Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia is considered a central nervous system disorder that affects pain processing, leading to:
There are often other symptoms including:
The traditional medical narrative is that fibromyalgia results from an issue with how the nervous system processes pain messaging, possibly due to some chemical changes in the nerves.
It is noted that the symptoms can begin after some sort of trigger such as a serious injury, a viral infection, surgery or significant psychological trauma. It is a “diagnosis of exclusion” – tests are done to rule out conditions such as an autoimmune disease, and these tests are negative, the fibromyalgia diagnosis is made. Treatment approaches are focused on managing symptoms, for example with pain killers, and on coping with the psychological impact that developing this condition has on the patient.
From an ecological medicine perspective, I absolutely agree with the premise that the symptoms occur because pain messaging has become disordered, and that this may be due to some chemical changes in the nerves, but I find this purely descriptive account is not clinically useful.
Ecological medicine doctors then ask the question “why”. Why is the pain messaging disordered? What might be affecting the nerve signalling to lead to the disordered pain messaging?
✨ Does this approach sound like one you want to explore further?
When working with patients with fibromyalgia, I focus on reviewing trigger events.
There are usually numerous issues that could be causing disordered pain signalling and/or chemical changes. Once we have identified these issues, we can plan testing with a view to making a diagnosis (or diagnoses).
And as always, once there is a diagnosis (or more usually, a hierarchy of diagnoses), then treatments can follow.
The treatment is not for fibromyalgia per se but for the deeper physiological issues underlying the condition.
The diagnoses I see most often in my clinic with patients with fibromyalgia include:
There is an overlap between ME/CFS, MCAS, fibromyalgia and my approach for all these conditions is similar: I use supportive treatments where I can, to help with symptoms in the short term, while we explore and work through the root causes to bring about meaningful change in the long term.
