A comprehensive guide on chronic pain, its causes, symptoms, and effective management strategies to improve your quality of life.
I have lived with Fibromyalgia for 30 years. The answers to this question are true and help to explain some of the new symptoms I’m experiencing. For example, when I stand up, I’m dizzy and have to be very careful or I walk into walls or furniture or trip and fall down. Everyone has been blaming this on the medication I take for depression and pain but when I look them up, dizziness is not…
Let’s remember that despite all of our great science, we don’t fully understand either central sensitization or fibromyalgia. So the question is cute but unanswerable. Central sensitization means that there is altered processing of sensation in the spinal cord and brain. Imagine you have an mp3 player and you plug it into an amplifier and then to some speakers. The mp3 player is like the tiny signals coming **constantly** from the nerves that touch all…
The best way is to accept it and moderate it in a moment-by-moment exercise. The stress of the “fight” will only make the pain worse for most with fibro. My new normal is that I am in pain every second of every day. I avoid unnecessary stressors which include movies and tv shows that are too intense. If a sporting event causes “tension and release” that is excessive for me, I stop watching. If a…
You know this is the craziest thing I am going to talk about now… I’m not sure what the percentage is, but I can tell you that I spent years taking Adderall for ADHD and then had to stop taking it when I got pregnant. During the hiatus from that medication, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. After unsuccessful attempts at treating it with many of the same methods you mentioned, I decided that I was…
Get your genes mapped. If you have either fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue it is probably most likely due to “Soft Tissue Calcification” which is caused by the body not excreting enough sulfur and phosphorus, which is caused by having genetic mutations like CBS 699 and SUOX mutations. The treatment for these mutations right now is to eat a diet that is very low in sulfur and phosphorus and calcium and vitamin D because these will…
Diagnosed 10 years ago. Every day is a new mystery I am ridiculously picky about my clothes, since mild to moderate Allodynia is one of my Fibromyalgia symptoms. No sleeves of any fabric, soft fleece if I need a jacket. No bra. Between allodynia and costochondritis? Let them tiddies sag. I like breathing with less pain and not getting rashes. Screw the rules. No wool, cashmere, or other animal fibers. When they are cut, they…
It’s hard to address them all at once. I’ll just mention that your issue with panic attacks is probably both psychological as well as physiological. From your wording, it sounds as though you experienced anticipatory anxiety about having a panic attack which then operates in a self-fulfilling prophecy fashion to trigger a panic attack. So there’s an initial cognitive element, which then produces a physiological result. That’s pretty common but also points to the fact…
The pain of fibromyalgia is real and the patients need help. The most frustrating element for fibromyalgia patients is that some healthcare providers think it is a “fad disease” and that erodes the doctor-patient trust that is so essential in treating patients with painful conditions. I will highlight a few points about fibromyalgia in plain English without any medical terms so that patients and families with no medical background can understand it. Click here to…
The brief answer is that in 2002 I was 33 and I took up running again after a four-year absence due to a ruptured disk that needed surgery to fix. When I began to run it became a real joy in my life. It was a mind over matter hobby that helped me to discover how far I could push my body and learn to listen to it at the same time. During my running…
About eight years ago, I went to my OB/GYN as I was experiencing some mild fatigue and joint pain. I had had a 20-year career as a dancer and had been diagnosed with osteoarthritis. I was having some anxiety about work and had been through a recent breakup, but we looked at physiological causes anyway and ruled out lupus, RA, and Lyme disease. When my anxiety about an impending merger at work became worse, we…