You’ve just come from your doctor, and your head is reeling. On the one hand, you now have a name for the constant aches, muscle spasms, headaches and fatigue you’ve been experiencing. On the other hand, you’ve just been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder with no cure and no viable medications from the allopathic world. Welcome to the world of fibromyalgia, where pain is constant and fatigue is endless. Before you curl up into a ball like a hedgehog, suck your thumb and call for your mama, check out this advice for the innocent abroad in the world of fibromyalgia:
Take a Little Time
You’ve just been broadsided with a lifetime diagnosis, and it’s a rather grim one; take a week or so and assimilate what you’ve been told, and grieve a little over how your life has changed. In this country, we don’t know how to grieve; we’re so fixated on moving ahead and overcoming, we don’t take the time to realize what we’ve lost. This is as true for a major diagnosis as it is for losing a loved one. Take the time to grieve, and then move on to the next phase.
Research and Educate Yourself
Getting a diagnosis of fibromyalgia is like being hit on the head with an axe, though not as fatal. You’ve probably never even heard of the disease, let alone know how to cope with it. Before you take anybody’s advice, or accept a prescription from your allopathic doctor, get on the Internet and start swimming in the waters of the web. There is a myriad of information available, and you need to know what you’re dealing with before you can decide who’s giving you good advice or not.
Embrace the Alternative
If you’re seeing a rheumatologist, he or she will most likely want to start you on a prescription strength non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID), such as Feldene. In conjunction, he or she will also want to put you on a tri-cyclic anti-depressant. There are alternatives to the NSAIDs, and you should consider them seriously; NSAIDs carry nasty side effects, and a responsible rheumatologist will want to see you at least every four months for blood work, to determine if you are experiencing any. Since you have fibromyalgia, you are a good candidate for a clinical depression, but that’s not the main reason for prescribing a tri-cyclic. One of the things known about fibro is it causes an alpha-delta sleep disturbance, where alpha waves intrude into the delta sleep cycle, causing you to get insufficient deep, restful sleep. Consequently, fibro patients are sleep-deprived by the disease, and most likely by other areas of their life as well. The only solution allopathic medicine has for this sleep cycle disturbance is a tri-cyclic anti-depressant. If the sound of all these meds is frightening, then you should start exploring the world of natural medicine and embrace alternatives to allopathic treatments.
Recognize Your Limits
You may be a fairly young, relatively healthy person when you get this diagnosis, and you may not want to accept the limitations fibro will put on you. While you can minimize them if you start early enough, there are still things that will be beyond your physical prowess. Remember when we talked about grieving? This is one of the things you need to grieve for, and get over. You can choose to do everything you want to do, but you will pay a hefty price in terms of pain when you’re done. Accept climbing mountains is not something you can do now, and find other ways to express your love for the outdoors. You can still camp, and you can still hike – just recognize you’ll need rest stops along the way. Everyone’s fibro is different; find your limits and learn to live within them.
Maintain a Healthy Weight
This is a hard one; weight loss is a whole other subject, and we won’t go there right now, but being overweight or obese makes fibro much harder to cope with, as your muscles, bones, tendons and ligaments are all carrying more than they should have to. Lighten your burden by lightening your load – literally.
Change Your Eating Habits
The best way to beat your fibro is to live as healthy a life as you can. This means changing your diet from one of processed foods, frozen dinners, and fast food to one of fresh foods you cook yourself, with a variety of fresh meats, fish, poultry, dairy, fruits, and vegetables. Learn the vitamins, minerals, and enzymes your body is deficient in, and start supplementing them through foods. If you can’t eat enough foods to rectify a deficit, get supplements to assist the effort. Ridding your body of the free radicals and toxins caused by the typical modern diet will make you feel much better.
Exercise
It sounds counterintuitive, but exercise will help you keep moving, and keep you flexible as well. You aren’t going to be competing in a triathlon any time soon, but you should be able to walk briskly three times a week. You can ride an exercise bike seven days a week. You can lift light weights for strength training. You can do light aerobics, and water aerobics too. The one thing you shouldn’t do is stop moving. Once you’ve stopped, it’s incredibly hard to start again, and if you don’t start again, you head down the road to total disability.
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Fibromyalgia is a stress-related disease. It is an autoimmune disorder, yes, but stress aggravates it significantly. Learn how to control your stress, and you’ve gone a long way toward taking your life back from your disease. Stuff happens, and life is stressful – you’ve got to find a way to cope with it before the stress brings on a major flare. Your life isn’t going to stop because you have fibro; you have to learn how to live in spite of it. Combine your exercise with stress reduction in a Yoga class, learn Tai Chi or try these yoga exercises. Tai Chi is a form of Chinese martial arts characterized by slow movements and mind-body interaction. It’s a great stress reducer. If you prefer time to yourself, get a CD player and put some New Age, or elegant jazz on and chill out.
Keep a Positive Attitude
Clinical depression is a concurrent hidden condition with fibromyalgia; it occurs because the neurotransmitter dealing with pain gets depleted by the constant drain of fibromyalgia. The production of this neurotransmitter, serotonin, can’t keep up with the demand, and a clinical depression results from the imbalance. You can fight this in a number of ways; use St. John’s Wort as a mild anti-depressant. It has been used for centuries, and has few, if any, side effects. You can take the tri-cyclic from your rheumatologist, but this should be a last resort. Keeping a positive attitude has been proven to be helpful in warding off depression, and it makes your life much happier to boot. If you wallow in your disease, you start a self-fulfilling prophecy of gloom and doom, and trust me – you don’t want to go there.
Supplements Instead of Prescriptions
When I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, I went the allopathic route to begin with, because I didn’t know about any other way to fight my disease. I became pregnant, and my rheumatologist immediately stopped my prescriptions. He recommended I try a pregnancy massage therapist if I got into difficulties with my pain. I found a wonderful therapist, who is also an alternative medicine advocate. Through her advice, the advice of the excellent local health food store in my neighborhood, and from research on the Internet, I found a combination of best joint pain supplements that helps me deal with my fibro. When I went back to my rheumatologist and told him what I’d done, he, wonderful man that he is, told me to go for it – if the supplements helped as well as the scripts (they’re actually better) he had no problem with my going the alternative route. At the time I worked out my regimen, there were no drugs specifically on the market for fibro. Lyrica has since hit the scene, but it’s not worth it. The side effects listed for the drug are worse than the fibro, and some of them can be life-threatening. Also, since fibro is an autoimmune disorder, it’s as individual as the person who has it, and no one drug will work for everyone. Learn about supplements, and find a knowledgeable person to help you – an integrative MD, a naturopath, or a locally-owned health food store.
A diagnosis of fibromyalgia is not a death sentence, although it may feel like one sometimes. It is a life-long burden, and you will have to learn how to deal with it. Life doesn’t stop because you have fibromyalgia, and neither should you.
REFERENCES:
- National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases: “Fast Facts About Fibromyalgia.”
- Arthritis Foundation: “Fibromyalgia: Treatment Options.”
- National Fibromyalgia Association: “Understanding Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain.”
- McIlwain, H, MD, and Bruce, D, PhD. The Fibromyalgia Handbook, Holt, 2007.
- Lawrence, R. Arthritis & Rheumatism, January 2008.
