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, which includes trigger points on your body, a review of all your symptoms, and sometimes a questionnaire to see how your fatigue and pain affects your daily life.
The second one is an “exclusion diagnosis”, which means that you have to be checked for every disease that presents similar symptoms (MS, Spondylitis, rheumatoid polyarthritis…). So, they will make you take MRIs, blood tests, sleep tests, and a bunch of other stuff that takes ages, just to be sure you don’t have of one those other diseases.
Once you’re “officially diagnosed” with fibromyalgia, you can stay at your rheumatologist, although most have a certain disdain for the disease, or you can seek someone who gives a shit. It can be a neurologist or a physiotherapist. In any case, once the diagnosis is official, you need someone asap that you can trust and feel is in your corner. This is vital. If the doctor you have in front of you is “fibro-skeptic”, run.
Also: there are now tests to objectively “see” fibromyalgia in a patient but they aren’t commonly used. However, if someone says “there is no way to biologically see if you have fibromyalgia”, it’s a lie. We can now see altered responses to pain stimuli in the brain on cat scans, or high levels of nerve capillaries in the hands through a biopsy.
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 years, I knew already that my mother had Fibromyalgia and from there, her symptoms became something I learned about and talked with her about.
So in late 2003 at 34 years of age, I began to experience some painful realities. For instance, when I would sneeze I felt a powerfully strong wave of pain flush through my upper body. The kind of cringe-worthy pain that kept me stunned until several moments when it disappeared or until I sneezed again which was normal since I typically sneezed twice in a row. This sort of pain I kept to myself and I’m glad to say that I don’t experience this as much as I did early on.
As a runner, I felt like I could run for miles and feel the better for it physically and mentally. So in late 2003, my second set of symptoms came with great discouragement when on Monday I ran 11 miles with such satisfaction that I couldn’t wait to push myself further on Tuesday.
But on Tuesday I experienced a fatigue brand new to me. No pain and no stiffness that seemed foreign to me but the fatigue worried me. I could not even run a half-mile without having to turn back. This continued to be sort of a pattern with me at the time. As healthy as I was there should be no excuse for this fatigue.
I saw my doctor and we went over my symptoms and landed on depression, which was and has been a true struggle since my high school days. Possibly I’m not sleeping well enough and lack certain vitamins. But these symptoms are not typical with fibromyalgia even if I trace back to this timeframe as my onset.
It wasn’t until 2007 when I sat down with my mother and knowing full well what she was going through it really was quite easy for both of us to fully self-diagnose me with fibromyalgia. From there it took a few years to get a doctor to believe what I already knew.
So this is my brief version, there are many years of loss and pain that only people with chronic pain live with could possibly relate to.
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 tried an SSRI, but the side effects were untenable, and talk therapy seemed to work better. We kind of wrote it off to a lot of typical midlife stuff and arthritis, but my NP thought it could be fibromyalgia.
Fast forward to about four years ago. The merger at work resulted in me having been made redundant. I had gone through a financial crisis like many people during the economic downturn–drained my savings, lost my house, etc. I was an empty nester and had become the target of some parental alienation when my ex remarried. I had had to put one of my dogs to sleep, and my BF had broken up with me.
I had moved to Mexico, a traumatic event itself, where the COL is low, and I worked both at my own business and paid jobs from home and in San Diego to support myself. I had a big event in San Diego for my business that necessitated getting up at 3 am, driving a long distance, stressing about the border crossing, and stressing about the event itself.
Everything went fine, but two days later I could hardly walk I was so tired. I kept thinking I was coming down with the flu, but it never happened. After a bit of looking on the Internet, I finally decided I was likely having a fibro flare. It went away in less than a week, and I thought nothing more about it until about six months ago.
I had moved house for the fourth time since moving to Mexico. I had been through the wringer over the previous four years with unbelievable stress. Two banks had at separate times discontinued my ATM card because of general bank fraud here, leaving me stranded without money.
