In conventional medicine Fibromyalgia is still a mystery. The reason is that all their research is into finding some miraculous drug that will alleviate the symptoms but not cause side effects worse than Fibromyalgia. That’s not going to happen!
When you look into the medical approach to Fibromyalgia, they typically throw the proverbial kitchen sink at it; from stress reduction to counseling to medication. Take a look at this from the CDC https://www.cdc.gov/arthritis/basics/fibromyalgia.htm
But there are effective ways to turn around your Fibromyalgia and start participating more fully in life again. It takes approaching Fibromyalgia from the perspective of the changes in the body that underlie it.
Check out this post I did on Resilience: Resilience: Respond and Recover
One of My Passions is Helping People Overcome Chronic Pain
My original introduction to chiropractic came about because of chronic pain caused by injuries from a head-on car accident. It was about a year later when my life was miserable. I was a young man but I couldn’t sit for more than a few minutes, had neck and back pain, headaches, and digestive problems.
Chiropractic helped me overcome my pain and changed the course of my life. After decades in practice, I’ve put together a framework that is effective and predictable in its ability to help others overcome chronic pain. When we look at the imbalances in the nervous system it points to the direction of what needs to change.
5 Elements to Overcoming Fibromyalgia
The fact that nobody has come up with a definitive cause or a simple solution, points to the complexity of Fibromyalgia. You could interview 25 Fibromyalgia sufferers and come up with 25 very different journeys to Fibromyalgia.
Some of that is a result of medicine’s insistence on putting labels on every condition. But, the fibromyalgia you suffer from is simply not the same fibromyalgia someone else suffers from. While there are similarities, there are also differences.
What does this mean to you as someone with Fibromyalgia?
Like any other chronic condition, it means a couple of things. These are critically important to successfully treating your Fibromyalgia.
- It is going to take some time. It took a long time to get to the point where Fibromyalgia dictated your life and it will take some time to unwind it. Every departure from health and every return to health is a process. And all processes take time.
- It will involve a multi-pronged approach. If there were a simple solution you wouldn’t be reading this right now. I have found that doing multiple things that reinforce one another have a powerful additive approach that is much stronger than any of those individually.
- You will need to change some things that you are doing that are unknowingly contributing to your Fibromyalgia. When people experience chronic pain and fatigue, they look for anything that offers even a little relief. That’s understandable. The problem is that many of these actions over time cause an increase in the very condition they are meant to relieve.
So, What are the 5 Elements?
In successfully treating any chronic condition, it is a balancing act of sorts. What do I mean? As I said above the solution is not simple and will involve a multi-pronged approach. But, if you try to throw the proverbial kitchen sink at it you will end up being overwhelmed.
The balance is to focus on the most impactful actions, strategies, and practices without going overboard. If you do too much you won’t have any idea what’s working and what isn’t. And, if you don’t do enough you might not notice the improvements.
Here’s my 5 Critical Elements:
- Address Sympathetic Dominance: In Fibromyalgia the Sympathetic ‘Fight-or-Flight’ portion of the nervous system is overactive. This drives muscle tension, pain, poor sleep, and inflammation. This is almost universal in every illness and disease.
If you don’t get this under control the best you can hope for is very temporary symptom relief. While this will take some time you will notice some immediate short lasting benefits that will only grow over time. - Focus on increasing the tone of the Vagus Nerve: this is the primary nerve of the Parasympathetic Nervous System that drives proper digestion, heart rate, relaxation, sleep. It has been called the highway to wellness. When the Vagus Nerve is underactive it can result in anxiety, depression, PTSD symptoms, autoimmune diseases, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and fibromyalgia.
It is critical to increase the activity and tone of your Vagus Nerve. It is the key to you being able to recover and adapt. - Posture and Movement: It’s essential to keep your body gently moving or you will experience a worsening of your Fibromyalgia. With fibromyalgia it’s a bit of a balancing act since too much activity will increase your symptoms and too little movement causes its own problems. It’s also key to adopt sitting and standing posture and movements that do not trigger an increase in muscle tension and pain.
It is common to adopt positions and postures in an effort to reduce pain and discomfort and for those adaptations to result in greater pain. - Stress: For the most part stress management is an exercise in failure since we have little control over the vast majority of stress in our lives. So, this isn’t about managing stress. But it is critical to identify those situations, activities, and people that trigger a stress response and reduce or eliminate them from your life. Find those stress triggers that you are able to control and take measures to reduce, eliminate or manage them.
- Sleep: This is another tricky one. Sleep is disturbed by Fibromyalgia and poor sleep is a primary driver of Fibromyalgia. This is intimately related to Sympathetic Dominance. That is why you must be addressing all 5 Critical Elements at once.
Adopting proper sleep hygiene, position, and pillow is critical. As you reduce the Sympathetic activity and increase Vagus Nerve activity there is always an improvement in sleep.
If you improve your sleep routine and your sleep you will also accelerate the reduction in Sympathetic activity and help increase your Vagus Nerve tone.
When you look for a professional to guide you in your recovery from Fibromyalgia it’s important to find someone well versed in those 5 elements. Other things might come into play like diet and supplements but they are less critical. You might benefit from mindfulness-based stress reduction or the approach called EMDR, which is a great method to desensitize past trauma.
Make sure to subscribe to all my social media channels so you don’t miss out on any content.
Facebook: Life Chiropractic Facebook
YouTube: Life Chiropractic YouTube
Instagram: Life Chiropractic Instagram