The horrible condition called fibromyalgia can mean that the merest touch to the skin feels painful. Joints can ache for no apparent reason. As is often the case, such an indefinable condition presents doctors with no clear and easy answer, so the temptation is to put it down to mental problems and refer the sufferer on to a psychiatrist. For unknown reasons, the condition strikes females more than males. Fybromyalgia is really the nervous system on red alert all the time, with every nerve ending jangling away. The answer to calming things down lies in finding the cause and so here are six possibilities:
- Intestinal pathogens.
- Cervical trauma.
- Visceral dislocation.
- Thyroid based.
- A combination of the above.
- Rich Jewish girl syndrome. Being pressurised into living a life we don’t want.
Intestinal pathogens.
There are so easily picked up. The waiter’s thumb in your pasta arrabiata; all you can eat buffets; a holiday; sloppy hand washing – and constant use of anti-bacterial soaps and toothpaste kill our good bacteria and leave us wide open for invading pathogens. In destroying the bad bacteria, we destroy the good ones too. So by various ways, the bad bugs get in and are sooo happy they breed and breed. We can only be as healthy as our guts are healthy and when our guts are more of a cesspit, the whole body, including the nervous system, becomes deeply unhappy and deeply unhealthy. We crave sweet food since this feeds the growing population of nasties, so we can end up getting fat – or we crave sweet foods, eat like a horse and get thinner and thinner (plus very, very painful). We will have abdominal bloating – and farting and poos not to be proud of. The cheapest option is to try the doctors and see if we can get a stool test. Being the NHS, this is not especially thorough and if it yields no answers, then I can arrange a comprehensive stool test with an excellent laboratory that not only tells us what the bad boys are, but, critically, what kills them in our own gut. Diet also needs to be altered to starve them out plus a good gut healing protocol. Then, in due course, we will begin to glow again, starting from within, instead of some dodgy spray tan.
Cervical trauma.
Cervical trauma covers such things as whiplash, falling off things onto our head, getting involved in a punch up, being in the scrum in rugby and so on. When these things happen to us and we are relatively young – sub 35-ish, the doctor’s cheery announcement that, ‘You’ll be fine, these things are very common,’ is rather like the weather forecaster, Michael Fish, telling us that it will be a bit windy tonight – and in fact the South East of England was hit by a hurricane that caused widespread and quite dreadful damage: ((The very evening I’d written this, I heard a doctor on the radio dismissing whiplash and saying it should be just called a bit a neck sprain, which will go away if we just take a few painkillers. I got so cross, I had to turn the radio off before I broke it. When a new client comes to me, we start exploring things to find a starting point – and in no time flat it becomes quite apparent that there has been some neck/coccyx trauma in the past, whiplash included. Always, always, the person is incapacitated in some way. We have to start carefully. People who have never had neck trauma are just so much easier. Bloody doctors.))
So if we are suffering from fibromyalgia and the time we were skateboarding, hit a sycamore seed, shot over the front on the board and landed on our head – even if we were only 12 years old and now feel 152 – this is a prime contender for the prize as to why we are suffering now. We need the services of an excellent chiropractor/massage therapist plus Z health to restore us to our former poise and glory.
Visceral dislocation.
This is mainly blows to the abdomen, but also covers severe abdominal cramps or surgery, and needs the attention of a specialist in gently massaging the organs back to where they should be.
Thyroid based.
Charles Poliquin suggests the following to restart the thyroid: the herb Holy Basil and forskolin (coleus forskohlii), up to 150mg a day, no more. Here is a link to a blog by Charles on fibromyalgia. Many things cause thyroid problems; toxicity, soy, heavy metal poisoning, excessive fructose intake to name just four. To unwind thyroid problems will be quite a journey.
A combination of the above.
This is extremely common. I usually find that when a new client comes to see me, it feels a little like facing a hairy birds nest. Between us, we have to work out where to begin untangling the strands. Yes, it takes a while and a combination of people to help, but the results make it all worth while.
Rich Jewish Girl Syndrome.
This is the only form of fibyromyalgia that needs a psychiatrist of some sort. Plus courage. Essentially it comes on when we find ourselves forced into a job by our well-meaning parents/family. We hate the job. Yes, it earns us money and we have a good reputation, secure financial future, lovely car and so on. But our heart is not in it. And we have the choice to continue suffering the awful daily grind of fibromyalgia plus caviar for tea – or we grasp the nettle and follow our dream.
Fibromyalgia can be a complex condition – but complexity does not mean incurable. And taking pills to mask the pain cannot help.