This short guide accompanies my patient-directed book Healing Fibromyalgia, which is based on my experience treating more than 1,600 fibro patients. Because of the nature of this condition, and the frequent necessity of prescription drugs, I wasn’t quite sure how to get the reader’s primary care physician involved. Virtually all fibro patients need professional expertise […]
Category: Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue
If you are suffering from widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep issues, memory and mood issues you may have Fibromyalgia (with or without chronic fatigue). Researchers believe that fibromyalgia amplifies painful sensations by affecting the way your brain and spinal cord process painful and nonpainful signals.
Fibromyalgia Quiz
From Healing Fibromyalgia, by David Edelberg, MD How Do I Know If I Have Fibro? Take the Quiz Even if you’ve already been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, take the quiz to gain a better understanding of fibro’s underpinnings. Because fibro is not a disease per se and offers your doctor no positive test results on which […]
Nicole’s Story and the Epic Tale of Fibro Explained
The following is an excerpt from Dr. Edelberg’s book, Healing Fibromyalgia. In the “How Can We Help?” section of our WholeHealth Chicago Patient Questionnaire, Nicole had written “I’m in constant pain as long as I can remember and I’m so tired I can’t even think straight.” Even as I welcomed her to our center, I […]
Fibromyalgia is Real
Fibromyalgia is real. The pain you awaken with is not “in your head.” You’re not even remotely a hypochondriac. If anyone–doctor, chiropractor, physical therapist, well- meaning loved one–ever tries to convince you otherwise, tune them out. They are wrong. Likewise, if anyone ever tells you fibro is incurable and you’ll just have to learn to […]
The Weather and Your Symptoms
I can always tell when there’s a major drop in barometric pressure by the number of e-mails I get from patients that begin, “I can’t believe I’m having such a terrible flare-up of my…”
Fibromyalgia: An Almost Natural Approach
One of the best ways to envision fibro is as a generalized anxiety disorder of the muscles, initially triggered by a stressful event and then perpetuated by the pain of the muscles themselves.
Fibromyalgia: Conventional Treatment
Patients and physicians unfamiliar with fibromyalgia are rightfully a bit shocked when they learn the average fibro patient uses five prescription drugs to make it through her day. Not one of these is “for fibro,” in the sense of a cure, the way penicillin cures a strep throat. The medications don’t even actually treat fibro, the way insulin treats diabetes. At their best, the drugs (sometimes) reduce symptoms.
Fibromyalgia: Gender Discrimination and Fibro Pain
Let me start with a fact that many doctors acknowledge but prefer not to discuss: Numerous well-conducted studies have shown that all chronic pain patients, but especially women, are seriously undertreated by physicians.
Fibromyalgia: The Fatigue Part
Right up there with pain, the second most common symptom of fibromyalgia is a constant sense of profound exhaustion. Disability insurance companies, people who don’t have fibro, and (sadly) most doctors can’t appreciate the extraordinary degree of this fatigue.
Fibromyalgia Explained: Why the Pain?
To understand fibromyalgia and why so many doctors tell their fibro patients, “All your tests are normal,” you need to think about serotonin, the brain chemical that acts as a buffer against stress.
Fibromyalgia Explained: Part 1
Hey, listen. Since May has been declared Fibromyalgia Awareness Month, even if you don’t have it I’d appreciate your plowing through the next couple of health tips and learning something about this miserable condition, which affects more than 15 million people, 95% of them women.
Two New Drugs for Fibromyalgia That Actually Work
Click here for the Health Tip link. Regular readers know I’m very skeptical about the claims of new drugs, especially those advertised on TV with a voice at the end of the commercial reading the side effects at the speed of a tobacco auctioneer (I always listen carefully for “death,” that ultimate side effect). You’ll […]
Fatigue
Living things, from amoebas to rocket scientists, operate electrically. Each of our cells generates its own tiny amount of (wireless) electricity, but the most active part of our bodies–both electrically and chemically–is the brain.
Fibromyalgia
If the muscles in your upper back and neck ache all the time for inexplicable reasons, it’s possible you have fibromyalgia. Virtually every day, patients (mainly women) come into the office with what turns out to be this condition. Either they describe long-standing symptoms associated with fibromyalgia, or they’re aware of their diagnosis but were told by their doctors that nothing could be done to help them. While at present no doctor, including me, can cure fibromyalgia, there is plenty we can do to help you feel better. In fact, our integrated approach, using conventional medicines, supplements, and other measures we recommend at WholeHealth Chicago, has produced real benefits for hundreds of my patients.
Fatigue
Occasionally, however, the electrical system in the brain goes awry, and an electrical storm erupts in one tiny portion of the brain. The result is an epileptic seizure. Seeing someone suffer an epileptic seizure is probably scarier than experiencing one yourself–in fact, the person loses consciousness too quickly to be aware of what’s happening. Through the ages, lots of stereotypes (good and bad) have been attached to anyone who had seizures. And it’s well worth repeating that people with epilepsy are just as smart, creative, and productive as everyone else.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Although fully 20% of any doctor’s patients report being tired or fatigued, actual cases of chronic fatigue syndrome are (fortunately) rather uncommon. Yet it’s also a condition that, like fibromyalgia, is markedly complex and about which doctors disagree. CFS (also called CFIDS, for Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome) first came to prominence in the 1980s when young people, after suffering cases of really awful flu, simply couldn’t get their energy back to normal again. And even though they seemed to have symptoms of a lingering virus (muscle aches, headaches, swollen lymph glands, sore throats), no virus wa
More on Lyrica, the Fibromyalgia Drug
Click here for the original post. Several readers sent me a link to this New York Times article about fibromyalgia and the newly approved drug Lyrica. The article addresses a continuing (and unnecessary) controversy about fibromyalgia. Namely, whether fibro is a “real” disease that deserves its own medication and, alternatively, if it’s not a disease […]
Advances in Fibromyalgia: Part 3
For fibromyalgia, there’s quite a bit you can do on your own. Some of this is old material, described in more detail in my book, The Triple Whammy Cure.
Advances in Fibromyalgia: Part 2
Doctors like me who work with many fibromyalgia (and chronic fatigue) patients try a variety of alternative approaches. These make perfect sense physiologically because they address the root cause of fibro, rather than supplying yet another painkiller (like Lyrica).
Advances in Fibromyalgia
As readers of my book The Triple Whammy Cure know, fibromyalgia is essentially a response by your body to unchecked stress, generally occurring (or returning) when your stress level exceeds the protective effect of your serotonin. You suffer that stress and your muscles tighten up and stay that way, hurting more and more. That’s fibromyalgia