Best Self Care Practices To Cure Fibromyalgia

Your body has an amazing capacity for enduring pain, but the symptoms of fibromyalgia prove difficult to ignore.

While there are certain extreme cases where pain is immediate and undeniable, it is more common to experience the little day to day “pains” which are difficult to remedy and easy to push aside, thinking you’ll deal with them later.

It’s common to think that you have to struggle on without rest, put our own needs aside, or simply deny those needs because you are physically and emotionally exhausted. These “pains” begin to add up over time, and collectively start speaking up in the form of the physical pains. Sensations such as throbbing, shooting, stabbing, or burning can be difficult to ignore. This is your body literally begging you to take care of yourself, and if you don’t it will make you. Period.

Since it is a mysterious syndrome at best with unpredictable cycles of flare ups that can disappear on their own or become more chronic over time, it can be difficult to treat. The most common recommendations for fibromyalgia are anti-depressants and pain killers, which can have complicated side effects and usually don’t completely take away the widespread pain of fibromyalgia.

Basically when you’ve reached this point, you have exhausted your physical, mental and emotional reserves, and your body is waving a white flag. You are unbalanced, depleted and in need of serious self-care so that your body can stop sending pain signals. I encourage my clients who suffer from chronic pain to consider the many lifestyle and emotional factors that may be contributing to their stress levels and to adopt practices that can help their body find balance and feel nurtured.

Make Self-Care a Priority, not a Luxury

Symptoms of fibromyalgia occur more commonly in females than males, which may indicate that the lifestyle choices and stresses of women, particularly mothers, are likely factors. Most of the women that I treat for fibromyalgia have been offering love and support to everyone in their families first, and placing their needs and worries last. They have been conditioned to think that if they take care of everyone else, then somehow they have done their jobs, and everyone in the family will thrive.

The result is a combination of symptoms that begin to have a snowball effect and pile up on each other, becoming overwhelming to your body, mind and soul. You can reduce these symptoms by focusing on a few lifestyle factors.

* Get plenty of sleep
* Reduce stress and do not overextend yourself needlessly
* Get moderate daily exercise
* Seek counseling for anxiety, depression, grief, sexual abuse, alcoholism or domestic violence
* Avoid chemicals and food additives
* Remove sugar, alcohol and wheat products from your diet

This disorder is often misdiagnosed and can show up in many forms ranging from headaches to PMS to other auto-immune disorders. Taking care of your emotional and physical stress levels on a daily basis is crucial to managing the pain of fibromyalgia.

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