Fibromyalgia and a few other things....
don't get me started!
This is a follow-on from a Stack discussion…
Interesting history here! The crushing fatigue aspect reminds me of mono...or fibro (don't get me started)....also not well-understood. We sometimes get so stuck on a story or an element of a story that we don't take a fresh look.
Case in point: a friend in Turkey with debilitating rheumatoid arthritis: when his pain was severe, would go to France for a 7-day hospital course of IV antibiotics, which would dramatically reduce his pain. He was then advised to return for another round of treatment in 3-4 years, when his pain became severe again. It was their experience that 3-4 treatment periods would resolve his rheumatoid arthritis. I watched it happen!
Certainly more hopeful, less expensive and harmful than our US approach.
I got to thinking about what happened and why that might work. My thoughts drifted back to the old folks who used to say they 'had a cold in their hip'- or shoulder or elbow. We might smile and think that was corny or silly, but I have learned to NEVER discount what comes out of a person's mouth...
More truth is spoken accidentally than we imagine! When this happens, that person has handed me..and themselves...the key to their problem.
So what were they saying in their plain and homely way?
They were describing a local accumulation of bacteria in a joint capsule.
So…the IV antibiotic treatment knocked the bacterial infection down considerably. It would take a few years to re-accumulate. And then it would be treated again. After the 3rd or 4th treatment, it was knocked down to the point where the body could take over and keep it within bounds.
I shared this with a young woman who had come for massage. She was studying to become a nurse practitioner.
She thought for a moment…and I watched a lightbulb came on. Then she said excitedly, “THAT'S what happens to my MOM (an MD suffering with rheumatoid arthritis) every time she takes an antibiotic! ALL her pain goes away for awhile!!”
She went home and they compared notes... This had happened a number of times!
Sometimes starting with a blank slate and a different vantage point works wonders!
We are engulfed in so-called health information these days. And yet, people are floundering more than ever! We have been steadily trained to concentrate so much of our attention on the subject of our health that we have become really warped and unnatural…and not much smarter about anything!
So let me explain myself a bit here…and how I came to think differently.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a doctor with all my heart, but once I saw our system up close, I was shocked to find that it was primarily a factory for making a ton of money and that they were putting human beings on that conveyor belt! (It’s so much more obvious now…)
My conscience would not allow it. I reluctantly set my life plan aside. Looking back on it now, I see that larger Life stepped in and my real education began…
Around that time, the Dairy Council got in bed with the government and said that they wanted to sell more product. The Food Pyramid was rearranged to accommodate their needs. We Americans were soon urged at every turn to consume more dairy… We still are…50 yrs and countless TV ads and billboards later.
It’s interesting to observe, that in this same time period, we also drifted from being called ‘citizens’ to being labeled ‘consumers’.
The power of language…Never forget.
For added emphasis, we were warned about the dire consequences of failing to consume more and more dairy products.
Behind the scenes, however, one year later, people were presenting in doctor’s offices all around Noth America with rising levels of arthritis, kidney and gall stones, hardening of the heart and arteries, hypertension, plantar fasciitis, bone spurs, etc., etc….all the 200+ conditions related to over-consumption of calcium.
It was too much of a good thing…
(Check your own thinking here… We are accustomed to thinking that if something is good for us, then more is better)
To their credit, those doctors did the research and raised the alarms. But the dairy industry held sway and they were ignored repeatedly. Promises were made, forgotten and set aside. Finally, in a further attempt to stave off impending health crises, the doctors and researchers begged the now calcium-mad industry to at least balance the calcium intake with magnesium. A half-hearted and poorly researched response followed. Calcium magnesium supplements and formulations entered the market. Later research showed that when calcium and magnesium are taken together, they compete for absorption and the calcium always wins. The result is that while you think you’re correcting the imbalance, you are accidentally making it worse!
My personal experience along these lines…
My first instinct (first instincts matter!) was that the body had it’s own balance…and that I probably shouldn’t tamper with it. So I ignored the urging. Eventually, however, I broke down under the non-stop barrage of grim warnings directed at small-boned active young women. I began to eat 2 small cheese cubes daily along with the very occasional supplement. During this period, I also experienced a period of extreme stress. Stress and too much calcium can derange a person’s body chemistry.