I witnessed the immediate aftereffects of two cartel hits. I found out one landlord was a gangster who had every unit in my building hooked up to my electric meter. He kidnapped one of my dogs (witnessed by neighbors) and dumped him outside of town.
After some similar experiences, as well as my car being hit three times without compensation, I was in another house, a little further south. It was arduous getting there because a freelance writing client (the primary line of work I had settled on to supplement my own business) had left for Europe for six weeks without paying her bill–thousands of dollars I needed to move.
Then I come to find out that at this place, the property manager has been cooking the books on the rent and stealing from the landlady, who in turn, wants to kill me and take all my belongings–apparently a common practice of hers. (If you’re tempted to think I’m making this up, live for a while in Baja.)
I spent two weeks walking around with a knife on my belt, my Rottweiler, who BTW, protected me from an intruder in the middle of the night, always at my side. I had to pay $500 to bribe the guard to open the gate to let me out with my moving truck, my entire house packed overnight, knowing I had to go. I had the night duty officer at the consulate on speed dial.
I get to the new house, the one I’m in now, and I’m working like a dog writing web content remotely to catch up with the $500 bribe money and pay my new rent. The LL is cool, understanding what happened, I’m settling in, walking my dogs on the beach every morning, commending myself for surviving the last half-decade, and finally finding a nice place to live, like there’s some sort of karmic justice in the world.
And wham… I wake up one day, and it’s like I’ve been hit by a truck in my sleep. I can hardly walk, every joint in my body is on fire, and I’m overwhelmed with fatigue. This sort of ebbs after a month or so until I trip over a piece of PVC pipe lying on a restaurant patio and fall on both knees, one of which has had surgery for arthritis. Back with the pain… again…
I have finally only recently recovered from the pain of that fall, but I am left with crushing fatigue. I am grateful every day I can work from home as a writer, but I have put my other biz on hiatus and become a hermit with my social life. I have to believe that my fibromyalgia is primarily stress–induced (I could probably list 20 more things like the ones above), but there are clearly physical triggers as well. I wonder too if my arthritis didn’t predispose me somehow to it, or even the knee surgery I had to treat it.
There was also an aspect of stress/adrenaline keeping my fibro at bay when I basically couldn’t afford to be disabled and then my body kind of relinquishing when I could finally rest. I am menopausal, and I’m sure my thyroid/adrenal system is shot. I probably have some PTSD too from chronic fear over the last few years.
My weight has gone up between everything I have related above. I have tried to get Obamacare, but the system says I don’t exist, after numerous initiations setting up an account. It’s probably because I haven’t used a credit card in years, so my identity can’t be verified. The last time my ATM card failed, it took four tries before a bank could verify my identity to get a new one. It finally became more stressful trying to get health insurance than having the insurance would have been worth it.
I can’t untangle what’s what, so I try to treat the common factors by reducing stress, eating as healthily as I can, reducing alcohol and caffeine, and getting a good night’s sleep. I take a tiny amount of tramadol, which is available OTC here, thank God, as well naproxen and Tylenol for pain. Occasionally I take a small dose of Valium to knock myself out at night when I really need to sleep, which I don’t always do well, in spite of my fatigue.
I have stopped giving a flying flip what anyone thinks of me at this point, including family and friends who just “hmm hmm” me if I try to explain either my fibro or the circumstances that seem to have precipitated it.
If I could be granted a magical genie’s wish, I think I’d go back in time to make a million different choices to erase the physical and mental stresses that led to where I am today. The philosopher in me likes to think sometimes that I’ve been led down this path to make me a better writer or fulfill some other grand plan, but then I remember what it was like to run or have any sort of a normal life, and I don’t know. I don’t know if I would trade a Nobel Prize for this condition.
