Fibromyalgia making lp work and survival hard

[KenDo]

Dealing with chronic pain, brain fog, severe food intolerances, breathing through nose is difficult too, due to fibromyalgia. Normal everyday life is hard af and I’m struggling to work on my LP along just basic survival. 

I posted on this in the past once but so far none of the advice has helped unfortunately!

any advice on how to improve my health?

[Yimpa]

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/315348#:~:text=Marijuana and fibromyalgia,-Share on Pinterest&text=People who live with fibromyalgia,these symptoms in some people.

[KenDo]

Tried it , not effective for me. Both cbd and thc in various forms 

[aurum]

4 hours ago, KenDo said:

Dealing with chronic pain, brain fog, severe food intolerances, breathing through nose is difficult too, due to fibromyalgia. Normal everyday life is hard af and I’m struggling to work on my LP along just basic survival. 

I posted on this in the past once but so far none of the advice has helped unfortunately!

any advice on how to improve my health?

You have a lot of concurrent issues, so working with someone with a broad scope / skills would probably be a good idea.

What have you tried?

[Michael569]

Fibro is very multifactorial, kinda like CFS or Long Covid, it is rare that only one thing works and it needs to be addressed from numerous directions at the same time. 

Do you know what caused yours? Have you had it for long time or more recent?

Was it developed after a severe immune shock? (Covid, major infection, trauma etx)  

[KenDo]

@Michael569 it started as child when I was under severe stress due to bullying and home abuse and me eating load of junk food and sweets, escaping in tv and massively spiking my dopamine levels to cope with it. Had a really unhealthy lifestyle back then. This is 12 years ago and I have an above average healthy lifestyle now and take a lot of care. I’ve researched so many things and do what works and discarded what doesn’t. Still it doesn’t seem to fully disappear. The past half year was quite stressful as well because of an injury to my hand which led to me getting fired at work and my gf broke up with me. During this time my symptoms got a lot worse again. So stress definitely makes it worse and may have caused it. 
 

But it’s hard to not have stress cause even if the symptoms are better they are never fully gone and all the time I was sick everyone else is living life and making experiences whereas I have nothing to talk about or share except my health issues. That is quite emotionally taxing. 

[Michael569]

@KenDo thank you for sharing all that. Yeah, if someone had gone through some much in their early life during neurodevelopment period, it would be surprising if they hadn't developed something like a fibro or RA or MS or something similar. The nature of the diagnosis and the "profile" of your early life experience kinda matches what I've seen in others with CFS & Fibro. 

Yes, you'll generally see most of your symptoms flaring up during periods of high stress. Portion of that is genetics, portion of that limbic kindling -  which is why others in your case are fine yet you develop symptoms, because your body has become hyper acute to pain signals. 

You might not be able to re-code your genes (although don't quote me on that, they say gene therapy is the next thing in medicine) but if you can slowly start building a lifestyle where you are not exposed to extreme stimulation, extreme environmental stress and, in general less oxidative stress, you might find that you can control your symptoms better. 

A lot of those things you might not be able to change immediately but it could be a vision for the near future. 

Things of more immediate nature you can focus on are: 

1. Diet - with high content of antioxidant intake while lowering sodium, saturated fats, processed meat, high fat dairy and burnd/deep fryed and char grilled stuff. - basically a sort of an Mediterranean diet 
2. Exercise - this might be tricky but evidence shows that people with fibro tend to feel better when they exercise vs those who don't when it comes to those pain points. Although it is not clear what type of exercise and things like aerobic exercise shows non-significant effect , mind-body exercise like Thai-Chi or other would actually benefit you and it seems to be mostly favourable, maybe connect privately with @Thought Art, who is our local expert on the topic and has tons of content on it. 
3. Sleep - I should probably put this on top of the list, seems to be as important as diet. Non-negotiable 8 hours +. Your cells fight off microinflammation the best during REM sleep. No need to monitor just don't deliberately shorten your sleep with reels and late night binge or anything like that  
4. Stress reduction - do everything possible to keep your stress levels low. I don't know enough about you to give any specifics here but its something to pay a lot of attention to 

In the long terms, working in a career that is not inducing a lot of internal distress and living in an environment that puts you at peace would be preferable. 2 Years ago, I moved to an English coast, took a pay cut at a remote job but my quality of life has improved and stress levels halved. I wouldn't go back to London again. 

Hope any of this helps. 

Edited July 1 by Michael569

[Yimpa]

@Michael569 thank you, very helpful! 

[KenDo]

@Michael569 started taking meds and noticed a significant improvement with my energy and reduction of my pain. Thank you for your help. I also made some improvements to my diet which help as well.

[Basman]

I have a family member that has fibromyalgia. Its a terrible disease. They get seizures occasionally where all their muscles tense up, collapse and stop breathing momentarily.

It doesn't help that they have autism as well, as they get more easily stressed over seemingly "insignificant" things, like a room being too dusty or there being crumbs on the table. The autistic mind has a tendency to not let go of things sometimes which exacerbates some of the symptoms of their fibromyalgia.

[integral]

On 2024-07-10 at 11:53 AM, KenDo said:

@Michael569 started taking meds and noticed a significant improvement with my energy and reduction of my pain. Thank you for your help. I also made some improvements to my diet which help as well.

With drugs you’re setting yourself up for a massive crash in the future, there are no drugs that are effective long-term yiy will only get short-term relief with a massive withdrawal grand ending.

on top of what Michael said reduce your exposure to cleaning products and laundry detergent chemical fumes and mould.

Edited July 11 by integral