The result: One year later I was in the doctor’s office complaining of joint pain, stiffness and swelling. At 22, I was diagnosed with arthritis.
‘Must run in the family,’ as the doctors like to say.
That kind of thinking STOPS all further thinking and simply dooms you to an inescapable and dismal fate. This is unthinkingly applied and accepted by everyone.
The WORST thing about that statement is that IT IS RARELY TRUE!
What is more likely to be true is that you grew up with the same soil and water. You have similar eating habits. ENVIRONMENT and HABITS are hereditary. Change THOSE things and you take control and change your future. I don’t suffer from any of the illnesses in my family...
I was treated with every regular and experimental drug in the Canadian health system for the next 4 yrs. Instead of getting better, I went steadily downhill. And then, at the ripe old age of 26, I was diagnosed with 4 kinds of arthritis and I was written up in the Canadian Journal of Medicine as having “the most rapid, violent onset of arthritis ever seen.” I was severely crippled, in pain around-the-clock and frankly terrified. Nothing more could be done for me at that stage, so they offered me a wheelchair and disability.
At that juncture, I left, never to return, and I set out to figure it out on my own.
These Hands...Debra Robinson·September 2, 2024Read full story
Within 18 months, I was very nearly back to normal. The path to health was to first remove all that excess dairy. Too much of a ‘good’ thing. (details in the post above) Arthritis is quite simply calcium deposits.
I cured myself through diet and stress management… It cost nothing.
The cure for many things is, in fact, to put less in our mouths…not more.
There are now more than 100 kinds of arthritis and related conditions. What remains unchanged more than 50 years later is medicine’s declaration that they don’t know what causes arthritis and they don’t know how to cure it. They can only offer treatment. Consider the following:
The global arthritis market is projected to witness a CAGR of 6 % during the forecast period 2024-2031, growing from USD 60.03 billion in 2023 to USD 95.68 billion in 2031. https://www.marketsandata.com/industry-reports/arthritis-market
The medical-industrial complex will likely continue on its way. We have let them get away with it. We have not called them to account. And thus they feel empowered to enact more scam illnesses and fraudulent treatments on people. They create more suffering than they relieve.
Later, when I became a full-time Thai and massage therapist, I had another window on the worlds of illness and western medicine…
Let’s look at the new kid on the block aka Fibromyalgia and see how it relates to arthritis. I see it as a logical progression of our poor lifestyle and diet choices. I also see it as fixable. The way back to good health is simple and inexpensive. It is also not extreme.
Once a person can see clearly how a few things affect our bodies and then see how arthritis, chronic fatigue leading to fibromyalgia flow one to another, you have a common sense understanding of how to keep yourself healthy.
I will also expose the scam of fibromyalgia as I watched it develop.
Let’s just take a look at the Latin basis for the words ‘arthritis’ and ‘fibromyalgia’.
Arth (bone)- itis (inflammation.
Inflammation of the bony structures (joints) of the body. In arthritis, this is the result of too much calcium coupled with an acidic environment caused by careless diets and/or stress.
Excess calcium results in bony overgrowth (bone spurs-jagged bits, often called crepitus, that grind away at soft tissue and tendons faster than the body can repair). The typical American diet is highly acidic plus bodies become more acidic with age. Lastly, acid is generated by stress.
Think of this…
Acid eats whatever it comes in contact with. Acid eats metal! It eats bones and tendons! (if a tooth is left overnight in Pepsi or Coke, it is half-eaten by morning. If left in Mountain Dew, it is completely consumed…overnight!)
Acid HURTS when it eats. This is Arthritis in a nutshell...
Let’s look at CFS or chronic fatique syndrome. The harmful diets tend to be high in processed and fast foods with their many chemicals, carbs and sugar.
We have been told all our lives that sugar gives us energy, but in fact, sugar actually ROBS us of energy. It eats our oxygen (leaving us open to the oxygen-deprived environment that cancer prefers). This leads to CHRONIC FATIGUE, a precurser to fibromyalgia. The more sugar you consume, the more tired…and achey you become.
We’ve all experienced this…we just failed to connect the dots. After a big Sunday church dinner, for instance, all people want to do is sleep! (church-goers have LOADS of CFS and Fibromyalgia…not to mention, cancer). They are addicted to sugar and carbs and, even when in extreme pain and distress, they are the hardest to help!
