Background: Let’s back up a step. Patients with “fibromyalgia” may have also heard the following diagnoses from doctors when describing their pain as their condition worsened:
- its your age
- its in your head
- its genetic
- or a blanket statement such as “you are a woman/man/tall/short/fat/skinny/allergic/hypochondriac/sensitive to weather ” etc. etc.
These are statements that our health care providers might throw out when they don’t know what to do. For fibromyalgia there is still no cure.
Derivation: from fibro-, fibrous tissue, Gk. myo-, muscle, Gk. algos-, pain, meaning muscle and connective tissue pain i.e. ligaments and tendons (the things that hold together bones and attach muscle to bone). We would expect to feel it if we were lumberjacks, or ditch diggers… until our bodies adapted to it. And there’s the key – our body’s are supposed to adapt to use, even lack of use. But some don’t and we have pain.
Chronic Pain – NOT!: We don’t accept that condition in our office. There has to be a reason for patients to suffer. I have jackhammer operators that do not have fibromyalgia and inactive patients that do have it. It does not add up.
Secondary conditions: There is a long list of conditions that have been connected with fibromyalgia including joint stiffness, sleep disturbance, even depression. Now there is a “fibromyalgia syndrome” which includes these conditions added to the pain.
Our approach Part A: Firstly, I discount the diagnosis. I don’t care what the doctor’s have said, patients should not suffer an incurable condition expecting a lifetime of pain and its sequaelae:
- because they hurt, they don’t move as much
- because they hurt, they get depressed
- because they hurt, they get fat
- because they hurt, and don’t move, and get fat, they don’t sleep as wel
- or have normal bowel function
- or have side effects from pain medication
- or a host of other things that would happen to ANY of us if we hurt, did not move as much, took meds, gained weight and got depressed.
Our approach Part B: Chiropractic care, nutrition, movement and hope. Patients get better and the condition goes away. Chiropractic 101 still works and the body heals.
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