Imagine being beaten and having huge bruises over your entire body, with a full-body sunburn on top of that, and having someone taking a stick and repeatedly poking all your tender spots while you are trying to run a long marathon. For someone with Fibromyalgia, everyday tasks are just as exhausting as running a marathon. Even simple things, like taking a shower, requires 5 times the amount of energy for someone with Fibro and CFS, then it does for a healthy person.
In addition, they often feel like they have the whole body muscle aches of the flu. Imagine trying to live your life with the pain and utter exhaustion of the flu and never getting any better. This is why everyday activities are often utterly debilitating for someone with Fibromyalgia.
Okay, now that you are sufficiently bruised, sunburned, and achy from the flu, don’t sleep for two days straight. No coffee, sugar, or carbs to keep you awake either. How tired and slow do you feel? Can you still think normally? Yes? Go another day without sleeping, until you are so tired you can’t remember how to spell simple words, and chewing food to too exhausting.
Now that you are tired enough, take 50 clothespins and put them on yourself in random places over your sunburn and bruises. Make sure to get your legs, arms, neck, shoulders, back, hands, and feet. Leave them on and try to go about your normal day even though you have the flu and feel like you can’t even get out of bed.
Leave the pins on and try to take a shower, brush your teeth, get dressed, go to work, run errands, cook a meal, clean your house, go see a movie with friends, play with your kids, pay your bills, mow the lawn. If the pins fall off, put them back on in a different spot.
Don’t take anything for the pain, because it won’t really take the pain away anyway, since the clothespins are still on. Leave those clothespins on until it hurts so bad you want to scream and you have tears in your eyes, and you can’t possibly stand another second. Go ahead and take them off.
How long did you last? Feel the pain radiate through your whole body? This is the kind of pain someone with Fibromyalgia lives with EVERY DAY. Only, we can’t take the clothespins off, the flu and bruises and sunburn never go away, and the marathon never ends. Even when sitting or laying down, we still feel the pain and are still exhausted.
According to the McGill pain scale, Fibromyalgia is directly under Childbirth as one of the most painful things a person can endure. Fibromyalgia pain ranks higher than sprains, bone breaks, tooth fractures, arthritis, post-shingles nerve pain, chronic back pain, phantom limb pain, and cancer.
This is really what it is like for us every day.
Everyone experiences some level of pain in their lifetime, but the difference is, eventually they heal, the pain goes away and they can go back to living their normal everyday life as if nothing has happened. For someone with fibromyalgia, the pain never goes away.
They can not just go back to their normal life as if nothing has changed. Their life is forever changed, and they often lose the ability to work or do things they once enjoyed, because the pain and fatigue consume their entire life and every waking moment. When your life is so drastically changed, you feel like a part of you has died, and you are only a shell of the person you used to be.
You are mourning and grieving the life you lost, only no one else knows the person you used to be has died. They don’t care, because they can’t possibly understand. How could they? They aren’t the ones who have to live in your body and endure the pain you feel every second of every day for the rest of your life.
ABSOLUTELY!!! December 2009 thru January 2010…..I was employed at a Major grocery retail store’s food warehouse (not naming names, but a little hint would be they are based in Germany…I would LOVE to just name the company and give as many bad reviews to them as I could.
I HATE this place …they have NO regard for their employee’s health safety or anything else for that matter…all this place cares about is the Almighty Dollar!!) I had been employed at their warehouse for about 13 yrs I think.
I still can recall all 5 days I used as sick days, meaning, I was there all the time…I never called off, my boss used to say “if you look up “woman hear me roar” in the dictionary you’d see my face”….I was an exemplary employee!! They decided they needed to expand the warehouse due to growth.
They employed several outside contractors to do the work. Long story, it could take me days to tell the details, but I will spare you all that. I worked in the freezer area where they cooled and froze products using Ammonia gas.
An employee of one of the companies went into the area, in FULL gear (suited up and a mask (respirator type mask), and instead of clearing the lines of all the existing ammonia first, he cut the pipe. the entire dock area where I was filled with ammonia gas.
