Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a super spectacular stress free holiday season.
So sorry that I disappeared but it’s been a rather extended round of not quite major and not quite minor flares… hmm maybe I’ll call it a “round” of flares.
No, I’ve got it! The spinning wheel of stress n’ pain; spin it while you sleep, and wake up in the morning to a stressful, painful SURPRISE.
Not all bad though, was busy with Christmas which I mostly did get to enjoy and I’ve been busy working on a secret project. It’s been fun but the stress has knocked me for a loop (ok so really, it’s been many loops). Hopefully tomorrow the stress ends, and I can start to work on the fun part. I’ll get back to you on that.
Have I told you lately how much I blooming hate the agony that is typing? Anyway, I think maybe I’m whining a wee bit too much. Pretty sure that isn’t what you’re wanting to read. So, enough of that!
I did want to say a little more about stress though. I know you’ve heard this before, but please please please be kind to yourself. STRESSkills. I’ve just watched this silent killer attack two people who are very important to me. It’s dangerous and it destroys lives.
I know, I know…I’m one to talk. For three years (well my entire adult life really) I’ve been trying to learn how to deal with stress, how to let things go, and especially how not to stress myself out.
I’m not there yet, but I am much better at dealing with stress than I used to be. I will no longer allow anyone to have control of what I am feeling. The power over my emotions is mine and mine alone.
This was sooooo not my intention, babbling on about stress but well as usual, once I get going you just never know what direction my rambling will take.
Now that life is about to be back on track, pain, and all I plan on doing better. My goal is to post more regularly on the Facebook page and to have something new on the blog at least once a month.
Ta ta for now and wherever you may be I wish for you to live your life stress–free. Hmmm, ok I’ll make that a wee bit more attainable…
I wish for you to live your life almost stress-free
Venturing out of my abode got me thinking about fickle fibromyalgia pain.
Recently I have been thinking about the variety of FM symptoms because some of them overlap with chronic migraine symptoms such that I don’t know which is the cause… such as vertigo; migraine-associated vertigo or FM-related vertigo, or the balance problems and even the sensitivity to sound and light. The thing is FM came first and migraines later and then chronic migraines so no matter how much my neuro wants to label everything chronic migraines he is actually just saying things doctors had actually labeled everything fibromyalgia before.
But my trip and any trip actually or any unexpected activity remind me of the fickle fibro pain. How it can hit like lightning in any muscle group or all muscle groups. How it can be a deep muscle ache that gets worse and worse, grinding and deep until your mobility is completely restricted, or a sharp nerve pain that arches through you or stings like cold fire or burns. The pain can be crippling and many of the incidents I remember can be so different and triggered by different things or nothing at all… so fickle.
Excluding the aches I had as a child the first sharp crippling pain came when I worked a job where I was standing for eight hours at some customer service job. I remember the pain of doing that but I was familiar with that sort of pain already and not diagnosed at the time. I believe at the time they had said I had ‘hypermobility with soft tissue pain’ so pain from standing was due to me being double–jointed. It sucked but it was familiar.
What wasn’t familiar was the fact that after enduring it for eight hours and getting home and sitting down, with profound relief, I couldn’t stand up. After a brief moment of rest and I tried to get up for supper and pain arched through my legs and they collapsed. Just gave out from the very pain itself.
It was the first time I realized if you have severe fibro pain you cannot stop and rest. There is no point to it because resting and getting up causes severe pain, sometimes causing your legs to just give out but most definitely causing a lot of difficulty in getting moving again because of intensepain… so it is better to just keep going, no matter how slow.
The next incidents of intense fickle fibromyalgiapain occurred when I was an undergraduate in university.
Because that is when my fibro because more severe due to sleep cycle changes and so forth. Also when I was officially diagnosed but not treated (I was told too young to be treated). I flared up really bad one year but there was no reason for it. I was living off-campus at the time. I was physically fit in the sense I walked to school every day. I walked my dog every day. I rollerblade and so forth. Fairly active for someone with chronic pain. I was doing what they want us to do… exercise. The flare-up nearly crippled me.
My fifteen-minute walk to school went from fifteen minutes to forty minutes and was extremely painful. It took a lot of willpower to achieve. Even when I got there it was difficult to sit at my desk, to actually sit down, and then to sit for the entire time. I just remember trying to pay attention through the pain. And that is why I remember that flare up so much because it reminds me of a migraine…. trying to think through pain and not being able to. That pain was all over pain. It hobbled me pretty good… but it was not just the legs, it was back, shoulders, neck… every damn place. And no cause. It lasted about six months and then was gone. It was in summer and wasn’t a weather thing. Just not sure what was the cause.
