Here are five natural and drug-free things that you can do starting right now on your own to either stop or greatly eliminate the pain - the chronic aching, bruising pain and fatigue often associated with Fibromyalgia.
The first one is to go to the store the grocery store and get some Epsom salts put it in your bathtub and have a nice soak - a good long Epsom salt soak for about an hour do this three days in a row and what you should notice is that the whole body pain levels should reduce by a couple of points on a scale of one to ten. The reason that this works for all pain syndromes is because the Epsom salts have an ionic effect. Your muscles are tight and you get lactic acid and other metabolic byproducts stuck inside of the connective tissues especially. Fibro-MY (muscle) -algia includes pain of the muscles and so what the Epsom salts do is they have a neutralizing effect on the acids.
The next thing that you're going to want to do is it's a position in yoga called the Child's Pose and what you're doing is you're basically elongating the spine by stretching out the muscles in your spine called the erector spinae muscles. So all the way from the lower neck area out into the pelvis. The two exceptions I would make, when comparing to a traditional child's pose, is don't have a child on your back at the same time (:o)) and leave some clearance between your buttock area and your heels. This allows you to go back and have a sort of buoyant or a bouncy type of an end-feel so that you can gradually, with each breath, get a little more stretching effect. If your buttocks are already on your heels then you're pretty much maxed out already. You want to hold this position for at least a couple of minutes. With each breath try to go back a little bit farther during the inhalation phase.
Well, that brings us to number three and that is to control your breathing. Now, what the studies show is that for people with Fibromyalgia, their stress levels are higher than people with other chronic pain syndromes. For example, a person who is older with degenerative arthritis or if they've had a major car accident or a sports type trauma, they know oftentimes that when they wake up they're going to be in more pain. They're going to have stiffness. They can do a couple of exercises and go for a walk and generally their pain levels are significantly reduced by 10 o'clock or so in the morning. However with Fibromyalgia, we don't know when the flare-ups are going to occur, when there's going to be a really sharp knife-like type pain in the traps muscles or in the pelvis down around the lower back or the back of the knees. Oftentimes in Fibromyalgia, most of the discomfort is located in the shoulders and in the neck areas but what the studies show is since the Fibromyalgia sufferer doesn't know when they're going to have the next flare-up, all the other in-between times there's a sort of anxiety like "oh my gosh I don't know when the next flare-up is going to occur" so that brings the stress levels up which can actually create even more pain.
There are are three sections of the video. It is a soundtrack to pace your breathing. It's very unique. It's on guitar and based on your height whether you're 5 feet or five and a half feet tall or six feet tall you should be breathing at a certain pace. If you can pace your breathing - if you can make your exhalation phase be slightly longer than your inhalation phase - what this does is it allows the carbon dioxide to take separate the oxygen from the hemoglobin so that it can get into your tissues better and be restored. This means less pain at the end of the day and more productivity. The first 10 minutes is for the 5-footers the second 10 minutes is for the 5 and a half liters and then the last one is for these six feet tall people.
The next one is turmeric root. What you're gonna do is you're going to go to a natural health food store, find the turmeric root (looks like little baby carrots with a peal on it) bring it home, smash up about a quarter of a cup of it, bring it with two cups of water to a boil so that the water is very very dark orange - almost brown - and then you're going to take it off, put a towel over your head breathe in through your nose. It doesn't matter if you breathe out through your nose or out through your mouth. Do this until the steam wears off and then bring it to a boil again and repeat.
Once it cools off drink it down just like it's tea. You can use honey in it if you want but, in my opinion, but the taste of the turmeric root alone, in my opinion, is not very strong. In my own family, we always do this if we feel like we're having in a pending immune challenge.
Then, last but not least, I want to share with you our approach at how we've been helping people with Fibromyalgia in the Rancho Bernardo area for years, and it has to do with a structural imbalance in the top of the neck. What happens is when the atlas vertebra which - from Greek mythology, Atlas was the titan that held the world on his shoulders - when it goes out of balance your body has no choice but to compensate and shift to make up for the difference in the weight of the head. Your head is about ten pounds, hence Atlas holding the world on his shoulders. It's like a bowling ball and what I can tell you is for the person with Fibromyalgia that often has several tender points in the neck and the shoulder areas, what I see my practice all day long is that when this area goes out you can't walk around with your head and neck shifted to one side, so your whole body is going to shift and compensate just to deal with gravity.
According to the American College of Rheumatology, within five years of a severe injury to the head and neck, ninety percent of the time this is when the Fibromyalgia symptoms first show up. There are other connections with bowel function, immune challenges, fatigue and some other things that are associated with Fibromyalgia but it's mainly about the pain, it's mainly about the musculoskeletal system and the neurology behind it all. And that's why our very very gentle yet specific works so well - if you know which key goes into the lock you shouldn't have to try to jam it in there.
We look forward to meeting you soon! If not, then I hope you get some really good value out of these other four steps. Feel free to shoot me an email or give our office a call. If you just want to consult over the phone that would be okay too. Thanks so much for watching and I hope to help you get your life back.