HEALTH ‘Fibro wreaks havoc with sufferer’s body’

FIBROMYALGIA was brought to the public’s attention by pop star Lady Gaga who was forced to cancel her European tour due to the painful condition.

Here, Cardiff-based chartered psychologist and author Kyle Davies, pictured below, gives his expert advice on what causes it and how it is treated.

What is fibromyalgia? Only a few years ago no-one seemed to have heard of fibromyalgia, but we’re now witnessing a surge in what medicine calls unexplained or invisible illnesses.

Like its cousin, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia is a cluster of what can be extremely debilitating symptoms. These, symptoms range from mild to severe, but many feel like they’ve just been run over by a train.

The lucky few can continue to engage in normal life, the less fortunate barely function as work, hobbies, socialising become almost impossible.

What are the symptoms? Most sufferers to some degree experience: Muscle and joint pain Extreme fatigue Stiffness and soreness Headaches Sleep disturbance Stomach and bowel complaints Memory and concentration problems – or “brain fog” as sufferers call it

That said, everyone’s experience is slightly different. The unique and more idiosyncratic symptoms can send a sufferer on a wild goose chase trying to figure out what’s going on.

In the absence of personal experience, fibromyalgia can be a difficult one to explain. Symptoms seem to strike from nowhere with little explanation.

Even though there are some symptoms that seem everpresent, many will fluctuate, coming and going.

The onset of fibromyalgia in almost all cases, is preceded by individual or clusters of recurring symptoms of aches, pains, insomnia, fatigue, bowel complaint or even depression or anxiety symptoms.

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These can be experienced over a period of months or years before fullblown fibromyalgia presents itself.

What causes it? This is where the debate really gets going. As with all medically-unexplained symptoms and invisible illnesses, there are many who desperately want a medical explanation.

There is a worldwide assumption that physical and mental, mind and body are genuinely separate entities.

Cutting-edge scientific evidence suggests that symptoms of fibromyalgia result from interactions between brain and body. There are changes or irregularities that occur within a part of the brain called the mid-brain, or emotional-brain.

This is the non-thinking, non-conscious part of the brain that oversees everything to do with human survival, including digestion and appetite, sleep cycles, the immune system, mood and emotions, sexual behaviour, body temperature, energy storage and expenditure. This area of the brain directly communicates and modulates the immune, endocrine and nervous systems. So this means that when irregularities are evident it wreaks havoc throughout the entire body – and this results in the experience of fibromyalgia symptoms from mild to severe.

How do you treat it? The first step in this process is to fully embrace the mind-body paradigm where we move away from the notion of the head and body, or psychological and physical, as being separate entities, rather we see them as one flowing interconnected system. The next step is to redefine the nature of a stress and particularly emotional stress. There are two interesting yet not well understood notions about stress. First, a physical injury, like a car accident, an illness such as a case of flu, and an emotional stressor such as losing a job or a family bereavement, all trigger the exact same stress response in the body. What’s more, our body can be in a state of stress without us being aware of it. This is where the problem lies.

When the body is stuck in a state of stress for a period of time and this lies outside of the conscious awareness of the individual, the brain areas become overactive, triggering dysfunctions with the body systems and then symptoms emerge.

When we look at treatment, we have to understand that emotional stress is the biggest contributor to this “stress bucket” and that it arises inside us.

As a complex physiological process, the emotional system directly modulates brain function, and blockages within the emotional system and the emotional memory system are coded within the brain.

The answer lies in identifying and unblocking the emotional system and re-code the emotional memory system – this means learning to effectively process and regulate emotion.

Understanding that our emotions come from inside us and not outside us is a first step.

Allowing it as it arises now and learning what to do with it quickly follow.

As the emotional system unblocks the brain re-wires itself and the nervous, immune and endocrine systems return to normal functioning – this means the reversal of symptoms…from the inside out.

Kyle Davies has just released a new book, called The Intelligent Body, which aims to help people with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, anxiety, depression, migraine, and stress. For further information visit www.kyledavies.net