One thing about fibromyalgia was that I could not work during school. I wasn’t capable of it. Work took too much out of me, so during the summer was my saving up money time. But unfortunately, sometimes it took a little too much out of me anyway if I chose the wrong job. We learn that the hard way with fibro being as it is so fickle we learn what jobs we can and cannot work. I learned as a kid, and during summer jobs that standing for eight hours is extremely painful but what can you do? Service industry jobs are easy to get when you have no experience.
Next job I learned lifting things repetitively or moderate lifting is a very bad thing to do if you have fibro… I got costochondritis. But I didn’t know it. I started getting twinges of chest pains which I ignored, they got more frequent more painful than more constant. The local doc said it was stress. So I ignored it and it got worse and worse. Until when I lay down it felt like someone was squeezing the life out of me, pressure and pain. I ended up in the ER one night because it got severe one night when I went out drinking. That doc said he didn’t believe in fibromyalgia (as was common back then) and sent me away. Needless to say, this pain wasn’t going away so I made the trip home to my family doc who did a chest x-ray and told me what it was. I guess because I have fibromyalgia and maybe because I had aggravated it so much by working with the pain it lasted well into the school year. The pain receded very slowly over six months. It has never, ever been as bad as that.
When I was in graduate school and I needed to get my thesis signed by all the dudes who needed to sign off on it I had to get my copies printed then run around to find the professors to get them to sign and then get the thesis to the right place in order to meet my deadline. This campus was huge. I did a lot of running around. I can’t walk, walk, go upstairs, walk, walk, go upstairs without beginning to feel pain. It isn’t possible.
So I started getting pain in my hips, knees, and feet. I had to keep going because I needed to get it done. I started moving slower and slower and getting more and more distraught. I was running out of time but I couldn’t physically move faster. In the end, I was moving so slowly that I might as well not have been moving. I ended up in my department crying because I couldn’t get it done. A professor found me and I explained (I had not been aware I could get disability benefits on campus by the way so no one knew I had fibro) he called my missing prof and got him to come to me and then got someone to bring my thesis to the right place. I was extremely thankful. I was also stuck there for an hour before I could move again. It was embarrassing to me as well. I never wanted to admit it could actually affect me. Not like the migraines were… and the migraines are what killed my academic career.
The next incident was years later because like a good fibro girl I aimed for a desk job and settled into it. But flares for no reason happened anyway. This one just occurred and surprised me because I could not explain it. It started in my feet, in the arches. Severe arch pain in both feet. I could barely walk just shuffle around. I could not really lift my foot and every step hurt. I tried fake arches. An anti-inflammatory cream my doc gave me. Foot exercise. Nothing. It lasted a year and then just gone. Then started in my wrists, both wrists, tendinitis I guess but so painful I could not put any pressure on them, had a hard time writing with them, and had to wear a brace at night and sometimes at work. They hurt like that for about eight months and then just stopped.
So when my feel suddenly hurt when I wore those sandals I remembered that pain. Those are flares of pain. And the pain in specific spots. Pains other people get for different reasons but we get those sorts of pains for no reason they are part of our normal life. The aching muscles, and general soreness… that is every day, not a flare. Skin pain is a different kind of pain altogether. Nerve pain is also a different kind of pain. Fibromyalgia has a lot of different types of pain. Because it is fickle. It can hit when you take a fifteen-minute walk, which has happened to me, or not until you have walked for an hour. Random, completely random. And these Hellish Flares of Doom… I don’t know what causes them. Sometimes we overdo it and pay and pay and pay. Sometimes they hit for no reason and we pay and pay and pay. I don’t get it but they are way worse than any other flare we have… and we have enough of them as-is.
Fibromyalgia is a chronic syndrome defined by widespread muscle pain, fatigue, sleep dysfunction, and cognitive dysfunction. Fibromyalgia pain dysfunction involves increased sensitivity to pain known as hyperalgesia. People with Fibromyalgia can experience what is referred to as ‘flares’ where their symptoms get more severe.
A survey in Pain Medicine recently looked into the nature of flares to ask people with Fibromyalgia the nature of these flares. They asked open-ended questions to determine how they perceived the fibromyalgia flares, their triggers of them, and possible alleviating factors for them. They were asked how these flare-ups are different from their baseline symptoms and how they cope with them. There were 44 participants in the survey.
