Apr 07 2009
Fibromyalgia
I have fibromyalgia. It’s a chronic, unpredictable painful condition that is not widely understood. I have advice. I take a drug called Lyrica. The doseage that I was on, made things complicated due to the memory loss that I believe it caused. There is something called “Fibro-fog” which describes the fogginess we experience due to the chronic pain. But I believe that Lyrica works very well to deal with the pain, doctors seem to be okay with a patient easily adjusting doseage when needed. For example, the month of April or the breaking of spring here in the midwest is seemingly difficult for many of us who suffer from Fibro. A friend confirmed this with me just the other day, and we both realized we were having hard times, and experiencing more pain.
Why is fibro so difficult, and what can you do about it? The first thing that is difficult is that chronic pain is strongly linked to depression. We end up taking a lot of meds for these two problems. Also, chronic pain targets our limbic system, where our reactions to stimuli occur, and our feelings sit waiting to be stimulated. If you were to google the limbic system, and I encourage anyone reading this to do so, you will find out why certain things are happening to your mood, your sex drive, your happiness and overall well-being, and most importantly, your reaction to pain (and pleasure) but it’s the pain we try to target our awareness toward.
One way that I try to block pain, and have significantly reduced it, is to swim. Swimming proved to be a great cardio workout (lap-swim) and I highly recommend it. Additionally, I was encouraged to get to the bottom of my weight category for my height and build. How would you do this? Well, I became a consumer of Herbalife, and they did a body scan on me (my health coach) and told me what my body mass index was, and how much fat I was carrying, and what was normal. Needless to say, I went from weighing 158 lbs (from my inactivity due to pain) to 145 (due to my activity and subsequent weight loss and pain management/reduction). Herbalife is a meal replacement, but the most important thing I did was pay attention to how much protein I needed to take in each day. Today i have to eat 108-111 grams of protein/day. This is hard to do unless you can find the nutritious high-protein foods, like shakes, tuna, beef jerkey, soy products, protein bars, peanut butter, etc. My diet has become much more diversified now that I understand what I can eat, and how active I need to be. I am now fluctuating between 145-148 over the course of a month.
What was most surprising to me, is that I was a women’s size 12-14 and now I am in a 6, sometimes an 8 depending on the clothing, brand, style. This was a surprise, because I haven’t been this fit, or this size ever since high school and I am almost 38.
Today things are best for me when I do these things, for fibromyalgia:
1. Get enough sleep (8 hours or more for me)
2. Exercise, and stay in my lowest weight for my height and build.
3. Eat a well-balanced diet
4. Take Lyrica or other recommended pain meds for fibromyalgia
5. Have a pain management “Plan” and you could find this on the internet (ideas) from meditation, to eating chocolate, exercising, sleeping, listening to relaxing music etc. The point of pain managemet is thinking of your pain-pleasure limbic system. Do something that reduces stress, and thereby improves your mood and physical functioning by relaxing your body. Exercise might not seem relaxing, but when I’m in the most pain, I absolutely have to go and lift weights, or swim. Some days I am just cold and my body is tight so I go to the sauna at the gym. It works!
Good Luck!
