A detailed guide to understanding Fibromyalgia symptoms, early warning signs, and how they are diagnosed.
Bless your heart! I would say to you to get a notebook dedicated to writing down everything you eat and how you are feeling every day. Write down your pain levels and fatigue levels and how your food affects you. If any foods cause you to have abdominal pain eliminate them from your diet. Additionally, stop all sugar except in the form of fresh whole organic fruit. This is because I believe that fibromyalgia is…
I always find it helpful to soak in a hot Epsom salt bath (the calm scent one or relax one), it helps the aching body as the water cools stay as long as you can handle it and then pat dry do not rinse. There are periods when I’m cold and can’t warm up a hot bath or shower…. Then there are periods I’m hot and can’t cool down- yep as cold of a shower…
My case is not particularly bad compared to many, so I try hard to be grateful it isn’t worse. Fibromyalgia evolves with life, usually constantly piling on and adding to the list of symptoms. Once in a great while, a problem might scale back or go into remission. I had bad migraines consistently approximately 3 days per week for 30 years, but those have since tapered off and now are only a few per year.…
Traditionally, rheumatologists do the testing to find fibromyalgia. That is because originally, nobody knew what fibromyalgia was and they assumed, as it was linked to pain in joints and muscles, that it should fall under the department of rheumatology. So, in a lot of countries, they are still the ones that do the testing. The way you test to see if you have fibromyalgia is in two stages: the first one is the clinical diagnosis,…
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…
After 27 years of service, decorated U.S. Army Brigadier General Becky Halstead (Retired), the first female West Point graduate in U.S. history to command at the strategic level in Iraq and Afghanistan, decided to retire after being diagnosed with fibromyalgia – a medically unexplained syndrome affecting the muscles and connective tissues. Currently, the disease affects as many as 12 million Americans and has been reported two times as prevalent in deployed veterans. “Agonizing pain, debilitating…
When people ask, I explain Fibromyalgia (“FMS”) as “experiencing pain where there’s no injury.” This is why it’s so difficult to treat. Based on my experience, and that of about 50 other people with a connection to FMS that I’ve questioned over the years, I have believed for many years now that it is caused by trauma – physical trauma, like a car accident, or emotional trauma, such as a bad divorce, because the physical…
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…
I’m not an expert with medical credentials but I can answer as a survivor who’s found her own peace with this crazy illness. It seems there’s a genetic factor in some people that some sort of trauma-physical, mental, or emotional-sets off or triggers fibromyalgia. My fibromyalgia came after a hysterectomy and the following emergency surgery to remove my infected hemorrhaging ovaries. I was on the mend when I started having severe stomach problems (IBS) that…
This is the 64 million dollar question. I wish I could answer it but fibromyalgia is complicated and so are its causes. However, I will say that I’m sure it’s connected to the evil quad that is causing so many people to be sick these days: antibiotic use, too much sugar in the diet, a sterile, nutrient-free, toxin overloaded food supply (thanks to agribusiness) and bad chemicals in all the plastics our foods are packaged…