• medical treatments (medications) • rest • activity and stress avoidance • waiting it out
The study concluded that the periods of “symptom exacerbation (i.e., flares) are commonly experienced by patients with fibromyalgia, and symptoms of flares can be differentiated from everyday or typical symptoms of fibromyalgia. Our study is the first of its kind to qualitatively explore the characteristics, causes, and management strategies of fibromyalgia flares. Future studies are needed to quantitatively characterize fibromyalgia flares and evaluate the mechanisms of flares.
It would indeed be interesting to see further analysis of the flare phenomena in the future. Particularly the mechanism of it. What is going on such that these flares are so suddenly and abruptly different from the baseline experience? Clearly, it is an event that is triggered. However, discovering what is going on and what a flare could perhaps further what is going on with the entire fibromyalgia syndrome itself.
• Taking a break– flares tend to occur at times of high stress when it is not exactly good timing for a break. However, no matter what is going on if we push through the pain like we are inclined to do often, we will pay for it. Instead, we should try to ask for help from others, ask for extended deadlines, reschedule things if possible and take care of the flare first. Try and reduce what is causing you stress and get that as low as possible. Also, take breaks during the day to help. • The say ‘No’ tip- is very valid again.At this time of a flare, it is even more important to protect your time and reserves. No, you can’t take on extra work. No, you can’t do that favor for a friend or your kid’s school. No, you can’t babysit for a friend. You don’t have to have an excuse, just a polite refusal. You just cannot take on extra things at this time. • Sleep– Sleep is always a factor in Fibromyalgia symptoms. This means that adequate quality sleep is even more important during a flare-up. Getting eight or more hours of sleep is important. Keep to a regular sleep schedule. Don’t nap too much during the day such that it disrupts your sleep at night, but you can have a short nap during the day. • Relaxation- Doing biofeedback, deep breathing, meditation and self-hypnosis can help take your mind off the pain. As well as distraction methods you may already use, like soothing music or a good book. • Pacing– We can keep doing activities, at a slower pace, which has been found to be better than not doing activities at all. However, we need to know our limits. Slow and steady. We can incorporate some gentle exercises such as gentle stretching, walking, and some light yoga. However, if you have an exercise routine consider decreasing the intensity. • Pain management– Use your medications following the schedule you use to manage the pain. If they are not sufficient ask your doctor about them. Use any alternative treatments you might find effective. Acupuncture, chiropractic care, massage therapy, biofeedback, and other therapies may be beneficial for your pain management • Support– It can be difficult to deal with so sometimes talking about it can help. To utilize the support group you have. Either an online support group, a real-life one, or the people in your support system like family and friend • Baths– some people find it relaxing to take baths in Epsom salts.
Brain fog is a symptom of many chronic illnesses and chronic pain. Just seems that when we get ill and our bodies get fatigued or are fighting pain, or both, add in some lack of sleep… you get brain fog.
I listed some of them there but really there can be more. For example, transposing numbers is also transposing letters so we can spell words wrong frequently. As well as of course forgetting words and then using the wrong word. And massive concentration issues. I used to be a disorganized person. One might say I am by nature and inclination.
However, brain fog has made me become, to the best of my ability, an organized one. I have to be because I at times forget things I Know, so I need to have little notes of things I need to access on a daily basis for those blank-out times. It is a constant frustration to think through this fuzzy, muddled head. Not to mention the damn typo brain causing tiny errors you have to hunt down.
There are a few tips we can keep in mind that can help out with brain fog during the day:
You knew I was going to say that right? It is always on the list. But indeed it helps boost our mental clarity. Even just a 20 min walk. In fact, if you are working and you find your concentration is shot try getting up and taking a short walk around, sometimes the act of changing activities to motion and then getting back at it can stimulate the brain.
Sometimes the act of changing what you are doing, shifting the brain from one activity to another can help clear your mind. Then go back to your task and you may find your mind more focused.
Stress also can be a cause of increasing our brain fog so reducing it is beneficial. One way to help reduce it is with such things as deep breathing exercises and meditation. Even if it is just some short deep breathing exercises during the day to calm yourself down.
Established routines help reduce our stress by taking away any stress associated with being flustered or in a rush. It helps maintain balance in the body. It is also beneficial to make lists and reminders to help us remember things, as again this takes stress off of us when we might have issues remembering non-routine events and appointments.
It has been established in studies that the brain actually works better when we focus on one thing… I suspect a lot better for those of us with chronic illness and issues with brain fog. To avoid this inclination to multitask.
