An estimated 5 million adults per year suffer from fibromyalgia, affecting vastly more women than men (7:1 ratio). Can children suffer from fibromyalgia? Is it better to treat via the medical or non-medical rout?
What is Fibromyalgia?
Fibromyalgia can be classified as a myriad of symptoms to include widespread pain, sleep problems, fatigue, and psychological stress. people suffering from this can also experience morning stiffness, tingling or numbness in their hands or feet, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, sleep disturbances, and cognitive fog. With such an array of symptoms, its no surprise as to how long it can take to diagnose. Medically you need about 10 out of 18 trigger points (muscle spasms) on your back to technically be “positive” for fibromyalgia.
Why does it Hurt?
The condition is classified as an “overactive nerve” problem. When the nervous system is stressed out, the nerves in this case are hypersensitive leading to all of the symptoms listed above. This is why you feel pain all over your back and body.
Medical Approach
The medical approach is more or less a trial and error. Since there are so many symptoms associated with this, the medical approach typically is chasing them with drugs for those individual symptoms rather than treating them as a whole. Many times we have encountered people who say they were simply diagnosed with fibromyalgia because their doctor didn’t know what was causing whatever they were experiencing. Medications for this have included Prozac or Cymbalta (anti-depressants) or even anti-seizure medications in attempts to deaden the effects.
Non-Medical Approach
Non medical approaches include lifestyle changes to help cope with the stress and pain. These include getting enough sleep, regular exercise, and eating healthy foods and limiting caffeine to reduce chemical stress and inflammation in the body. Additionally, alternative therapies such as massage therapy and acupuncture helps to relive stress as well as increasing blood flow which helps to alter the excitatory neurotransmitters responsible.
Chiropractic Approach
Chiropractors are trained in finding and removing subluxations in the body. This is important because these subluxations cause the interference leading to these issues. By removing the subluxations, the body is able to heal itself as nature intended to, from the brain to the rest of the body or “above, down, inside out!”. These misalignments cause the negative effects in the body as people with fibromyalgia experience. At awaken Chiropractic, we are trained to work with people with such conditions and making sure not to overstimulate the nervous system. Don’t worry, there’s no twisting or cracking involved. Only the most gentle of adjustments used.
If you or someone you know suffers from this, we would love to help anyway we can. Please pass this along to anyone you know who might have this. We are offering an assessment for only $20 to anyone who contacts us from reading our blog. So click below to take advantage!
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Yours in Health,
Dr. Alex Willard
Awaken Chiropractic
720-381-6139
6208 E Pine Ln, Parker, CO 80138
