Tips Archives - Fibromyalgia

30Mar 2021 by chronicwoman No Comments

Does the waiting ever end in Chronic Life?

Chronic Illness, Fibromyalgia, Research, Tips

Living with one or multiple chronic illnesses involves a LOT of waiting. We wait for doctor appointments, test results, pain relief, cures, diagnoses, people to understand, and so much more. But does it ever end? There is no simple answer to this question. My chronic illnesses which include but are not limited to, fibromyalgia, psoriatic arthritis, psoriasis, degenerative disc disease, abdominal adhesions (from endometriosis and surgical scarring), and coccydynia, have all forced waiting periods into my life when I would have rather not been sitting around waiting. The problem with all the waiting that has to be done is that waiting then becomes a way of life. However, as I discovered after the first 12 years after my first diagnosis, there are some things that we shouldn’t be waiting for,…

30Mar 2021 by chronicwoman No Comments

Fibromyalgia vs My Rest Day

Fibromyalgia, Research, Tips

When is the last time scheduled a rest day? I am not talking about spending the day in bed because of your chronic illness flared and made leaving it impossible. What I am asking is, when did you last choose a day to relax, give your body a break, allow yourself to chill out in front of the television for no reason other than you wanted to? I don’t need a rest day The problem with having multiple chronic illnesses is that a lot of our downtime is dictated by chronic pain. Fibromyalgia, psoriatic arthritis, and endometriosis dictate when I am active or when I can leave the house. There are times when they make me feel like I have no control of the time in between. It is like…

25Feb 2021 by chronicwoman No Comments

Camping adventures

Awareness, Chronic Illness, Fibromyalgia, Research, Tips

Squirrel!!! Sorry, this little guy amused the heck out of me. I took at least fifteen shots of him going up and down this tree to get little pieces of bread. I’m easily amused. Clearly, I’ve found a hobby for when I retire. So three days of Camping Adventures was about as much as my body could take But it was better than it could have been. Potentially it could have been quite painful because I knew those inflatable bed things can flare up every tender point on you in the nastiest of ways in one night. Tip #1: Thick inflatable mattress and one of those foamy things on top. It worked awesomely. I had some strange bruising after day three and I ached all over moderately but the most…

25Feb 2021 by chronicwoman No Comments

Objective test for Fibromyalgia now on the market

Chronic Illness, Fibromyalgia, Research, Tips

This is a follow-up of my previous article Study suggests fibromyalgia might be an immunologic disorder in which they suggested the study would be able to produce a diagnostic tool for fibromyalgia. The recent study published in BMC Clinical Pathology and held by the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago (UIC) and EpicGenetics revealed research that has led to the first objective diagnostic test for fibromyalgia. This will significantly reduce the wait time for diagnosis in patients. However, was the test put to market too quickly without enough validating research? The study involved a total of 110 fibromyalgia patients and 91 healthy control subjects. The study found “of stimulated PBMC cultures of healthy control subjects were significantly increased as compared to matched non-stimulated PBMC cultures. In contrast, the…

25Feb 2021 by chronicwoman No Comments

Fibromyalgia treatments

Fibromyalgia, Medication, Research, Tips

There are a few approved medications for fibromyalgia and many more off-label. Used to be FMS was just not treated. Sort of the ‘suck it up, buttercup’ approach, which I for one did not appreciate. For some reason when you are in loads of pain whenever you do anything you tend not to do anything which then increases the pain… and those of us with fibromyalgia just have to muddle through it and find our own treatment plan. Now there are three meds that can be beneficial for fibromyalgia. 1)Lyrica– (pregabalin) This is in the class of anticonvulsant type medications. It affects the pain chemicals in the brain that send pain signals across the nervous system and thus why it is used for fibromyalgia as well as nerve pain. I…

25Feb 2021 by chronicwoman No Comments

Should rheumatologists treat fibromyalgia patients?

