Mayo Clinic states, “Fibromyalgia is a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues. Researchers believe that fibromyalgia amplifies painful sensations by affecting the way your brain processes pain signals.” (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2021)

The amplification of pain from Fibro is believed to be due to over facilitation of the nerves in one’s body. Think of ones nervous ganglia much like security guards that have seen so much war, that they sound the alarm if they see so much as a cat walk by. Instead of resting at -95 millivolts the nerves in fibromyalgia can rest as high a -60 millivolts, requiring very little stimuli to send a strong pain signal. This amplification is not limited to the muscular nerves and all stimuli, including light and sound may also develop sensitivities. People with fibromyalgia may also be prone to amplify harsh thoughts and feelings against themselves, especially when their hope of betterment appears bleak.

Although many Doctors still debate the cause of fibromyalgia, or even if they believe it’s symptoms are worthy of a name, the author has noticed it to include a dramatization of a healthy persons’ pain-spasm-pain cycle. According to his studies with The Sweedish Institute and abroad, this cycle is begun when an average person gains a trigger point, the brain is usually uncertain as to the cause and will generally tighten the area a little to restrict potential blood loss and potentially increase inflammation in the hopes of helping it heal, the tighter muscles then become more predisposed to further trigger points which result in slightly tighter muscles and increased amounts of inflammation. In a healthy person their trigger points tend to heal faster than new ones form, but with Fibromyalgia, formation of new trigger points seem to be increased while their healing is greatly reduced. Thus, the author feels that ‘Fibromyalgia’ is something we all have to a degree but it’s when the nerves become over facilitated and the patient presents with a large range of painful trigger points that we call it fibromyalgia.

This is similar with candida, cancer and many other pathologies where we al have traces of them but don’ call it a pathology until it meets a diagnosis threshold. 

In extreme stages of this pathology at a chronic lvl 8+ pain with meds, spinal disintegration (spondylitis), rib subluxation, injury and paralysis by pain become more and more likely.

Standard Treatments

Arthritis.org states:

“From medication to lifestyle changes, these tactics can help fight fibro. If you're living with fibromyalgia, you already know that there is no cure for the pain and fatigue you often feel. Fortunately, with medications, self care strategies and lifestyle modifications, living with fibromyalgia can be a little easier.”

For most, there is no hope for Fibromyalgia or other chronic pain disease, leaving them hopeless or desperate for treatment beyond pain management.

Many people will try a diet but see no improvement, then exercise, then massage and so on.

So how have we been able to help our clients get to a chronic pain of 0? Read on!

Overcoming Fibromyalgia

There is hope!

(NOTE: PLEASE CONSULT WITH YOUR DOCTOR AND USE YOUR OWN BEST JUDGEMENT.)

All recovery plans must include a Western Doctor. Many are upset with the Western worlds lack of cures but it’s important to understand that western medicine has the strongest grasp of disease and can help make sure that there isn’t other more easily treatable things going on. Fibromyalgia is a diagnosis by exclusion and rarely fully certain.

Medications or pain reducing substances are not a waste of time and are actually an important part of recovery because they, among other things, allow the massage therapist to pass the ‘threshold of efficacy’ and be able to make lasting progress. And we can’t stress enough that’s it’s important to ensure with your Doctor that there aren’t other things going on, like infection. As an example a client could come in with back pain and mention a systemic loss of ROM. They should be recommend to go straight to their Dr/ER since we know that could be spinal infection.

The key with Fibro is you must do everything listed below at once. Think of it like one soldier being unable to overcome an adversary but a united army becomes unstoppable. Especially when you combine the power of the placebo effect (affirmations) with the below actions. Note: Doing everything listed but massage alone can help reduce your chronic pain levels by half and when you are able to get a massage it will become far more effective!

• Diet - If you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired then it’s time to make some changes. We recommend you do your own research on what food increase inflammation and which foods decrease it. But obviously you’ll have to let any junk food, processed foods, sugar etc go. Caffeine/coffee should also be replaced with green tea or let go altogether. Many think caffeine increases energy and mood but our bodies have the opposite long term effects to short term stimuli. Not to mention the energy crash, increased inflammation and push to stay in ‘fight or flight’ mode which also increases inflamation and makes even general healing impossible.

• Therapy - Fibromyalgia can begin in the body and affect the mind or begin in the mind and affect the body and combinations therein. If you can’t afford to see a therpist, or if every one in town is booked out for a year you have to find actions that are theraputic. And no, Facebook and Netflix do not count as therapies. The challenge is to do things that require physical motion, like art, exercise etc.

