physical, mental, and social components. At a basic level, the ability to perceive pain has helped people survive throughout the ages. Without feeling the uncomfortable sensation when you touch a stove, which causes you to remove your hand, the heat from the stove would end up causing far more damage to the cells in your hand, than it did before you felt the…
Breaking the Cycle of Appointment Fatigue in Chronic Pain Management Living with chronic pain means navigating a constant balancing act—managing symptoms, medications, work, relationships, and self-care. At the core of this juggling act lies an unspoken burden many patients face: appointment fatigue. This term refers to the emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion that comes from attending endless medical appointments, undergoing tests, meeting new specialists, and often, repeating the same explanations of symptoms without seeing long-term…
Fibromyalgia and myofascial pain syndrome often go together. Because of the frequent overlap and some similar symptoms, they’re often mistaken for the same condition and, as a result, people with both are sometimes only diagnosed with and treated for one. That’s a real problem, for three major reasons: Some researchers use the name “chronic myofascial pain” (CMP) instead of myofascial pain syndrome because of evidence it’s a disease, not a syndrome. (A “syndrome” is a set…
Emotional: a word used often nowadays to insult someone for their sensitivity towards a multitude of things. If you cry happy tears, you’re emotional. If you express (even if it’s in a healthy way) that something is bothering you, you’re sensitive. If your hormones are in a funk and you just happen to be sad one day, you’re emotional AND sensitive. Let me tell you something that goes against everything people have probably ever told you.…
Have you ever tried resting in bed, but the sheets are somehow painful enough to keep you awake? Have you ever been outside on a warm day only to have a cool breeze or gust of wind hurt your body all over? Or how about this one: has the elastic on your sleeves, pants, or socks bothered you so badly that you just had to change clothes or go naked for a bit? If you’re…
Thyme is an herb from the mint family. This is a truly ancient herb, used by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans for ceremonial and ritualistic purposes. Through the Middle Ages where it was also used for religious and medicinal reasons. It is an incredibly potent yet simple herb affecting multiple systems in the body and capable of treating dozens of diseases. It contains one of the strongest antioxidants known and is proven to kill 98% of…
Light and noise sensitivity in fibromyalgia (FMS) and chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) have been scientifically established since the early 1990s, but they’re still underrecognized and rarely make symptoms lists. Rest assured that you’re not alone in experiencing this symptom! When I used to take my kids to daycare, some mornings the noise would hit me like a brick wall. In an instant, I’d have pain, nausea, dizziness, trembling, and a looming panic attack. More than once, I had to…
Let’s be perfectly honest. Most doctors have a difficult time with chronic pain patients. One physician described it to us many years ago: “When I see a patient suffering severe chronic pain come in the front door I want to go out the back door.” That’s because there are few good options. Drugs like hydrocodone or oxycodone used to be prescribed in huge quantities. Now gabapentin (Neurontin) and pregabalin (Lyrica) are on the ascendency and…