What’s your solution?
This thread may become a great reference for people.
Why do those work? Vitamin D and magnesium are deficient in much of the population but are both essential to mitochondrial health and function. In addition, magnesium plays a key role in hundreds of enzymatic processes. Since collagen production declines with age, collagen peptides have become a popular anti-aging supplement. Liposomal vitamin C helps the body to use collagen peptides to rebuild skin and the vascular system.
The harder part was headaches and peripheral neuropathic pain due to persistent atypical shingles. For years, heavy doses of aspirin tamped down the pain, but kidney damage forced me to drop them. In addition to the previously mentioned supplements and eggs (usually) for breakfast, I gradually added vitamin K2, niacinamide, green tea extract, benfotiamine, liposomal luteolin, and a high quality krill oil. Along with hot baths and strong hot tea, those slowly reduced the pain. Most people will find aspirin also useful for the pain.
I am writing a medical journal article on all this and will post it on FR when it is published.
This thread may become a great reference for people.
Ahh, the ultimate question, right?
Here's what I have always recommended and how I treated my FM patients.
1) First and foremost, assure them that I BELIEVE them when they tell me their symptoms. Realize, there may be more likely many other underlying feelings, issues and emotions here.
2) Get "baseline" scores on their perception of their pain/sxs. Keep track and share with the patient when appropriate. Gains may be small, and may go unnoticed unless you have some way of tracking them regularly.
3) Start a discussion before each each treatment session for them to share a recent POSITIVE action or event that they were able to do, complete or finish. Sometimes it can be so basic as "I was able to get out of bed". It just HAS TO BE positive!
4) Continue building on those POSITIVE events, and allow the patient to see that they DO have SOME CONTROL over their lives. I use the "for every action there is a reaction" point of view, the "If/Then" statement. For instance, "IF you try to walk two miles today, THAN you are gonna be so sore and stiff the next day". Take that IF/THAN and make it positive. IE, "IF I walk for 10 minutes, THEN I won't be near as sore the next day"... Etc etc
My plan of treatment is to try to give the patient the "control" back that they feel they have lost. If you have ever experienced this form of chronic pain, you'd understand that complete "Loss of control" you feel for your life. It is a terrible spiral that only gets worse; the more pain you have, the less control you have over your day to day activities. So, I try to get my patients to feel "back in control" even for just a little bit, and then build on that.
AS you can see, it it, I believe , a very difficult diagnosis and treatment. It involves not the just medical people, but I believe, you MUST involve the patient, and in a POSITIVE manner, for best results.
In short, this is not a "fix me Doc!" kind of diagnosis, it is a "what can I help you with to accomplish the best outcome?"
I don’t have any quick fix solution.
Being a researcher, all I can say is that this issue requires millions of funding for research. And research is a very slow process, but necessary to understanding the underlying mechanisms. Once those mechanisms are understood, then targeted treatments can be developed. Even when targeted treatments are developed, then there is the challenge of getting them approved through the FDA. There are things that the FDA will not approve, even though they work in research laboratories.
This might sound like I’m just angling for more money in research. I’m not. Research is a very time and resource intensive process.