Holistic Help for Fibromyalgia
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Lately we’ve been seeing a wave of clients coming in with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia. In case you’ve never heard of it, it’s a devastating condition characterized by chronic muscle and joint pain in multiple areas in the body. If you google fibromyalgia, which every client newly diagnosed with this condition does, the future doesn’t look good: medication for pain relief, anti-depressants and anti-seizure drugs are the standard path forward along with manual therapies and counselling. If you weren’t already depressed from the chronic debilitating pain, brain fog and interrupted sleep you soon would be by the prospect of a life of unrelenting pain.
Fibromyalgia in many ways is a kind of perfect storm of physical, mental and emotional factors that result in chronic pain. It’s one of the reasons holistic medicine is a good fit for this condition is because if you just treat the physical you’re not likely to get breakthroughs, you have to also treat emotional and mental health. Remembering pain, from a holistic perspective, is your body’s (very effective) way of getting your attention. Chronic stress or trauma are common co-factors that mean the body’s ability to restore balance is blocked. Of course, once you’re in pain and you can’t sleep or move or work then you’re trapped in a spiral of inactivity, worry and stress. Wondering if you are ever going to be able to function and live a life of any kind of quality.
Thankfully holistic approaches to treating fibromyalgia are effective, acupuncture, in particular, has research evidence that is encouraging. A meta-analysis in 2019 (a study that aggregates the results of many smaller studies) showed acupuncture was both safe and effective for reducing pain. Similarly, remedial massage has good quality evidence although the studies are small. Research evidence is vitally important however it often lags decades behind the clinical observations of effectiveness as it takes years to plan, implement and report the results of studies and then multiple studies to build the level of evidence that creates awareness. In other words, other therapies can help you, but they can’t broadcast that fact as it would be unethical without the research evidence.
Whilst it gives us tremendous pleasure to be able to restore a sense of hope to people we encounter suffering with fibromyalgia I can’t help thinking of all those people who don’t know where to look and who are suffering as a result.
