The Essence of Fibromyalgia

      The condition known as “fibromyalgia” has been with mankind for some time now. Bedeviling many, torturing them, dogging them, and not relenting to most treatments. Connected with inexplicable, meaning without any obvious source, pain, its very lack of a genesis has caused it to be treated as equally without cure or even treatment. Many have apparently been committed or felt they should be committed because of the fact that there was no source for the sensations, but the sensations continued.

      In fact, though, even that is understating it. In addition to what fibromyalgia assaults them with, those afflicted with it have likewise been victimized in innumerably many associated manifestations, testament to the unfortunate tendency of so many in society to prey upon the weaker or the disaffected.  Swindlers have offered “cures” that were little more than hokum. Unsympathetic self-seekers have “diagnosed” the condition as something crucially demeaning on the part of the sufferer, like some sort of mental illness, hypochondria or even fakery. And those who could do good, seeking only to maintain the lucrative potential of funds and research grants that a “mystery illness” guarantees, have deliberately looked everywhere except the truth to try to define it.

      In fact, those who represent themselves as attempting an analysis of fibromyalgia depict it as being with us always. Some trace it back to Biblical times, ascribing the physical pain and sleeplessness suffered by Job as signs of fibromyalgia. Certainly, discomfort and muscular tenderness and frequent inability to sleep is associated with fibromyalgia diagnoses. Florence Nightingale was represented as having contracted the condition during the Crimean War in the mid-1800's and never lost it until her death in 1910. In fact, fibromyalgia, or conditions very much like it, were recognized as early as the 1600's. At that time, they were termed “muscular rheumatism”. During part of the 1800's, it was known as “hysterical paroxysm”. In the early 1900's it was given the name “fibrositis”, denoting inflammation of muscular fibers. Curiously, it wasn't until 1976 that it was declared that no inflammation of muscles was present in the condition and its name was changed to fibromyalgia. Actually, equally curiously, it wasn't until the last few decades that any actual investigation into facets of the condition, from the actual number and placement of “trigger points” to sleep disturbance under the condition were examined.

      Traditional “explanations” of the history of examination of the ailment emphasize the idea that it was psychosomatic or hysterically engendered. Even into the 20^th Century it was evidently suspected that it may be a psychological manifestation rather than an actual syndrome. There were also suggestions it was somehow only a female disease.

      And here lies a fundamental facet of the problem of fibromyalgia. Indeed, a critical fault underlying many impressions and opinions about “science” and “medicine” and “progress”.

      We see now the ideas and beliefs framing the impressions about fibromyalgia in the past and many scoff. Either because they find flaws in them or because they are compelled to scoff by opinion articles. Think how many ideas that existed even forty, fifty years ago that so many today consider outlandish in the extreme. They can't understand how anyone could believe even a fraction of what defined “cutting edge” theory, “scientific” reasoning only a few decades ago!

      Today, so many say, we are immeasurably superior to what we were then. Because that was then and this is now, and now must be better than then. And, because of that, whatever “they” say about anything must be unquestionably right, not prone to error!

      But the present “now” is the past “then” to some future "will be”. Years from now, individuals can be opining how anyone could hold to the insipid and all but delusional concoctions that today are taken to be the height of wisdom! At one time they did consider it to the unquestionable that fibromyalgia was a form of rheumatism! At least, it seemed as reasonable to practitioners then to see it as rheumatism as it is to practitioners now to hold to the current “definition”.

      A “definition” people maybe only fifty years from now will call all but criminally incompetent to work with!

      A complication to the process of trust that must intrude itself always when considering at least something about which there never was and is not now general acceptance.

      And, that, tragically, is just another travail that those suffering fibromualgia are subjected to. In addition to the toxic symptoms and suffering they undergo, they are provided treatment that will be viewed as laughably incompetent only a few decades hence! That they are being sold “snake oil” with the assurance that it is “state of the art”! And they are not warned that what they are staking so many hopes on today will be the subject of a parody of “medical“ ”science” before the end of the century! No practitioner ever tells the “pigeon” in their waiting room that this is far from guaranteed, that the system is a continuing process of which is utilized today is only a link in a chain. No, their attitude, universally, is, “We have achieved Millennium! This is the only answer! This is all you will ever need!”

      Unsurprisingly, that renders the system victim to another shortcoming, if not a catastrophic fault, of the situation with respect to fibromyalgia. Undefined, uncharacterized, it becomes an immediate subject for the scammer, the unprincipled huckster, the swindler. You will find a number of venues, for example, that treat the accepted connection between fibromyalgia and women as a manufactured means of keeping women down by ridiculing them. But, then, it is revealed that 80% of all fibromyalgia sufferers are female. But this isn't mentioned by those who use the accusation to fatten up enrollment in their “woman power” organizations. Likewise, pharmaceutical houses will crank out endless supplies of drugs to attack every individual manifestation of the condition, from antidepressants to pain killers to sleep aids. But no one will ask how it is that a single physical problem should produce a condition that requires so many different chemicals to cure. And, of course, the drug companies won't broach the subject that they aren't curing the condition, they are only masking its symptoms. Just as practitioners prescribing the cocktails will gladly accept the perception that they “cured” the individual. Except for the more advanced practitioners who will prescribe surgery, then prescribe antidepressants, pain killers and sleep aids for the suffering that the deforming of the human physiognomy through surgery will bring!

      Another layer of the misery that fibromyalgia can impose on the unwary. And, frankly, the majority of those who contract it are unwary!

      There is an old adage that, if a method does not solve a problem, then it's not a solution to the problem! Likewise, if no solution was derived in one place, it might be a good idea to look elsewhere!

      Among other things, this will be an examination of the nature of fibromyalgia with an emphasis, among other things, on looking in places conventional “medicine” refuses to look. There will be discussions about what to expect. What has a good track record of actually undoing what no other conventional treatments manage to undo. And warnings about the many other forces that can seek to work against you when you are being assailed by fibromylagia, as well. The observant individual can ride a roller coaster once and accurately describe every twist and turn. Unfortunately, many, on a roller coaster, concentrate only on being intimidated. Material in here comes from the experiences of my wife, which I viewed close up every step of the way, in her contracting fibromyalgia, her looking for an answer, her being continually betrayed by forces around her, and her finding what works. This will spare the observant having to go through the same twists and turns and provide those intimidated by the lack of real cooperation in healing them to be found in the world today.

      There is more than a hope of this offering what is worthwhile to the suffering. There are undisputed facts in this that those with no record of having actually helped anyone achieve a triumph over the condition discuss or address. This is going where those who do not succeed refuse to go. It can offer a good deal to those who do try.