This is Dr. Lam.
Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition characterized by widespread pain in the muscles, ligaments,
as well as the tendons, along with that, also you have fatigue, as well as a multiple tender
points, places where your body can have a lot of pain just with a slight amount of pressure.
Affecting approximately 2% of the population in the States, and more so in women than in
men, you hurt all over and you frequently feel exhausted.
If your body has number tests conducted by your doctor and this all comes back negative,
then fibromyalgia may be a consideration.
Classically, fibromyalgia often begins after a physical or emotional trauma, but in many
cases there appears to be no triggering event.
Let’s go through the symptoms first.
Number one, the pain associated with fibromyalgia is described as constant, dull ache, typically
arising from the muscles.
To be considered widespread, the pain must occur on both sides of your body and above
and below your waist.
Fibromyalgia is always also characterized by additional pain when firm pressure is applied
to specific areas of the body called tender spots or tender points.
The common tender points locations include back of the head, between the shoulder blades,
top of the shoulders, front sides of the neck, upper chest, outer elbows, upper hips, sides
of the hips, as well as the inner part of the knees.
What is interesting with fibromyalgia, is that it often comes with many coexisting conditions,
including depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, lupus, restless
leg syndrome, post traumatic disorders, as well as osteoarthritis.
The causes of fibromyalgia is not known, but most likely it involves a variety of factors,
with common factors including physical, emotional trauma, which has to do with adrenal function,
if the adrenal glands are not able to handle the stress, as it is the stress control center
of the body and we will deal with this later.
Infection can also be a common trigger of fibromyalgia and this can include a sudden
onset of acute illnesses or even slow viral infections.
Certain people have common hereditary factors so genetic may also play a role.
Risk factors for fibromyalgia include age, irregular sleep pattern, hereditary or family
history of fibromyalgia.
According to the American College of Rheumatology, there are two criteria necessary for the diagnosis
of fibromyalgia.
Number one, you have a widespread pain lasting for at least three months.
Number two, is you have at least 11 positive tender points out of a possible 18.
Commonly, blood tests are ordered, including complete blood count, as well as erythrocyte
sedimentation rate, as well as thyroid functional tests.
As far as treatment from a conventional perspective, there is nothing that specifically can get
rid of fibromyalgia because we really don’t know the cause yet, but commonly the symptoms,
the suppression drugs include analgesics, such as aspirin, Tylenol, and things like
that to help relieve pain.
Antidepressants are oftentimes prescribed because the doctor may feel that the person
also has the depressive tendency.
In some cases, anti-seizure drugs may also be employed.
Emotional counseling can be added, as well as some physical therapy, on a very gentle
basis, from time to time.
As you can see so far, fibromyalgia is really a basket diagnosis of a muscle pain of unknown
origin that conventional doctors really don’t have a very good sense of what is really going
on.
So all that can be done is to suppress the symptoms and hopefully the symptoms will resolve.
From an alternative medicine point of view, there are actually many, many reasons why
a body would go into such a state of fibromyalgia.
Make note that fibromyalgia just means that there’s pain in the muscles and the muscle
fibers.
So the question is, well, why would the muscle fibers have pain when they didn’t have before?
One of the key things that we know is that cortisol is a hormone that’s responsible
for suppressing the inflammation of the body.
If there’s any inflammation anywhere, there’s the cortisol shot to suppress it and make
the pain go away.
If this cortisol function is not at optimum level, then the body will have a tendency
to have states of inflammation due to a variety of reasons, from infections to stress, either
physically or emotionally, to foot allergies or foot sensitivity, to chemical allergies
or chemical sensitivities, to a wide variety of other reasons.
So one thing we have to look at from an alternative world, is how is the body’s cortisol function
relates to the fibromyalgia?
Now, in Adrenal Fatigue, we know that the adrenal glands are weak.
The adrenal glands are the main glands that controls and helps the body deal with stresses
from external sources, whether this is physical stress or emotional stress or infections,
or a variety of other stressors.
When the body’s adrenal gland is in a fatigue stage, that means that adrenals are no longer
able to handle the stress.
In this case, the body’s cortisol level usually goes up first in the early stages,
stage 1 and stage 2, then in stage 3, it starts going down.
When the cortisol level starts going down, then the body’s ability to reduce the inflammatory
state becomes compromised.
As a result, things that usually do not cause inflammation can cause inflammation.
For example, you can be just bending down to pick up something and straining yourself
a little bit more than normal, and for normal people, the breakdown of the muscles would
be followed by a build-up of the muscle and any excessive breaking down will be controlled
with cortisol.
If the cortisol is low, then the breakdown process, or catabolic state, tend to be much
more pronounced and as a result, the cortisol imbalances will lead to a state of not only
pain, because the body muscles are being stretched, but also fatigue.
So both goes hand-in-hand, the pain and the fatigue.
The pain, if it is because of the weak adrenal glands, will be basically like fibromyalgia
in the general sense that it comes in various places, trigger points may be present at the
same time or may not be present.
In other words, if you have fibromyalgia, it is very important for you to look at the
source and find out what the trigger is.
If conventional medicine has no solution, then you have to look at Adrenal Fatigue because
Adrenal Fatigue in itself can trigger fibromyalgia.
In the picture clinically, it looks very, very much like regular fibromyalgia, except
that this fibromyalgia is triggered by a weak adrenal gland.
Well, why is it important?
Because if you understand this concept and you pursue this and if you do have adrenal
weakness, the good news is that when your adrenals are able to be healed with natural
compounds and lifestyle changes, then the cortisol level will then go back up and when
that happens, the anti-inflammatory mechanism will kick back in and the pain, or the fibromyalgia,
will go down.
In other words, if you fix the adrenals and if the adrenals are the source of the fibromyalgia,
then the fibromyalgia will improve.
Now, you can do all kinds of medications and if you have Adrenal Fatigue and all you do
is suppress the symptoms and don’t fix the adrenals, then it’s very unlikely that you
will be able to get well just with medication alone.
So in summary, fibromyalgia is nothing more than just a condition that conventional medicine
put in to denote what happens to your body’s muscle when it is in pain due to a variety
of causes, and right now, there are no etiology, as well as treatment that is specifically
for that other than suppressing symptoms.
So if that is working well, that’s fine.
If you are having fibromyalgia or muscle pain and you cannot find out the reason why, then
I urge you to consider Adrenal Fatigue as a possible reason.
To learn more, you can go to my Adrenal Fatigue center at my public educational website at
www.DrLam.com.
I have many, many articles on this adrenal, as well as related conditions, including articles
discussing fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue.
The best article is probably called, “Adrenal Fatigue and Associated Health Conditions,”
and it will give you a lot of details of how the adrenals is all tied in into the situation,
so you can learn more.
You can feel free to read that article in its fullness, it’s free.
If you have questions after you read, you can write to me directly from the website,
or if you need personalized attention, you can call our office.