Is Stress Real, Is Fibromyalgia Real?
These are two questions that are often asked by those experiencing the effects of either. We live in a culture that likes to label every thing. Medicine can’t treat a problem unless it is a diagnosable disease. If it not a disease, it is not real.
Accused of being a quack, the physician Hans Steles who put stress on the map had to move to
Fibromyalgia, suffering the same plight is now being honored with its first drug. Pfizer in a new television ad touts the value of its drug Lyrica for fibromyalgia. I am glad that the suffers of this often misunderstood condition are getting recognized. So often, I have seen people who are told that either they are imagining their symptoms, they are depressed (inferring crazy) or to just get over it.
The cause of fibromyalgia
The downside of this drug release is it further diverts the focus from the real cause – stress and toxicity. Just like with Prozac and depression we will likely see the abatement of symptoms for some, no effects for others and an adverse reaction by others from this drug.
Many have cured themselves of both depression and its sibling, fibromyalgia through releasing their chronic stress and learning not to recreate it. There are few problems with this approach. First, it requires personal responsibility and commitment. Often it requires stepping beyond the traditional models and their treatment regimes. At some point as the stress starts to leave a person’s body the emotions that were associated with its imprinting are felt.
When these emotions first occurred, usually in childhood, we did not have the permission or the tools to express them, so we stuffed them. These emotions became stress, which became tension, which wears us out frequently causing depression, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. As we begin to accept the stress so we can release it, we are accepting the former unacceptable emotions. This is not easy – but it is required if we are to get well.
Original fibromyalgia doc is cynical
In 30 years, I have never seen anyone truly get well from these conditions without dealing with their stress and emotions. The drugs maybe great at suppressing some of the symptoms; no drug removes the cause – stress. “Dr. Frederick Wolfe, the director of the National Databank for Rheumatic Diseases and the lead author of the 1990 paper that first defined the diagnostic guidelines for fibromyalgia, says he has become cynical and discouraged about the diagnosis. He now considers the condition a physical response to stress, depression, and economic and social anxiety.” – as quoted from the New York Times.
The New York Times article finishes with – “Still, Dr. Wolfe expects the drugs will be widely used. The companies, he said, are ‘going to make a fortune.’” Let’s hope all this attention validates the pain many suff and supports them in healing the cause of the pain.
on February 20th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
As much as I appreciate a post being written on Fibromyalgia stressing the fact that it is in fact a real problem, I don’t believe Fibromyalgia should be referred to as a “sibling” of depression. Fibro is not a mental health disease and shouldn’t be referred as such. Depression, along with CFS, pain, muscle weakness, and a host of other conditions, is just some of the components of the “disease.” People often confuse clinical depression with situation depression. It’s like saying that somebody with cancer, who is depressed because they’re in pain and can’t do the things they used to do, is clinically depressed and needs medication for the condition. Not surprisingly, when the cancer goes away, so does the depression because they were never clinically depressed to begin with. I’m not a doctor, so this is just my personal opinion. Anyone with a chronic disease is going to be stressed out, depressed and have economic burdens that other doesn’t. What came first, the chicken or the egg?
on April 7th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I do not have Fibromyalgia, but my mother and a close friend do. I have always been skeptical about this disorder/disease/collection-of-symptoms, but I do agree that the two sufferers I know are truly in pain. I can’t help but make a couple observations, however. Both my friend and mother are prone to depression, and both have trouble managing their money. Both of them have extremely sedentary lifestyles. Each is keen on self diagnosis as well as finding new doctors when they don’t hear what they want to hear. Also, they both tend to reject suggestions of self help, while quickly accepting medication as a cure for any problem a doctor will issue it for.
My mother is now planning on trying a new program involving a regime of injected drug cocktails, and is very hopeful about this program. I too hope that she feels better as a result of this treatment, but I am completely assured that if it works, it will be doing just what Dr. Wolfe said and removing the symptom, not the cause.
I always suggest to my mother that she should make an effort to get more exercise and get outside more often, and treat her stress partly by minimizing her medication intake so as to ease her very heavy financial burden, as opposed to making it much worse with even more expensive medication. My mother rejects these ideas, and while I am no doctor and my opinion may be dismissed as conjecture, I would hope some sufferers explore these and other stress reduction techniques before leaping on medication and the crutch of an aptly named disease.