Explore the medications commonly used to treat Fibromyalgia, including pain relievers, antidepressants, and other options to manage symptoms effectively.
Was this helpful? “To fall is not to fail. You fail when you don’t try.” – Superchick, “Get Up” Click Here to Visit the Store and find Much More…. It’s easy to think of yourself as a failure when fibromyalgia has taken so much away from you. But you are not a failure. You prove that every day by continuing to try. This song quoted above is about persistence and is a wonderful anthem for…
There are a lot of things I wish people understood about Fibromyalgia I would like to share for fibromyalgia awareness. Here are a few… We have ambition. Just like all the ‘normals’ out there we have ambition. Career goals. Things we desired to do with our lives. It is just the syndrome with the pain, fatigue, and comorbid conditions interfering with that reality. We ended up making compromises and getting other jobs. Or we were…
There is this impression that a lot of people do not know about Fibromyalgia or understand it in the general public. I wrote an article in 2020 about How Much Awareness is Out There that suggested there was more than we think. I am going to post the reprint on that. I assume there is even more awareness now via all the 800 drug company commercials. Click Here to Visit the Store and find Much…
At a recent appointment with my naturopath, to the wonderfully named Dr. Love, the topic of recurrent muscle pain flares came up. Anti-inflammatory interventions and nervous system calming remedies had not broken the cycle of muscle pain I experience. My pain predominantly occurs in my upper back/shoulder blades on either side and my glute muscles/SI joints. Even though I stretch and strengthen, which helps, I have not broken out of these painful cycles. My naturopath…
As I have been opening my mouth more and more about Fibromyalgia, The Crusade, awareness, and the general passion of my life to anyone and everyone that will listen I keep having positive experiences! Where I used to get glazed over expressions of distracted disinterest I am now finding myself bombarded with questions of genuine curiosity. I don’t know if the difference is me or Fibro. No longer mopey and sad-faced as I mumble that…
I am launching THE FIBROMYALGIA CRUSADE! I am a Fibromyalgia patient, not a doctor, scientist, researcher, or Ph.D. I am a real woman living a real-life with a real disease that receives little to no respect or understanding from the world at large. I became ill in 2005 and have devoted the last 5 years of my life to overcome the debilitating and miserable reality that is living with Fibromyalgia. My medical history is complex.…
Causes of FM/CFS: Scientific Basis for the Gupta Program The premise of the Gupta program is that fibromyalgia (FM) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME) are caused by abnormalities in the functioning of brain structures that process physical and emotional threats to the body. However, connections in the brain are not fixed and can be rewired. Neuroscientists call this process “neuroplasticity”. The program was created by Ashok Gupta, who suffered from ME/CFS himself, but has since…
Part I: From Onset to Diagnosis For Fibromyalgia Awareness Month, I wanted to share my illness journey here on the blog. My story starts eight years ago. It wasn’t a climactic beginning. It was just achy low back pain that got worse the longer I sat writing my M.A. thesis. It seemed like a common enough problem to have, except for the fact that I was 23. The nurse told me to take ibuprofen 24/7 and…
Like an ‘invisible illness, Fibromyalgia is difficult to diagnose. The symptoms of Fibromyalgia overlap with many other chronic pain conditions, which is why receiving an official diagnosis is often problematic. If you have Fibromyalgia, you will experience widespread pain. This may be felt throughout the entire body or could be worse in certain areas, such as the back or neck. The pain is likely to be prolonged and unpredictable; there will be times when it…
Meditation is a way to practice being present. According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, a pioneer in the field of meditation and medicine, meditation is a practice of cultivating mindfulness, which means “paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” For this post, I wanted to look at some recent research on mindfulness meditation programs involving participants with chronic pain. The purpose of these studies was to assess whether mindfulness can lower pain, reduce depression, and improve…