There are medications that can cause mentalfatigue and if it is an issue that is of concern see if it is a side effect you are dealing with and ask your doctor about it.
The Flare-up (see here for my article on it) is one of the worst fibromyalgiaexperiences. I fell into it sometime last night and woke up with the most unpleasant pains. In the hips, shoulders, and back, not to mention all over aches. I was very fatigued yesterday and perhaps that was some prediction of impending doom.
Here is the thing we can pace and moderate but we cannot avoid all flares. Sometimes they just occur. Sometimes they are just radically unpredictable. And we just do not know where the hell they came from. This one I have no clue what triggered it. It certainly was not something obvious like overdoing it. Things like poor sleep are a constant factor but that could certainly have done it. It wasn’t the weather.
And, well, I can blame stress. Because I can always blame stress. But specifically, I do not know. There is nothing that stands out. I know, usually, when it is stress-induced because it is a significant stressor. But I can say I don’t always know when it is a lack of sleep because that does fluctuate from bad to horrific.
Nevertheless, we simply can’t avoid it. And it is Painful. I was walking around like Frankenstein’s monster. And slow, so slow.
Medications can only do so much I suppose. Mine doesn’t do that much. They take the edge off regular FM pain which is true, but not the hyped-up Flare pain. I can’t rest when I have to work. Can’t avoid stress… when I have to work. So… I am waiting it out. And moving slowly. Tomorrow I am off and I will have a day of rest. And it will be a mellow day of relaxation and a lot of menthol creams I suspect.
It never ceases to amaze me how FM can flare up so spontaneously from like a 4-5 level pain to a 7-8 level pain. Fast, little cause, just BAM. Overdoing it is the most prevalent cause we experience. We just cross that limit a little too far… just a smidgen. And maybe we don’t even realize it right away. Or maybe we do a little bit. With muscle fatigue and aches. Then suddenly the pain just smacks into us out of nowhere. It is sometimes hard to Know where that Line is. So it is pretty easy to cross. Especially on good pain days. Not to mention we are literally told all the freaking time to not let our pain stop us from doing things. So of course, if we do things we are going to accidentally cross those invisible lines. Hell, I cross them just doing the exercise I am supposed to do. Because exercise is painful all the time, it is hard to know when I have pushed that pain limit too far. And then when I do it is extremely painful and I can’t exercise for days after.
So to recap… pace, moderate… but don’t stop doing activities… but don’t exceed your limits and overdo it or you will cause a flare-up. So simple, right?
I have been struggling with work lately. And by lately I mean always. Always struggling to function through the pain. Always not quite doing it.
My psychologist said well I cannot compare apples to oranges. I cannot compare myself to people doing the same job perfectly healthy. Nor to myself when I was healthy-er. And it did occur to me that this job I am now doing wouldn’t even be a challenge to me when I was younger and in less pain than now. But the pain now has eaten away at my cognitive capacity with the FM and the chronic daily migraines. Not enough space in the brain to focus on much other than tolerating the pain.
Here is the Thing.
The thing is I am permanently this person that is confused, befuddled, and living in a pain haze. This is who I am. No matter the job. Good days and certainly, by far, bad days.
And I don’t like it. I don’t want to be this person. This person frustrates the hell out of me. I just want to do my job… hell A job effectively and efficiently as possible. Hell, I want to excel at what I put my mind to, as it was before the pain became such a living force. This person is plodding. This person’s communication skills get rather tangled up. Perhaps why I love writing so much is that I don’t feel the cognitive sting so much as I do in reality. The sharp snag to the working memory, the complete lack of short-term memory, and where the hell is that long-term memory anyway. I want to get more sleep so I can shake off this infernal mental fatigue and this damn exhaustion. But I can’t because I can’t ever sleep decently and because it is a damn permanent state of affairs. Pain inhibits cognition and chronic pain therefore chronically. So I am stuck thinking through molasses forever.
So yes, I understand completely not to compare myself to people without chronic illnesses and pain. Or even to myself in my lesser state of pain. Never a good idea. However, I do rather trash myself because I cannot function the way I want to function. I am constantly limited and inhibited in my capacity. I am not content with the way I am functioning. I am aware of my capacity and very aware of this thick mental lag, fatigue, and sludge in the way of it. Just like I am aware of the profound difference between the ability to function on a good pain day and a bad pain day. Well a good day, still not a great day. I think we are all aware of that wall of fatigue and pain in the way of our thinking. All the little errors, glitches, and failures to communicate happen every single day.
