- Autoimmunity is overlooked or mistreated.
Autoimmunity (AI) is the top of the list because it trumps everything else. When your immune system goes out of control, it launches an attack on your body’s tissue. AI has dramatically increased in developed western cultures in recent decades.
Fibromyalgia is often left out of the list of autoimmune diagnoses. (Remember, diagnoses are labels, and labels are for cans, not people.) Frankly, I’m glad it is left off the list. The medical world’s answer for autoimmune conditions is steroids. If fibromyalgia were on that list, doctors would do an even poorer job of managing it. I do not mean to be cynical, but there are some chronic conditions the medical profession has done an abysmal job addressing.
A majority of the patients I see who have a diagnosis of fibromyalgia have an underlying autoimmune or chronic inflammatory condition. Chronic inflammation most commonly affects thyroid physiology (fatigue or weight gain), your adrenal glands (chronic fatigue or blood sugar imbalance), and the brain (fibro fog). Running the right tests and solving the system-based problems is the only way. Treating symptoms alone with pain and psychiatric medication is not a solution.
2. It’s in your head.
How many doctors have you had tell you it is in your head? Take these antidepressants. This directly translates into: “I don’t know how to help you. Get out of my office.” All of your lab tests are normal; all of the imaging you have had are normal (a few of you may have even seen “white spots” on your brain MRI. If this is the case, I refer you to No. 1, autoimmunity). Many doctors will associate fibromyalgia with a personality disorder. Great, more people telling you you’re nuts.
The most disturbing aspect of chronic FM is when those who are closest to you say, “You need to tough your way through this,” or “Stop being lazy.” This is where it becomes a moral diagnosis. There must be something wrong with you as a person.
I am here to say that your condition is actually in your head. Unfortunately, it is everywhere else, too, and your doctor is only as good as the drugs he or she prescribes. Fibromyalgia is a metabolic condition. You cannot medicate your way out of a metabolic condition.
- Incomplete tests are ordered.
I see this every day in my office. The tests usually ordered include a complete blood count, a chemistry panel, and TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone). Some people will come to my office with more extensive testing to see if there have been any recent or chronic infections, perhaps signs of nonspecific autoimmune markers. These tests are necessary but often not enough information to get you better.
We often order tests that allow us to look closer at the immune system; we order complete thyroid panels, adrenal stress indexes, and sometimes, food sensitivity panels. We need to order just enough to make a sound clinical judgment. Since being in practice for 20 years and having gained clinical experience and hundreds of hours of post-doctoral education in functional medicine, I find that I need to order less and less every year, but I still must order the minimum necessary to recommend a functional solution.
- Right tests ordered; wrong reading of results.
Medical doctors use lab reference ranges as a guide to determine whether or not you have a particular disease.
The easiest to use as an example is TSH, which is used to determine whether or not you have a thyroid condition. Traditional medicine uses the lab ranges of 0.5 to 5.0. In other words, if your TSH level is below 0.5, you have hyperthyroidism, and if it is above 5.6, you have hypothyroidism. In order to have optimal thyroid health, your levels must be between 1.8 to 3.0, which is a much narrower range. You can be symptomatically hypothyroid with a lab value of TSH at 3.5, yet your doctor says it is a normal test. The reason is that most people who get lab tests are sick people, and one of the most prescribed classification of medicine in the western world are thyroid medications. The numbers experienced by the lab, which they base their reference ranges on, are from abnormal subjects. Therefore, the reference range is too wide to be useful for people interested in getting healthier.
Functional medicine doctors use functional ranges, not lab reference ranges.
We also recognize that your thyroid can work just fine and produce ample amounts of thyroid hormone, and once the thyroid hormone begins the process of getting converted to the active form in the liver and gastrointestinal system, things can go wrong, resulting in hypothyroid symptoms with normal blood tests.
- Medicate, medicate, medicate!
Fibromyalgia is a neurological condition caused by a breakdown in your metabolism. It is a metabolic condition. You cannot drug your way out of a metabolic condition. Drugs will help with your symptoms temporarily, but they will eventually make you worse because of the damage they do to your kidneys and liver. Do you really want to continue to gamble with them? It is impossible to restore your health with chemicals that play no role in improving your health. They do just the opposite over time.
- No diet changes.
Most doctors know very little about nutrition, especially as it relates to the immune system. If you go to your doctor and ask him or her about gluten sensitivity, they will run a celiac blood panel test (which is a very inaccurate test and can have a very high false negative rate). A negative celiac test will prompt most doctors to not make any additional nutritional recommendations.
The fact is, fibromyalgia symptoms are commonly caused by what you put in your mouth. The standard American diet (S.A.D.) causes so much stress on our bodies that it causes many of us to be sick. Even when you have switched in recent years to a seemingly healthy diet, you may have chronic gut dysfunction that is preventing you from benefiting from that healthy diet.
Gut dysfunction is inevitable with fibromyalgia because it is a brain-based, inflammatory problem that has its effect on everything the brain controls. The GI tract uses much of our brainpower, and when brainpower is low, GI function is poor. The network of nerves around your stomach and small intestine is more extensive than the network of nerves in your brain. Ninety-five percent of all neurotransmitters we use are in our gut. They are chemicals with names you recognize when dealing with depression and anxiety, such as serotonin, dopamine, etc.
- Taking too many supplements.
Taking too many supplements can make your condition worse. If your fibromyalgia is caused by an autoimmune or other immune-related condition (your own body’s immune system, which is supposed to keep you from getting sick, actually attacks your own tissue and makes you sick), then taking some supplements can actually trigger an autoimmune reaction and make your condition worse.
- What about the thyroid?
Thyroid disease (or disorder) is often overlooked in fibromyalgia. If it is assessed, most of the time it is mismanaged. Every cell in your body has a thyroid receptor. When the thyroid slows down, every system in your body slows down. You may have fibromyalgia symptoms because of an autoimmune attack on your thyroid called Hashimoto’s disease that has gone undiagnosed.
- It is reversible!
All too often in the medical world, a doctor will diagnose a patient with fibromyalgia (if he or she even believes in it) and say, “Well, Ms. Jones. There is nothing we can do. You are going to have to live with it,” and then write a prescription for Lyrica and an antidepressant.
This is not the answer. I have spent the last 2 decades in NYC helping people overcome the icy grips of fibromyalgia. If you treat it correctly and make the correct lifestyle changes, it is reversible.
- The condition is real.
I really don’t care what other health care professionals have told you. Fibromyalgia is real. It is not in your head. (Well, it is. It is technically neurodegenerative, so yes, it is in your brain.) It is a very real condition that is destroying millions of lives across the country. I have seen the devastating effects it has. But it is reversible.
Thanks for reading!
Please feel free to share with us by writing in the comments section your experiences or stories you’ve heard of people being told it’s all in their head, that they are just depressed, or any other condescending excuse that usually accompanies a visit to your doctor when dealing with fibromyalgia symptoms.