On to Fibromyalgia…
This one makes me so mad! Watching this unfold over the last 2 decades…
Women (primarily) were told that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was ‘all in their heads’. Countless women suffered the gaslighting of their often severe and very real, symptoms. This went on long past the time it should have. Many patients reported that their doctors were hostile and often precribed medications that worsened their conditions. A look back at the early studies show the remarkable complexity of their approach (which continues to this day) Although dietary changes were noted to improve or even resolve the condition, little attention was paid to the findings.
COULD IT BE AS SIMPLE AS NOT PUTTING SUGAR IN YOUR GAS TANK?
Responsible parents would never allow their kids to eat sugar around the clock and on demand. but these same adults do exactly that to themselves without concern. Acting worse than children! Connect the dots…
You cannot expect to run at peak performance on a diet of junk. If you continually insult your body, there comes a point where it cannot supply the lack and it breaks down.
Couple that with too much calcium, depleted magnesium (the Master Mineral) and you begin to harden, age prematurely…and you begin to ‘HURT ALL OVER’.
A little Latin lesson:
Fibro (fibers, muscles) -my (many) - algia (pain).
Fibromyalgia is a fancy Latin was of saying “I hurt all over”.
Basically, arthritis is inflammation of the joints from too much calcium. Over time, the rest of the body becomes calcified as it fills in rhe blank spaces. It is the logical extension!
A new disease demanded new tests!! New explanations!! A new rationale!! Fancy new treatments!!! Expensive, money-making new treatments!! A specialty was born…and a blockbuster condition that generated obscene profits. These specialists were the envy of the medical profession!!
The mind boggles at this stage!!
I listened to my patients recount their conversations with their specialists. There was a lot of guesswork going on. They were clearly grasping at straws and hoping the patients would swallow what they were told. “Maybe it started with the accident…or the surgery you had…or the birth of your last baby”, etc. etc. Some of it was just nonsensical. They clearly did not know…
The patients were being treated…again, a lot of guesswork at their expense…but they were NOT GETTING BETTER. If anything, they were being swallowed up into the belly of the whale…from which there was no escape.
I, too, had once ‘hurt all over’. I actually spent the 1st half of my life in a fair bit of pain. I could sympathize. It made a serious student out of me. I learned how to not spend the 2nd half of my life in pain!
I was now working with 8000-9000 patients whose 1st complaint was pain. I felt privileged…and duty-bound…to learn all I could to really help them, rather than just taking their money every few weeks.
When the 1st ‘tests’ rolled out, I nearly fell out of my chair!
These fake ‘experts’ had simply torn a page from basic common massage therapy manuals regarding ‘trigger points’…and named sore trigger points as ‘proof’ of the diagnosis of the dreaded fibromyalgia.
What any massage therapist worthy of the name knows, is that anyone over the age of 4 or 5 will experience soreness in these points. They are simply points where muscle and tendons attach to bones. We all have them. They are not in themselves indicative of a disease process. A FRAUDULENT MADE-UP DIAGNOSIS that they sold to the public in order to capture the ‘market’ for suffering people.
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And this is how too much calcium and sugar morphed into arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.
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Market Overview Global Fibromyalgia Treatment Market has valued at USD 2.98 billion in 2022 and is anticipated to witness an impressive growth in the forecast period with a CAGR of 3.90% through 2028. (https://www.techsciresearch.com/report/fibromyalgia-treatment-market/19552.html)
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Thankfully, the body is quite forgiving if we make the simple adjustments and corrections in our diets. I was immobilized with pain…and the depression it brings, and suffering from the toxic meds I’d taken for 4 years. Within 10 days, most of my pain and swelling was gone as my body was busy repairing the damage. I went on to practice Thai massage for 20+ years with no pain or hint of disability.
These are the bodies we are given!
I recommend reading various posts such as the one above… My site will remain free to all (one of my dear readers said “We have to get you making money here!”)
While I appreciate the need for that in many fine writers- at this point,
I am not making a living…I am making a Leaving.
So, as always, thank you for reading! Feel free to share and restack.
We’re here to help each other… Try not to die of any misprints!