Saturday, June 13th, 2009
“What I am looking for is not out there; it is in me”, Helen Keller
The idea that fibromyalgia can be ‘cured’ through medications is erroneous. Drugs such as Neurontin or Lyrica can sometimes be effective to control the symptoms in some people with fibromyalgia some of the time. Is this really treatment or merely masking the symptoms?
I will make this blog very short and suggest that the best way to treat fibromyalgia is 1) to remap the brain; 2)control the excess arousal of the nervous system; 3) unlearn what we have believed to be either a biological/viral/bacterial cause of fibromyaliga; 4) stop the talk therapy that only brings up the same negative stories we have told ourselves over and over and continues to reactivate our nervous sytem; 5) stop looking for a ‘cure’ with medicines.
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Posted in Fibromyalgia, Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley, Lyrica, The Mind and the Brain, body movement, diaphragmatic breathing, discipline, meditation, neurontin, remap brain, shaking, shivering, talk therapy, touch therapy, trembling, unlearn | 6 Comments »
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
“The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn”,
Gloria Steinem
Women are often prone to say that we are experts on multi-tasking whereas men are more linear and less circular in their thinking. This of course suggests then, if this is accurate, that it is more difficult for women to ‘be in the moment’ as it is for men who are presumed to be more focussed on the main task at hand. I wonder therefore if this could contribute to the higher incidence of fibromyalgia in women than in men? The more tasks we are responsible for, the less we are focussed on one specific moment in time. Rather we are intent on handling not only the many present responsibilities, but that of other tasks in the future and the perceived needs of others.
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Posted in Fibromyalgia, Jon Kabat-Zinn, diaphragmatic breathing, fibromyalgia and multi-tasking, letting go, living moment to moment, mindfulness meditation, quilting and fibromyalgia, racing thoughts, worry and anxiety | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
“Memory, the warder of the brain”, William Shakespeare
This is it!!! In my view this is the most significent in-sight I have had about the pain of fibromyalgia. It has been a long and interesting journey beginning with my book in which I laid the foundation about why women are more prone to developing FMS and my conclusion that it is actually caused by an over-aroused nervous system. However, while this was the first step, and the primary one, more has been revealed to me and I am very excited over the unlimited hope there could be for us all. I still don’t have all the answers and it may be that I am presnting information that is not quite accurate, but it has been a steep learning curve and requires much un-learning, which is said to be more difficult than learning. It all began with my physiotherapist, Nick Matheson who brought me to a path which I had never travelled down before, that is, to explore the relationship of pain and the brain, rather than looking simply at fibromyalgia as the result of a hyper-aroused nervous sytem. The journey down this path is not yet complete so I welcome comments from others who are more learned in this domain than I am.
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Posted in Craig Hassed, Daniel Amen, David Butler and Lorimer Moseley, Diane Jacobs and Nick Matheson, Dr. Bud Craig, Fibromyalgia, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Kalu Rinpoche, R, Richard Davidson, The Wellcome Trust, activity diary, adrenalin and cortisol, adrenals, aleksandr luria, autonomic nervous system, body/brain/emotions, body/mind/spirit, calm the nervous system, catastrophizing, central nervous system, diaphragmatic breathing, emotions, empath, imagery, interoceptive pathway, memory, michael merzenich, mind and brain, mindfulness meditation, movement, norman doidge, overly empathetic, pain, parasympathetic nervous system, paul bach-y-rita, peripheral nervous system, peter goodman, plasticity of the brain, psychological techniques, reconceptualize the problem, reframing, responding rather than reacting, sandra and matthew blakeslee, sympathetic nervous system, the brain and fibromyalgia, training the brain, women and fibromyalgia | 6 Comments »