(I’m actually getting goosebumps as I’m reliving this incident) A few days later, another one of the companies was doing concrete demolishing on some of the walls. The ENTIRE dock area AGAIN was affected.
Do you all remember the picture when 9/11 occurred with the people running down the sidewalk with the huge plume of smoke and dust behind them?? That is what the dock looked like! We all who worked there could hear each other, but there was NO way to see each other!!! Needless to say, after these 2 incidents and after breathing all these toxins, my breathing became almost impossible!
I had woken up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. As I was attempting to get back into bed, my throat closed. I couldn’t breathe!! My husband called 911 and they took me to the hospital via ambulance. (the whole while my 3 yr old son was yelling and crying “please don’t let them take my mommy”). They ended up sending me to a pulmonologist.
He had me on 5 different inhalers and MASSIVE amounts of prednisone to try and take down all the swelling of the airways. I was diagnosed with Asthma. THAT was the first of so so many diagnoses! It “freed” my vocal cords (I actually had to take Speak Therapy to relearn how to talk, breathe and learn how to try to breathe if an attack started to happen.
So here’s the list: Asthma, Vocal Cord Dysfunction, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, Migraines, Adrenal Insufficiency (this was a BIG one as I almost died), PTSD, and anxiety, SEVERE continuous pain 24/7.
I’ve had my lower back and neck fused, I’ve had a “pain stimulator” inserted into my right butt cheek with the leads put into my spine to try and help ease the pain, More trigger points, cortisone, and botox shots than I could ever count.
The last 20ish years have been a HELLISH NIGHTMARE!! I have lost, NO they have TAKEN away, my job, health, income, insurance for the family and myself, 401 K retirement plan, 5 weeks vacation, and probably most of all my self-worth! I struggled with guilt, (God only knows why this “incident” was by NO means my fault at all!) not being able to provide for my family what I did for so long!
Almost lost my husband, it is so much harder than ppl think to deal/live with someone with chronic issues! I feel so bad for my husband and 2 kids!! My son “has a much different” mom than his sister!!! SO there is my answer to your question: “Can I pinpoint an incident or trauma in your life that brought on your fibromyalgia?”……ABSOLUTELY I can!!
She can barely get out of bed some days. One day it’s her foot, another it’s her hip. She’s sad and tired and feels like my and my sister I’s lives aren’t what they could be because of her. How do I help her?
Your mother isn’t making things up. She’s not lying; she’s not exaggerating.
One of the hardest things for “norms” (people without invisible illness) to understand is the erratic nature of this disease. Just because I could do this thing yesterday doesn’t mean I can do it today.
She’s likely struggling in three areas; pain, fatigue, and what’s referred to as “brain fog”.
It never ends. There isn’t a moment (unless strong drugs are involved) that your mom is pain-free. It isn’t mild pain. It’s pain that’s severe enough that it cannot be ignored, even for a little while. It’s there, weighing her down, every minute of every day. And like you noted, it wanders.
Today it’s in the hips, tomorrow in her hands. It’s worse in the morning, but it never goes away and gets worse with exertion. She will probably need help with simple things, like opening jars, or vacuuming.
This symptom is part of a vicious circle of pain. Pain uses up a whole lot of her energy. Think of it like bandwidth on computers. Pain hogs most of it, so everything else has very little energy.
When she’s feeling bad, she may be as exhausted as a marathon runner with the flu. When fibro is flaring, I sometimes sleep up to twenty hours a day, for several days in a row, and still feel exhausted. This can make it dangerous to do tasks most of us take for granted, such as driving.
This one is hard to explain. It’s almost a physical sensation. It feels like my head is stuffed with cotton. My memory is completely shot. I have trouble communicating because I can’t remember the words for things.
My kids have become experts at figuring out what I mean when I ask them to go get me the “thing for the thing” (usually accompanied by a vague hand gesture). I mean the broom but cannot remember that word for the life of me. Simple conversations become nearly impossible to follow.