That is my frustration at this point. The fact that with chronic pain, migraines specifically, I seem so cognitively impaired all the time. Migraines can vary neurologically as well. Sometimes it is straight-up aphasia that impairs my capacity to communicate. Sometimes the sensory distortions make it difficult to focus on reality. Sometimes the confusional states make it difficult to comprehend things. Mostly though it is straight-up trying to just function through pain when pain is taking up all that brain capacity.
I’m not saying there aren’t things we can do for things like brain fog and fibrofog. I wrote something up about fibrofog Here. What I am saying is it never seems like I get a break in this area no matter what I do. Likely because the pain hasn’t given me a break. I have been reading a book on cognitive abilities and it recommends things like mindful meditation, exercise, and brain games. None of which get rid of the pain that is triggering the issue in this case, but never hurts to keep the brain going strong when clearly it is having issues. For example, I already do mindful meditation for pain, and if it can give me a cognitive boost that would indeed be a bonus, wouldn’t it?
I really miss the clarity of thought that comes with not having a migraine. It has been years since that was the case. But I do remember the last day it occurred. I remember how clear my thinking was. How crisp. How quick. How accurate. Then the cloud sank back down.
The Spanish study in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology called “Cognitive complaints in women with fibromyalgia: Are they due to depression or to objective cognitive dysfunction?” recurited105 women with fibromyalgia for their analysis.
Fibromyalgia is characterized by widespread pain, cognitive dysfunction, sleep dysfunction and fatigue. However, the cognitive dysfunction of fibrofog with its concentration issues has not always been thought of to be from the FM. Studies have shown it is from the pain, from the sleep dysfunction and even from depression.
Eighty-four percent of the patients reported subjective cognitive complaints. Depression scores, everyday physical functioning, and working memory performance were most strongly associated with subjective cognitive complaints. These three variables were significant predictors for subjective cognitive complaints with a final model explaining 32% of the variance. Study
In conclusions “Cognitive complaints are very frequent in patients with fibromyalgia, and these are related to functional and cognitive impairment as well as to depressive symptoms.” Study
In other words, even if the patient has depression, all the cognitive issues are not related to it.
Last week I found myself in the worst flare of my life. After a month of mounting stress, marital grumblings, and the sheer psychosis of living chronicallyill I hit bottom. Bottom when you have Fibromyalgia really hurts. So I proceeded to walk around stooped over like a little old lady holding my lower back, wailing and crying and gnashing my teeth over how absolutely awful everything was. Then the anger I try so hard to keep tucked tightly under cover flew up and gave me waves of new aggressors to aggravate my rapidly crumbling illusion of reality.
Oh, I was a mess. And Fibromyalgia saw this weakness and POUNCED, took her claim back over my body. Elephants ballet danced with thunderous weight across my upper back, the pain from my lower back radiated all the way down my legs, into my feet for crying out loud! My hips forgot they were made to swivel and when I walked my body weight threatened to crush my internal organs. It was as if somebody pushed the rewind button and took me back to 2006 when I was disabled from Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME.No wonder I was such a mess, I thought to myself. This is horrible! I became convinced I was never going to run again and immediately crumpled into a Jello-ing heap at the thought of gaining back the 30 lbs. I just found out I have lost this year. How was I going to write a blog with a positive spin on how to survive Fibromyalgia? How was I going to write the book I am working on to raise awareness? How on earth could I keep the burning embers of The Fibromyalgia Crusade stoked and roasting? How, how, how? For there was just so much pain.
The life I know and have been working so hard to rebuild ceased to be a reality as the evil fingers of cranial destruction pushed on damaged neurotransmitters and overactive pain receptors. I experienced agony beyond a medicate-able amount, sending me not only through the roof but darn near jumping off it when I got there. Am I going to get my life back, or is this just the way it is now? I seriously wondered. Then I recalled with acute clarity the first time I asked myself that question and how many years and how much work lay between then and now. I am just not up to it, I can’t do it again, I reassured myself as I slept and watched mindless reality television, looking for any escape. But something strange happened as I took leave of my stress and took care of myself. I started to feel better. Slowly but surely I started to feel better until one day I woke up and had to remember the flare, for it had passed. But I have renewed in my efforts folks, shouting from the rooftops as loud as my little lungs will carry how absolutely horrible Fibromyalgia is and how living in that unbearable pain is perhaps the worst thing in the world. God bless all of us who suffer from this illness.
” So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us”, Gaston Bachelard
A flare-up, a word for an acute attack of fibromyalgia, can be very alarming if it seems to come out of the air without warning. Even after years of living with fibromyalgia I can become overwhelmed with anxiety about an episode that I can’t account for. Sometimes the flare-up is in a localized area of my body, for example, this year it is in my hip, while last year it was in my foot.
