Celebrate the resilience of Fibromyalgia warriors, sharing stories of strength, tips for managing symptoms, and resources for support and empowerment.
Osteoarthritis is known to occur in those suffering with fibromyalgia, but why? Find out in this blog. Not to be confused with osteoporosis, osteoarthritis affects the cartilage in your joints and wears them down over time, causing the bones to rub together. As a condition, osteoarthritis can make it extremely hard for you to move around, leaving you feeling uncomfortable, particularly for those of you who are looking to be active in any way. Symptoms…
An illness like fibromyalgia permeates every aspect of your life – it forever alters the trajectory of your story. For this year’s Fibromyalgia Awareness Day, I wanted to reflect on how my diagnosis changed my path, both in negative and positive ways. I have written about my story before, but here I want to talk about the impact my diagnosis had. Initially, all I could see afterward was a loss in every direction, as if…
When is the last time scheduled a rest day? I am not talking about spending the day in bed because your chronic illness flared and made leaving it impossible. What I am asking is, when did you last choose a day to relax, give your body a break, and allow yourself to chill out in front of the television for no reason other than you wanted to? I don’t need a rest day The problem…
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…
Recently published research stated that those patients with Rheumatoid arthritis had higher pain levels if they also were diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. “Fibromyalgia is associated with worsening function in rheumatoid arthritis patients”.”The researchers noted that Fibromyalgia is a debilitating syndrome characterized by widespread, non-articular pain. The condition is more common in RA patients, with a prevalence of about 20% compared with 2.5% in the general population.” A few additional facts from the study included a psychosocial…
A number of years ago I had a female patient that doubled as a famous female singer. Her resemblance to the singer was remarkable. After performances, this patient double would be ushered through the crowd to a limo that the followers and photographers would converge on. While this was happening the star singer was going out a side door with no crowd. It was great theatrics. When she was in town and available I would…
Talk about “coming out”. Lady Gaga announced she had to enter a hospital and cancel a number of future engagements due to severe body pain and fatigue that has been diagnosed as Fibromyalgia. She was very positive but she had no time schedule as to when she might be able to return to a regular schedule of work. If you have Fibromyalgia or know of someone who has this disease you know that this debilitating…
Last week I traveled to the California Fibromyalgia Research and Treatment Center to visit with Doctor R. Paul St. Amand and his assistant Claudia Marek. During my visit, I found that the research center is getting closer to identifying the genetic component that triggers fibromyalgia and its many symptoms. Since pharmaceutical companies control where and how much of the research money is distributed the ability to complete the study is lacking. Guaifenesin, the OTC product…
Obviously, I cannot answer for all of the people of the countries in the world, however, those people that I interviewed for the most part either never heard of fibromyalgia or had very little knowledge of this condition. In my opinion, the people that I interviewed were well educated. Some had heard the term fibromyalgia but had little knowledge of this condition except for some similarity to flu-like symptoms. Any of the other many symptoms…
In twenty-four years working clinically with fibromyalgia patients I have yet to meet one that does not have some lumps, bumps, and/or water-filled swellings also known as lesions just below the skin. What are these and where do they come from? They most often are not painful trigger points. They are areas of swollen tissue. With excess phosphate and calcium in fibromyalgia patients’ cells, the body is unable to evacuate these and other chemicals. These…