Fibro Files: October 2014

Friday

Fibromyalgia research findings from Mayo Clinic

Mayo Clinic Associate Professor, Terry H. Oh, M.D., talks about her fibromyalgia research findings in the Fibromyalgia Treatment Program, including symptom severity and quality of life, such as obesity, alcohol consumption and age, in patients with fibromyalgia.
With a database of more than 1,000 fibro patients, she shares some of the findings from the database in this video.

SOME OF THE TRANSCRIPT: Fibromyalgia is a symptom complex characterized by chronic widespread pain and a constellation of symptoms such as fatigue, poor sleep, and cognitive symptoms. It affects about 2% of the population and is more common in women. Fibromyalgia is a chronic disorder, and the condition negatively affects the quality of life and can have a devastating effect on people's lives.
The Mayo Clinic has a comprehensive fibromyalgia treatment program, which was established in 1999.
Our dedicated team members include nurses, therapists, wellness coaches, nurse practitioners, and physicians...

Our program focuses on cognitive-behavioral therapies. We wanted to see how our patients do after undergoing the program. The majority of our patients reported improvement in their symptoms and quality of life after undergoing the program. However, we noted that some did not improve. Therefore, we analyzed the factors associated with treatment outcomes. Our study showed that those who had a greater benefit were younger, had more years of education, had higher baseline depression score on the fibromyalgia impact questionnaire,
a lower number of tender points, and did not have an abuse history.

We looked into factors associated with symptoms and quality of life in patients with fibromyalgia.
So we looked into BMI status, and we noticed that obesity was more common in our patients than the general population.
Close to 50% of our patients were obese, and furthermore, those obese, about half of them were severely obese. Then we examined the association between BMI and their symptom severity and quality of life.
Our study found that those obese had worse fibromyalgia symptoms and worse quality of life compared to those non-obese and overweight.

Thursday

ALTERNATIVE TREATMENTS FOR FIBROMYALGIA

By Alternative Treatments, I mean treatments that are used instead of conventional, mainstream medicine.

Some people call it complementary medicine or integrative medicine. Some doctors are starting to recommend and use these alternative treatments and the term 'complementary' is preferred by them because they don't see them as a substitute but something that can be used alongside conventional medicine.

In Australia, 60 percent of the population say they have tried some form of alternative medicine. in the US there is the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) and they have reports of research results into natural treatments and evidence-based reviews. In the UK there is The Complementary Medical Association and the British Complementary Medicine Association (BCMA). In Europe there are many groups including The European Society of Integrative Medicine which is an international association supporting the science, research, education and further training, and evidence-based medicine in Integrative Medicine.

Alternative treatments include a long list of therapies – herbalism, traditional Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, iridology, massage, homeopathy, Ayurvedic medicine, osteopathy, chiropractic medicine, dietary supplements and herbal remedies and many more. There is more and more research being conducted to back up the effectiveness of these treatments.

Many of these traditional therapies have been used for hundreds of years which should count for something. Apparently, they were removed from the market after the discovery of penicillin.

Traditional Chinese medicine has been used for over 3,500 years and combines herbal medicine, acupuncture, therapeutic massage, and diet and exercise.

The use of herbal medicine goes back thousands of years, with the earliest written records in 2800 BC in China.

Ayurvedic Medicine is a medical system that started in India more than 3,000 years ago and is still used today.

Over the years that I have been blogging, I have tried many natural alternative treatments to help reduce the symptoms of Fibromyalgia and I have written about them here on this blog.

Many things have helped me and some have not. I always find it interesting to read other people's experiences with things that may help. Please have a look and see if any might be of interest to you: