Fixing Fibromyalgia

For people that haven't experienced the constant, wide-spread pain of fibromyalgia, it may be hard to understand. Living with fibromyalgia means living with continual fatigue, resulting from almost constant pain throughout multiple areas of the body, The Mayo Clinic defines fibromyalgia as: "a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues."

A google search advises the following treatments:

And while I would agree that these are all viable treatments for fibromyalgia, from my own experience, this treatment list is not complete.

After living with fibromyalgia for almost 25 years, I want to share what has worked well for me in treating fibromyalgia. I am not a doctor, and do not have a medical background, so please take my recommendations only at face value. This is what has worked for me and I think there is some validity in saying that what I'm about to suggest could help you too.

Once I came to terms with living with a chronic illness, I decided that I wanted to do take action to improve my health and well-being. So I did a lot of research and tried a lot of different approaches before making changes that have virtually neutralized the majority of my fibromyalgia symptoms.

For me, fibromyalgia was triggered after a fall down some icy steps. But a precursor to that incident was a severe case of mononucleosis (mono), caused by the Epstein Barr virus. As mentioned in an article from everydayhealth.com, an activation of the Epstein Barr virus can be one of several causes of fibromyalgia, as well as could the viruses that cause influenza, and hepatitis B and C. Scientists still debate the origins of this disorder, but my own personal history aligns well with this theory.

So with with keeping in mind these diagnoses and additionally Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Lupus, these are the basic steps I went through to restore my health back to pre-Fibromyalgia days:

1. I went through testing for gut health. I found I had a candida overgrowth so I took the following steps to resolve this and related issues:

   1. Significantly reduced my sugar intake

   2. Started a prebiotic and probiotic supplement

2. After working on and improving my gut health & therefore my immune system, I started looking at nutritional deficiencies:

   1. Vitamin and mineral testing revealed not only areas of deficiency but also areas of mal-absorption. So I started adding these supplements in. One key area of deficiency for me was magnesium especially. I found that I don't absorb it well. I found that taking magnesium with calcium showed improvements, as did finding more readily absorbable forms.

   2. In fact, according to an article from sciencedirect.com, "adequate intake of magnesium, selenium, vitamin D, and vitamin B12 is important" in treating fibromyalgia.

   3. Additionally, some people with fibromyalgia experience harmful effects of heavy metals, such as mercury, cadmium, and lead, so talk to your health professional about ways to safely reduce or eliminate these types of heavy metals.

   4. Another supplement I added years later was totally life-changing for me in terms of improving my fibromyalgia symptoms. I am not getting paid for this recommendation, I simply want to disclose what works for me. It's called: Kylea Total Living Greens

3. The next major steps was to address food allergies and sensitivities. This is a big one for Fibromyalgia. Inflammation is a key cause of pain in this disorder, as well as so many others. So eliminating sources of inflammation is key. Side note, turmeric curcumin is one of many supplements that is helpful in reducing inflammation. After getting a blood food allergy panel test done, I found a had some pretty high allergies and sensitivities to a variety of foods like: milk, wheat and gluten especially.

   1. Doing an elimination diet to take the foods I was reacting to helped my symptoms tremendously. A lot of times I've found with my own and others' experiences with this plan is that you only have to eliminate foods for a period of time before you can add them back into your diet in small quantities without having any inflammatory reactions.

   2. Taking digestive enzymes can also help to mitigate inflammatory reactions and my family and friends have had a lot of success using the Designs for Health Digestzymes that were recommended years ago to me by a doctor in Integrative medicine.

I'm sure there have been other things that have helped along the way here and there such as: getting on a better sleep cycle, exercising within my own limits, etc. but these are some of the key areas I needed to address to get to where I am today. And "Where am I in my journey with Fibromyalgia?", you might be asking, well most days, I forget that I have Fibromyalgia, because my symptoms continue to be managed.

I hope these article can help others out there suffering with the relentless symptoms that Fibromyalgia produces. If you have other recommendations for what has worked for you, I'd love to hear them! You can reach me at: restoredhealthandwellbeing.com.