Other times it is everywhere; my nervous system is on fire and pain and fatigue runs rampant throughout. When it happens I go through all the scenarios of the past few days and wonder what precipitated this new, intense attack. Elaine Scarry writes that “Physical pain has no voice, but when at last finds a voice, it begins to tell a story…”
I look back at my childhood and try to remember what it was that laid the foundation for my sensitive body’s struggle with this affliction. I remember the horrors of childhood in the Catholic school where the nuns terrified me and I would hyperventilate at night, thinking I would die and go to hell. I think about how difficult it was growing up in a big city with the polio scare surrounding us.
I remind myself that even though I was an anxious child with a stern, angry father and a passive mother, I no longer have that kind of trauma in my present home life. I try hard to keep my life manageable, although not too restrictive. Then, I remember the more important and positive thing about flare-ups: they don’t last forever! They eventually subside and fade into the chronic, less debilitating fibromyalgia I have lived with for decades, until the next one.
The most frightening thing about a severe attack is wondering if this is an unusual episode that is unrelated to fibromyalgia. Pain that brings about loud gasps, moans, and outward signs of distress can be frightening to others, but even more so to myself. Is this fibromyalgia or something else I should be attending to, I wonder? If I suspect it is the same demon, I ask myself: what happened in the last few days to bring this on? It becomes easy to blame myself for excitement, overeating, or pushing myself too hard. But, if it is beyond my control, as in a weather change, then I relax somewhat and wait for better weather conditions.
Living with fibromyalgia is a constant up and down handling of life events. Some days are not so painful or filled with fatigue while other days require almost a withdrawal from life for a while. It requires courage to pick myself up and start over again, knowing I am often spitting against the wind. The old childhood tragedies help form this personality of mine and I can’t go back and do it over again. Flare–ups come and go. Life goes on and spit happens. As my sister says: “Grow where you’re planted”. All things considered, there are joys to be savored, especially when the flare–up ends for a while.
Fibro-Rash! Is this really a thing you ask? Yes, apparently it is a thing. If you have trouble with any kind of rash all over your body and you have Fibromyalgia, you could also have Fibro-Rash. I just visited my dermatologist because my rheumatologist wanted me to rule out psoriatic arthritis. I have had itchy skin for many years and just thought it was my dry skin. It turns out that it is really folliculitis, an inflammation of the hair follicles brought on by Fibro -and I do not have psoriasis-whew! My doctor said that there are ways to ease the symptoms but the only way to really control it, is to control the Fibro. Sure, no problem that is an easy fix….(she says sarcastically.)
I’ve always had sensitive skin, so it doesn’t surprise me that my Fibro symptoms come out through my skin as well. People with auto-immune illness and chronic diseases are more susceptible to folliculitis. So, it makes sense that I really started to notice something was wrong when my flare began. My chest broke out into a red, blotchy rash which waxed and waned with my stress level. It was like my body was doing whatever it could to get me to stop and notice. I was waking up scratching my legs at night – it was horrible!
How can fibromyalgia folliculitis be treated? Here is what my doctor said to do:
Cure Joy that I found with a simple google search. Please follow the link for complete directions. I have tried a couple of these, please leave your experience in the comments below.
2. More Ideas To Help You Control Your Itchy Fibromyalgia Rash
3. White Vinegar – one tablespoon to two cups of water, then apply to the affected area with pressure for twenty minutes.
5. Garlic– beneficial due to antibacterial properties
6. Aloe Vera-antibacterial and anti-inflammatory. This is the aloe vera that I use. I love it and it has tea tree oil in it already – I apply after a shower daily.
7. Since I first wrote this article a couple of years ago, I have learned a lot about Fibromyalgia. In the last year or so, I have really been focusing on controlling my symptoms with my diet. I go into a lot more detail (see link) about how an elimination dietcan help you improve your fibromyalgia symptoms.
8. If you want to try an intolerance test to get to what might be causing your rash faster I recommend 5 Strands Affordable Testing, use fibro cure 10 for 10% off. I used this service and hope to write an article on it soon. It really helps narrow down foods that may be bothering you.
Rashes can be scary, if you have one I recommend going to your doctor. I hope that my story has brought you some comfort and that if you do experience this, you now know that you are not alone. Not only are you not alone but there are steps you can take to relieve the misery. Subscribe to my newsletter and receive a FREE printable.