Chronic Illness, Fibromyalgia, Medication, Research, Tips

I do believe there are patients who have widespread musculoskeletal pain attributed to a syndrome we call fibromyalgia. However, I do not believe rheumatologists should be the “main caregivers for these patients,” as Pisetsky and others have suggested. We simply treat these patients by default. The main reason for my stance is the lack of any creditable evidence supporting fibromyalgia as a rheumatologic condition other than the existence of chronic pain. Although rheumatic diseases are often associated with chronic pain, the converse is not necessarily true. With the burgeoning entrepreneurial specialty masquerading as “pain management,” my opinion is that these patients would be best served by those who claim to be pain specialists—if only we could get them to put their needles down long enough to actually treat the pain…

25Feb 2021 by chronicwoman No Comments

Mindfulness therapy may not be effective for managing fibromyalgia

Awareness, Fibromyalgia, Medication, Research, Tips

Mindfulness therapy may not be effective for managing fibromyalgia In a recent study, fibromyalgia patients using mindfulness-based stress reduction, such as practising yoga, showed no significant improvements in either physical symptoms or emotional well-being.A program aimed at easing stress with meditation and yoga may not be much help for people with the chronic-pain condition fibromyalgia, a recent study suggests.The study, published in the journal Pain, looked at the effects of so-called mindfulness-based stress reduction — a technique developed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts in 1979 that combines mindfulness meditation and gentle yogaFor the new study, researchers led by Dr. Stefan Schmidt, of the University Medical Center in Freiburg, Germany, tested the program’s effects among 177 women with fibromyalgia.They found that women assigned to the mindfulness program showed no…

22Feb 2021 by chronicwoman No Comments

How to find meaning again when fibromyalgia and chronic illness upends your life

Awareness, Chronic Illness, Fibromyalgia, Research, Tips

You’re sitting in the doctor’s office, being told you have an incurable illness. Maybe you have to leave your career, or pull back on your workload, with set accommodations. You can’t live up to being the involved wife, parent, sister or daughter you planned on being. Travel become difficult, athletic ability falls off, and favorite hobbies or pastimes become more challenging. But mostly you just don’t feel like you. A period of grief ensues over your previous life, and it crashes over you in waves. Eventually you start asking the big questions. Can you live a good life despite pain? How do you find meaning again amidst all the change? I don’t have THE answer, but I did find some answers. I had to understand what I’d found meaningful in…

22Feb 2021 by chronicwoman No Comments

A Gentle Guide to Moving More When You Live with Fibromyalgia Part 2 Areobic

Awareness, Chronic Illness, Fibromyalgia, Medication, Research, Tips

I think we need a paradigm shift in how we view physical activity and fibromyalgia. Consider what we mean when we talk about ‘exercise’. Usually, it’s defined as a routine program of physical activity to improve fitness. We associate working out with breaking a sweat, feeling our heart pumping and our muscles burning. It’s something you have to push yourself through – just look at all the painful terms were use: whipping yourself into shape, hitting the gym, or burning fat. Fun stuff. Also, not going happen when you live with chronic pain. For most of us, ‘exercise’, defined as above, is a recipe for a fibromyalgia flare-up. The conventional wisdom gives us s a false choice between “exercising” and being “sedentary”. For the vast majority of us, it seems…

22Feb 2021 by chronicwoman No Comments

Can Essential Oils Actually Help Relief Fibromyalgia Symptoms? – YES

Chronic Illness, Fibromyalgia, Medication, Tips

You may be surprised to learn that research shows some essential oils have medicinal effects that may help improve fibromyalgia symptoms. There are three main symptoms that essential oils can help relieve: anxiety, insomnia/fatigue and pain. Essential Oils for Stress and Anxiety Living with chronic pain and illness can be emotionally overwhelming. There are days when I feel anxious over an upcoming appointment, frustrated by the limitations caused by pain and fatigue, worried about the uncertainty of flare-up…and the list goes on and on. Managing stress by making time for relaxation can help you cope with anxiety. There are a number of essential oils that help promote relaxation. For example, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center, “Scientific evidence suggests that aromatherapy with lavender may slow the activity of…