Watching TV is impossible because I can’t understand what’s happening. Remembering appointments, or what you said to me five minutes ago are as unattainable as the peak of Mount Everest. I’m not stupid. I’m just “busy” being exhausted and in pain.
Your mom will likely be struggling with the guilt that she can’t be the kind of mom we see on TV. Remind her that you love her no matter what. Take responsibility for any of the household chores that you can manage. Nagging you probably takes more energy and mental effort than she has.
Every bit of physical effort you do for her frees up a bit of energy she can spend on you. Forgive her when she cannot do things for you like help you with your homework, or when she has to cancel attending your events, and remember it kills her to have to do that. Write things down for her, instead of expecting her to simply remember.
Remind her of events a few times in advance. She loves you. It’s just that her body fails her more often than she’d like. Tell her you to love her. Knowing her kids are OK is very important. I’m not recommending you lie, but when it’s true, remind her of it. Worry is a huge energy sink.
If you’re lucky, you will end up as compassionate and self-sufficient as my kids have. Their childhood wasn’t typical, but I think they’ve come through it OK.
NB: I’m having a bad flare day, so hopefully this makes sense. I’ve spent quite a while editing. I Will have to come back when I’m feeling better and rework it, I’m sure.
I am 5’4”. When my fibromyalgia symptoms started, I was 22 and weighed 140lbs. I was, and still am, an endorphin junky who loved swimming and running. I had to give up running because of pain spreading to all my muscles, particularly after weight-bearing exercise. My weight plummeted to 105lbs. I most likely lost some muscle mass along with the fat, and I was depressed and nauseous from medication side effects. I was rolling down my jeans several times over and folding down and pinning my skirts in the back.
After I learned to manage my symptoms better, I got back to swimming, using fins to spread the work over my entire body, thus avoiding a major flare in my shoulders and obliques. I picked up a sport called underwater hockey.
My weight rose back up to around 125lbs after I started feeling somewhat better, and it mostly hovers around this amount. However, when I feel worse, it can drop back down to between 110–115lbs, again because of loss of muscle mass from having to lie on the couch so much, compounded by depression from missing out on my favorite activities and whatever current flavor of side effect is plaguing me due to whatever new medication I am attempting to manage my symptoms with.
I also recently came to the realization that I have quite a bit of anxiety sprinkled into my depression, due to never entirely knowing if some new treatment or activity is going to make my symptoms worse or better. And having to answer questions like this one. This question makes me lose my appetite.
I realize my story is not typical and that most people gain weight after developing fibromyalgia. However, to my understanding, being overweight or obese comes with a specific set of symptoms, which can include pain, but that is distinct from our understanding of fibromyalgia and other chronic pain syndromes. In other words, fibromyalgia can affect people of all sizes, and there is still much work to be done to narrow down all the possible causes and risk factors.
Because they are ignorant and cruel. I was struck with this disease in my late teens. I was, if anything, underweight at the time. The blood bank routinely turned me away from donations because I didn’t meet their minimum weight requirement.
Gaining weight didn’t cause my disease. I was slender until my mid-thirties. The sedentary lifestyle enforced by chronic pain and fatigue eventually caused me to gain weight. This is exacerbated by the fact that being sick all the time makes it much harder to shop for and prepare low-calorie, healthy meals.
I’m now nearly fifty and considered clinically overweight by about fifteen pounds, but I have never been in the category of obese.
I am a 41-year-old female with Fibromyalgia. 5’5″ 215lbs. Fat. Well, I haven’t always been sick, and not coincidentally, I haven’t always been fat. Like many fibro patients, I am fighting other things as well, but Fibro was the downfall of my active life and the subsequent rise of my weight.
I think many people see my sedentary lifestyle and think that I would be much healthier if I would just exercise more. (They’re not wrong) That my pain and fatigue are the results of my laziness. Thus, “Fatso–myalgia“
But the pain came first. The fat came later.
