There are many common chronic illnesses out there, from migraines and asthma to cystic fibrosis and ALS, and all of them affect a person’s life quality. One of the most common chronic illnesses nowadays is Everyday Health.
What is Fibromyalgia?
This chronic illness can be caused by infections, physical trauma, physical or psychological stress, and surgery, and usually don’t have a single cause, but it’s a result of an accumulation over a longer period.
Fibromyalgia sufferers feel pain throughout their entire body, in their tendons, muscles, and tenderness in their joints. This illness also comes with insomnia, fatigue, mood instability, and forgetfulness or foggy memory. Sometimes it can even come with TMJ disorders, tension headaches, anxiety, IBS, and Healthline.
Statistics
Fibromyalgia comes right after the leading musculoskeletal system disorder, osteoarthritis. Everyday Health, about 1 in 50 people will develop this illness during their lifetime.
Approximately 80 to 90 percent of all fibromyalgia cases are women. It appears that it is also a genetic illness, so a woman who has a family member with this disorder has a higher chance of developing the disease.
The average fibromyalgia sufferer is hospitalized once in a 3-year period. About half of all people with fibromyalgia can’t perform or have difficulties doing their daily activities, while 30 to 40 percent of them need to change jobs or stop working.
What Can Fibromyalgia Sufferers Do?
Although fibromyalgia is considered to be an incurable disease, people are always searching for hope. Barbara Sinclair is a woman who asserts that she managed to heal herself from this illness, with the help of a few holistic methods. Read her story in continuation.
Barbara Sinclair’s Story
This woman developed fibromyalgia at the age of 48, in 2002, and she had it for 7 years, during which she wasn’t able to move freely, or she could’ve experienced limited movement.
Her illness began with a one-day fever. However, she lived with pain for the following 7 years, meaning that even a slight breeze was a cause for her agony. Western medicine didn’t find anything wrong so she was prescribed medication for treating her insomnia, anxiety, and depression. But Barbara wasn’t satisfied because she wanted to find and manage the root of her disorder. She discovered physical therapy: chiropractic adjustments, massages, and acupuncture.
Her acupuncturist recommended replacing her Ambien with St. John’s Wort tincture for her insomnia. She says that after several weeks, she suddenly started to sleep, and she felt a drastic decrease in the pain that she mostly felt during the night. Moreover, Barbara states that she began having a more positive view of life.
Then, one of her colleagues at work recommended her Ayurveda. She managed to find a proper doctor after several months.
Vata is part of the balance in the body, the air/space dosha, and according to her doctor, hers was off the charts deranged, which was the reason why she was affected by light breezes. Although slow, Barbara still began making progress. The doctor explained to her that as the body needed a long time to get out of balance, it also needs a long time to restore it.
She spent years looking through her past until she discovered her mountain of sadness, which was actually repressed traumas and things of grief, including her failed 30-year marriage. Barbara understood this after she was cured. Nevertheless, she had one more step in her journey before things got better. She admitted that she had drifted away from her Ayurvedic doctor’s teachings when he left the city.
Then, she was recommended to the Tibetan Buddhist doctor Yeshi Dhonden by one of her friends. When she went to his office, there was a translator next to them, but the doctor knew exactly how she felt before the translator even had the chance to say anything. He said she was feeling pain throughout her body which was worse in the cold of winter and heat of the summer, and that she can’t sleep and had numbness in her limbs. The doctor gave her a list of foods to avoid and specific herbs that she got every month for an inexpensive price that she paid to Yeshi Dhonden’s clinic in India.
Barbara claims that she faithfully followed the recommendations of Dr. Yeshi Dhonden for several months, and one by one, her symptoms started slowly but surely disappearing until they were completely gone.
Via Fibromyalgia Resources | Healthline | Mayo Clinic | WebMD
