This is our story to tell. You'd think for all the reading I do, I would have thought about this before, but I haven't. I've never once thought about the interpretative, the story telling aspect of life, of my life. I always felt like I was in a story, yes, but not like I was the author of it, or like I had any say in its telling whatsoever.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Monday, November 11, 2013
Considering taking medication to treat Fibromyalgia?
Below is a list of common medications used to treat or reduce the symptoms of Fibromyalgia. Follow the links to read common uses, side effects, dosage details and read user reviews for the drugs listed below.
| DRUG NAME | INDICATION | TYPE | USER REVIEWS |
|---|
Photos Make Chronic Pain Visible
If you live with chronic pain, you have vast quantities of company. The estimates range from a few million to one-quarter of Americans in long-lasting pain. But you might never know it. Pain is not visible. There’s no 12-step group for it. And if you’re hurting for long, you’re likely to retreat into isolation rather than reach out to others.
Enter the US Pain Foundation (US as of only this January; it began as the CT Pain Foundation), a volunteer-based group founded by Paul Gileno, a former chef who had to find a new calling after a broken spine left him in constant agony. It runs support groups; does advocacy work; and tomorrow, beginning at noonish, is holding a free-lunch session at the Tufts School of Dental Medicine that features The INvisible Project, which documents in photographs and text the lives of people with chronic pain. (One example is here.)
The project’s aim is to educate others about the lives of people with pain, Paul said: “I think the biggest perception for people who don’t have chronic pain all the time is that if they don’t see it, then it’s almost like they don’t believe it after a while. In the beginning, if you get injured, people say, ‘Are you okay?’ But after a while, that chronic pain stays and it’s a year later and people tend to say, ‘Okay, when are you going to get better?’ Well, I wish I could get better right now but my pain is still there. We’re saying, ‘It’s real and we want you to know this is real.’”
Also, Paul said, “We want to show other people with pain that their new normal isn’t much different than everybody else’s who suffers with chronic pain. We want to show them that it’s okay if you’re home one day and not feeling well, it’s okay if this is all that you can do. We want to show them that this is the new normal and they’re not alone.”
The people featured in the project have diagnoses ranging from arthritis to FIBROMYALGIA to lupus to obscure syndromes few have heard of, but they have two things in common: They’ve been chosen by fate to be physically tortured, and they soldier on.
Their stories tend to be Job-like; I can’t imagine what it’s like to live their lives, and to tell the truth, I don’t dare try. And that’s part of why people with chronic pain need to connect with each other, Paul Gileno said. “You’re understood on a deeper level that you need to be understood on. Because your family and friends aren’t going through it and can’t understand, and you need that understanding and support to move forward.”
“It’s so common for people to fall into such a deep state of depression and suffering,” he said. “And it becomes worse because when you’re depressed you move less, and your body’s tightening up,” worsening the pain. “You start to lose where that original pain was, because now you’re riddled with pain everywhere. Our goal is to try to catch people when they’re first diagnosed so we can walk them through it. Right now when people come to us” — some virtual hermits because of their pain — “it’s like they can’t take it anymore so they need to reach out. We want to catch people before they get to that point.”
I asked Paul what the culture was like in an organization where virtually everyone suffers from chronic pain. I could imagine two possibilities: Maybe more grumpiness than in most workplaces, but also more compassion.
Over time, he said, the foundation has found many people whose pain keeps them from working but who still have valuable job skills and find volunteering very fulfilling. The key is redundancy, he said: If a project employs, say, three or four attorneys where normally one might have been enough, then “if you’re having a bad day or bad moment or bad week, you don’t feel that pressure of ‘Oh my God, i have to get that work done.’ We all understand that — we make sure it’s not all on one person’s shoulders.”
Everyone understands other aspects of “the new normal” as well: “We are a little slower, our timelines are different, a lot of people are up at night so that’s when they’re doing a lot of work, because they can’t sleep at night.”
Since Paul founded it in 2006, the Pain Foundation has grown to 27,000 members, he said. There are other pain-oriented groups, including The American Pain Foundation and The American Pain Society, but he found when he was injured in 2003 that none seemed to fill his needs. “My life had changed and I started trying to meet other people whose lives changed because of pain, and I couldn’t find anybody. I started the foundation just looking for other people. and it snowballed from there.”
Saturday, November 9, 2013
If you have fibromyalgia, you may want to read this
A message from Dr. Tom O’Bryan Founder, The Gluten Summit and theDr.com
Gluten can easily sneak into your diet and, if gluten is bad for you, those sneak attacks are rarely much fun at all. A Grain of Truth: The Gluten Summit will help you take the next step toward determining if gluten is bad for you, and reveal those foods where it often hides.
But enough about that for the moment.
Let’s take a sneak peek at some of the
other things you’ll learn next week!
(Yes, the summit begins on Monday! Can you believe it?)
My Chat with Lexi About Her Gluten- & Dairy-free Diet
Lexi is a bright-eyed 10-year old who admittedly “puked up in her mouth” a lot before she learned that her diet might be the cause. So, she took it in stride, switched to a gluten-free and dairy-free diet, and wrote a book about it!
Listen to Dr. O’Bryan’s entertaining interview with Lexi!
Underground Wellness: Gluten Talk with Dr. Tom O'Bryan
Sean Croxton of Underground Wellness invited me onto his podcast last week, and I brought some audio clips from The Gluten Summit interviews that will be available next week!
For example, find these topics during the podcast at the following times:
- 10:08: Wheat: It’s the “staff of life”, ya know!
- 18:45: Your immune system is like the Armed Forces in there!
- 38:51: 30% of teenagers have subclinical heart disease!
- 56:55: Even tofu can increase your risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Listen to “Gluten Talk” on the Underground Wellness podcast now!
Though we sometimes talk light heartedly about gluten-related disorders and the impacts they have on people’s lives--humor can be healing, as you know--the fact of the matter is that only a small percentage of the population has been diagnosed with a gluten-related disorder, and a very large portion of the population has symptoms that may be caused by a sensitivity to gluten… withno idea that gluten is the culprit fueling their symptoms.
I’ll say that again…
More than 300 symptoms could be caused
by the consumption of gluten, yet a very
small percentage of the population
knows it could be fueling the cause.
That, my friends, is the ultimate reason why “A Grain of Truth: The Gluten Summit” is so important: To help those potentially return to health who have no idea what is fueling their ailments, including you.
Do you know someone—a friend, family member, even yourself—who thinks they may be sensitive to gluten or with any of the following symptoms:
- Brain fog?
- Fatigue?
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)?
- Unexplained rashes?
- Migraines?
- Tummy aches?
- Constipation or diarrhea?
- Thyroid problems?
- Unexplained weight loss (or gain)?
- Joint pain?
- Dental defects?
- A child's failure to thrive or shortened stature?
All of these, AND MORE, could be caused by gluten in one’s diet.
That’s why I encourage you to reach out to those you know, perhaps family members or a friends, and invite them to join you in watching The Gluten Summit. Simply send them a note over email, on Facebook or Twitter, a text message or a phone call, and say, “I really think you should check outtheglutensummit.com. It’s free. It’s online. And, it’s next week. Join me. We’ll watch it together.”
You could change a life next week, especially your own.
Again, I am so appreciative of the fact that you’ll be joining us online on Monday. See you then!
Sincerely,
Dr. Tom O’Bryan
Founder, The Gluten Summit and theDr.com
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