Now it’s just the revolving door of pain=lazy=fat=pain.
It would depend on your definition of ascension. I suspect that just like almost all illnesses can be viewed from an anatomic, biochemical, and biophysics perspective, and often explained largely from each of those perspectives individually, it can also be explained from a Mind/body/spirit perspective.
I have discussed the mind-body perspective of fibromyalgia elsewhere. But not so much the spiritual interplay with the physical. So please bear with me as I give a perspective to consider.
In metaphysical terms, Ascension can be seen as moving from a perspective of Duality to Unity. People with fibromyalgia, overall tend to be more empathic, and often have difficulty setting clear boundaries (as in saying “No” to requests that feel bad). Setting up an energy crisis in their lives.
The thymus gland, which is the seat of our immune function is the ability to set boundaries between self and others. An ability that needs to be learned to be able to move to ascension, or Unity, while still also maintaining our unique individual perspectives at the same time. Fibromyalgia is a common problem in that growth path, as we learn to develop a perspective of Unity (Ascension) while maintaining ourselves.
In that way, it can be viewed as a milestone on the path to Ascension, teaching us to love and respect all, and all perspectives, while still being able to simply say No to things that feel bad. An important lesson of the illness.
Yes, yes yes!!!!!! My ex-husband started abusing me emotionally and mentally after I moved in with him. Before that, he was so sweet kind, and very loving. The symptoms we not from just my feet burning, I had that for CPL years before I met him. How did the intensity come on fast? I had to quit my job and was literally bedbound for 2 years before I got a handle on it.
When I was diagnosed in 2009, my rheumatologist, while she was examining me, made the observation that I had been badly abused. She asked when the abuse had taken place, what type of abuse I had endured, and if I had been raped.
As I answered her questions, I began asking some of my own and she noted that in her years of practice that she had noted that those who had suffered from abuse displayed different characteristics in their conditions. Those who showed symptoms early in life were more likely to have more serious trigger events and symptoms later in life.
I have been now told by three different rheumatologists and two different pain management practitioners that I have one of the worst cases that they have ever seen. It is not a condition that is easy to deal with, but it is one that can eventually affect every aspect of your life.
Domestic abuse is extreme stress, which can in some cases trigger Fibromyalgia. It’s one of those weird conditions that have a whole mountain of things that can trigger it. I’d consider domestic abuse to be pretty high up there on the list.
For me, it was (I think) a car accident after I had just had neck surgery (3wks post-surgery, augh, I know), plus the stress of not being well enough to function at my job. 900% not fun, I’ll tell you that much.
Fibromyalgia is tied up into psychological yet physical pain which is why some people do really well on Cymbalta as a part of their treatment. Cymbalta, while helping agitated nerves calm (much like epilepsy), also acts as a mood stabilizer. That can help with the psychological state post-trauma (i.e. the domestic abuse, which hopefully has been dealt with accordingly), allowing the abused party to step back from the situation long enough to breathe and begin to heal and provide a scientifically proven way to relieve nerve pain.
In short, your emotions are tied to your physical well-being. Fibromyalgia is, very literally, in your head and in your nerves. Brain scans show that the electrical activity in a person that has Fibromyalgia is much, much higher than in someone who doesn’t have it. Great stress changes the body (I know since I’ve lived a life of intense stress myself and am a survivor of child molestation), which affects the mind. Invasive surgeries can also trigger Fibromyalgia – great stress on the body, which, again, affects the mind.
You might go through 20 surgeries and not get Fibromyalgia. You might go through 50 instances of domestic abuse and not get Fibromyalgia. Or you could have two surgeries and get in a fender bender that changes your whole life, triggering Fibromyalgia. It’s a lotta weird for a complex set of conditions that may or may not leave someone suffering from Fibromyalgia.