• Affirmations - Average people are generally hard enough on themselves. This seems to become harsher when you add any chronic diseases or pain into the mix. Thus it becomes extremely important to try and counteract negative thoughts against ourselves with positive ones. Interestingly, affirmations alone can feel impossible to do with tough cases yet are possibly the most important part of the healing process for it helps get the placebo effect working for us. An easier version is to simply listen to affirmation videos on YouTube. My favorite is “LISTEN EVERY DAY! “I AM” affirmations for Success.” The next best thing is saying affirmations out loud, then to a mirror and my favorite of all is martial art affirmations or simply stating an affirmation before doing a martial arts move (safely please!).

• Energy Work - We’re constantly bombarded by negative energy from the world and, at times, ourselves that it’s important to spend some time each day trying to focus on creating positive energy. You may feel silly following along to a you tube video before you can get Reiki energy work added to the beginning of a massage or by itself- but we have not been able to make a dent against Fibromyalgia with all of our sophisticated training without it!

• Reflexology - More than a foot and hand massage. Those with chronic pain will mostly have issues along their spine and sciatic nerve. For your spine massage the inside line of your feet from your toe to the balls of your foot, on the hand its the outside line from the tip of your thumb to your wrist. For your waist area massage the outer ball of your foot and bottom parts of your palm.

• Exercise - Life has a general physical demand level on us. If the well being and strength of our muscles is below that we get pain and injury. That’s also why many pregnant mothers have lower back pain, the load from their anterior puts a lot of strain on their lower back, meaning it’s important for ‘mothers to be’ to try and develop their lower back ahead of time since exercise will be less and less possible.
  We recommend you consult with a physical therapist that has helped people recover from Fibromyalgia before. Walks, water work and swimming are the best exercises, just don’t kick too hard with your feet as the joints will not yet be strong enough for a kicking frenzy! A person in chronic pain should never weight lift/exercise to failure or soreness. Only a mild comfortable level of strain. The reason is that your normal muscular recovery abilities are just not there and working to failure can take weeks to recover from even if injuries are not sustained. With that in mind, gentle back work and work on postural muscles can be helpful. And yes, getting back in motion will make a Medical Massage more effective since in the world of health everything generally effects everything and a massage therapist will never be able to massage an undeveloped muscle into relaxation since that pain is more from a lack of strength.

• Gentle chiropractic - Standard chiropractors that roughly twist their clients about are better for less serious clients in our opinion but in general are a vital asset to recovery. For chronic pain levels above 3-4 we recommend going to chiropractor that main use an ‘Activator’ and more gentle approaches.

• Approved vitamins - As approved by your nutritionist. Vitamins are critical. Not just multivitamins but other things like MSM, probiotics, Omega 3’s etc. Applied kinesology also helps a person discover nutrition they may be mising.

• Meditation - Honestly only possible after working on the other areas but essential to recovery. Meditation doesn’t have to be closed eyes while sitting still. It can also be a conscious act of staying calm and still your breath while doing Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Yoga, Sitting in a Sauna or exercising.

• Acupuncture - When combined with the above acupuncture is HIGHLY effective at helping with recovery. If you have to choose between Medical massage or Acupuncture we do recommend massage but an apt even every three months can go a long way to helping with recovery.

• Medical Massage - With most of the above being done, even the most basic of massages will show improvements to chronic pain levels over time. But getting one of our sophisticated fibromyalgia/chronic pain massages will rocket ride your recovery. What makes us unique, besides our success with the disease, is our ability to use hot stones and cyrotherapy on a population that normally believes they can’t handle them. Of course you can’t just throw a stone on their back or they will jump off the table! We pride ourselves in our effectiveness in dealing with Fibro, Chronic pain and injury recovery. All of our Testimonials are 100% true and although we can’t promise anything, and general safe estimate appears to be 1 month of  recovery for every lvl of chronic pain. So a chronic pain of 8 would be roughly an 8 month recovery with 4 massages a month. Anything less than that is generally permanently released in one hour.

So there is hope and thus our saying, “Believe in your impossible.” :)

We are still researching more precise ways of testing pain thresholds as well as more scientific documentation not only in our aim to become ever better practitioners with a more scientific way of tracking improvements, but to also better prepare for clinical trials etc.

For our thorough detailed approach to fibromyalgia can be found in our Detailed Methodology. This website in a constant work in progress and we hope to better show and explain how people can effectively help themselves across a wide range of pathologies.