If you think there’s something wrong, see a Rheumatologist right after you take that harrowing leap out of that shitty domestic situation. Get yourself out of the stress, contact a shelter, go live with your mom, get safe and then get answers.
I had fibromyalgia symptoms for 15 years before I was diagnosed. At that time, I took a course of physical therapy where I did the Wharton stretch method, where you put a strap around your ankle, stretch your leg, and then gently use the strap to extend the stretch for a second. This, combined with a slow, progressive walking program where I extended the length of my walk over time improved my energy and pain levels to almost normal.
After that, I had a car accident which put me into a fibromyalgia crisis and I’ve never reached that former level of health. I gained weight, and what helped my energy levels next was having a sleep study and getting CPAP. Later I was diagnosed with Wilson’s Thyroid syndrome and started on T3. That helped my energy somewhat.
in 2005 I went to Africa as a missionary. I discovered that I am a mosquito magnet. I had malaria 8 times and intestinal parasites several more times, and all the antibiotics led to a massive reduction in energy, which caused me to come home after 7 years on my dream job.
That made me believe that an abnormal gut biome has something to do with the disease, and might be a leading component. To that end, I did the challenging GAPS diet for 2 years, and while it has not improved my energy levels, it has greatly improved my bowel symptoms.
Before that, about 5 years ago, I did a juice fast for 5 days. For the first 3 days, I went into a massive detox and had huge pain and fatigue. Then for 2 days, I felt like a 30-year-old again. I had energy and motivation! It was amazing! But I developed bruises all over my body. I called my fibromyalgia specialist, Dr. Joanne Pizzino, who is in Cary, NC, and she called the True North Clinic in Santa Rosa CA, which specializes in supervised fasting.
They told her that juice fasting is contraindicated when you are taking blood thinners because it acts as a blood thinner itself. As I am taking both aspirin and Plavix after having had a heart stent, I sadly had to stop the juice fast, and all my symptoms came crashing back.
At the time I juice fast I was doing Dr. Joel Fuhrmans vegan diet, at Dr. Pizzino’s urging. She had me watch the movie Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead first. I did that for a year, and while on that, my energy improved to the point that I could walk again, and I worked up to a 45 minute fairly brisk walk.
Since I got off it, my energy levels have faded to nothing, and I’ve developed cardiac symptoms. I think my heart is now driving my health. I’ll have to go back to the vegan diet to establish that.
There is also a lot of research being done on antiviral treatment. I recommend everyone with Fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue read Cort Johnson’s excellent, encouraging, well-researched blog: Health Rising. He mentions 2 doctors who are having success with that. Dr. John Chia is in California and Dr. William Pridgen is working in Alabama.
Another resource is Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum, who is in Hawaii and cured himself of chronic fatigue. I found Dr. Pizzino through his list of fibromyalgia practitioners. Sadly, he is into the business of selling his own supplements and I think he emphasizes them too much in his treatment protocols.
But what he does do is parenteral nutrition: an IV cocktail that bypasses your leaky gut. Dr. Pizzino has expanded his original small cocktail of stuff and if you are within range of her clinic, she could help you, if you can afford her. She doesn’t take insurance, and the IV cocktails need to be taken on a weekly basis.
I lived too far away from her, and couldn’t do her whole program, and went back to Uganda in the middle of it. The moral of that story is don’t start treatment unless you can finish it.
Another treatment that helped me a lot is Ondamed, which is electrical biofeedback. Ideally, it is given every other week. I had 4 treatments, one by Dr. Pizzino and 3 by a man based in Greenville NC who came to St Louis every few months.
His treatments really helped my pain and energy levels but they were not regular enough to be effective. Then he stopped coming. I think if you could purchase the $16,000 equipment, take the classes and treat yourself that would be the best way to go.
To sum up, I think that a two-pronged approach of looking at antiviral treatment and parenteral nutrition treatment or fasting is the most promising possibility for a cure. The True North clinic could probably cure you. Failing that, watch the movie Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, and do the juice fast.
