Fibromyalgia is not a joke.  It is not for the faint of heart.

Fibromyalgia hurts. Everything hurts. Everything is inflamed. The back, the body, the brain, the guts, and the spirit. It’s all under attack. When you have fibromyalgia you are literally being attacked from within.

Many people with fibromyalgia will tell you “they feel like all of their bones and joints are under attack”.

This, unfortunately, is the fibromyalgia life

What I’m about to discuss is not a new concept. There is a good chance that you have never heard of it. The pains from Fibromyalgia and a person’s overall digestive gut health are intimately intertwined. There is plenty of science to back up.

      What fibromyalgia feels like.  This is for real.

When someone has fibromyalgia neither the body nor the digestive system is performing well. The gut has become so inflamed that it cannot produce enough power/ energy to give the body what it needs to heal. In the evolution of the disease the lining of the digestive gut wall begins to fail first- long before symptoms of fibromyalgia begin to appear.  The problem has been there 10 or 20 years before the symptoms of disease show.

Let’s be honest, when we are young we abuse our bodies in many ways. We abuse it physically, nutritionally, and probably even emotionally. These childhood experiences set the stage for problems to occur later in life. Even properly prescribed drugs, like antibiotics, are an abuse to the body.

    Antibiotics always kill our good healthy bacteria.  Then we get sick later in life. 

Antibiotic literally means against life.

Think about that.

Now, the body can take these abuses but sometimes it crosses this tipping point – and then it just can’t take it anymore. This is a bad tipping point. This is where people start losing their health.  The person’s condition is at a point where it can’t even maintain what it has. Health is now going backwards. Disease is setting in.

   Health is good until it crosses this invisible tipping point. 

This is the invisible tipping point of overall health. You don’t realize it when you cross it.  However, your health will start going downhill fast if you do.

See what I mean, this ain’t no joke!

Fibromyalgia isn’t just widespread muscle pain and tenderness. It is also extreme fatigue, joint pain, brain fog, mood disturbances, and more! Overall with fibromyalgia the body just doesn’t run itself very well. People don’t sleep well and they’re always tired. The thyroid is struggling to maintain energy levels. Your body is trying to function the best it can- but it’s just having a bunch of problems. It seem nothing is going right. Fibromyalgia is very frustrating because it’s tough to successfully regain your health once you have it. Many people lose hope and believe that it’s hopeless, which is totally not true. The body can heal if you give it what it needs.

Flare ups and remissions. Over and over and over again.

If the gut ain’t happy then nothing else in the body can really be happy either.  Nothing else will function right if the gut isn’t functioning right.

Just sit back and think about that for a second. If the gut is not performing well then it’s impossible for the body to either. When the body starts to process food into energy then it all starts with our gut. Your body is only really as healthy as your gut. We should nurture the gut as a precious resource. I guarantee you that anyone who is fighting a chronic illness has a problem with their gut. It’s that simple. The reality is that people are having trouble recovering from illness BECAUSE of their poor gut health. When the gut starts to fail then it opens the door to disease.

Literally.

           Yes –  right this way to a diseased state.  We’ll be there before you know it!

Fibromyalgia and Leaky Gut Syndrome

         Tiny gaps form in our gut wall and toxins go right on through.

You should not have tiny gaps in the lining of your gut wall that toxins and undigested proteins can slip through.

Obviously, this is bad. We need to keep the toxins out.

Toxins and undigested food leaks through these holes that begin forming in the gut. The gut wall becomes permeable and all sorts of bad nasties enter the bloodstream unchecked.  It’s called Leaky Gut Syndrome.

These toxins should not be in the bloodstream. These toxins in the blood will start making the body extra sensitive to things. It will start to become inflamed. Inflammation causes pain.

                         

Have you become more sensitive to certain foods over the years?

One main cause of fibromyalgia is that our gut gets tore up from things that we eat and drink. All these things we crave in our diet just poison out gut wall. It gets real irritated and inflamed. It has trouble digesting things that we are consuming and it causes the body to go haywire. We can begin to get ulcers. The thing is, we really abuse our gut and we don’t even know it. We take for granted that it’s just going to function properly. We consume copious amounts of pharmaceutical drugs and alcohol with reckless abandon. We consume a diet rich in processed grains, and we actually think this all is healthy. It’s not and it makes us sick.

       Our liver and our gut is not designed to process all these chemicals!

Fibromyalgia symptoms are widespread pain and tenderness- even to light touch. Sometimes even the weight of the clothes or a necklace on the neck can be too much. The arms and legs usually ache and they feel heavy. It can feel like that body “aches to the bone”. There is widespread fatigue, especially after working for just a little while or being out in the heat. The exhaustion can be overwhelming. Fibromyalgia shares a lot of the same symptoms as chronic fatigue syndrome. This is because the gut needs help in both cases.

     I may look fine on the outside but…   My everything hurts.

How did this happen?

Whether we like it or not human beings are not designed to eat the way that we do now. Period. The human diet has changed drastically in the past 100 years. Our bodies are not genetically designed to handle the SAD Standard American Diet that we consume- at least not for long periods of time.

Just because we CAN eat it, and it tastes good, doesn’t mean that we SHOULD eat it.

           

Our body cannot withstand our inflammatory diet and be healthy at the same time. We absolutely cannot continue eating this way and be healthy at the same time. Hearing this isn’t going to make many people happy. If you feel bad all over then you are not eating properly. If you change your diet you can be healthier.

We feel the effects of our diet every day. That should be obvious, but  it’s usually not.

Why are we chronically inflamed?

Right now, at this moment, Americans consume 150 lbs. of added sugar every year. Per person. Each person eats this. That is a half a pound of added sugar per person per day.

 

Take a moment to realize that the sugar content we just talked about is measured by pounds per day.  We didn’t say calories per day we said half a pound of added sugar per day. The daily added sugar content is measured by weight not calories. You know It is a lot of sugar when you measure it by weight.

  This is the 150 lbs. of added sugar Americans consume every year

The majority of the added sugar consumption actually comes from our drinks. We are not designed for Polar Pops and fast food every day. Monster drinks are not health food. Our drinks poison our gut with either artificial sweeteners or sugar syrup. This is an underlying cause of Fibromyalgia (and just about every other condition imaginable.)

The point it- we can’t handle all of this sugar. This sugar causes inflammation, degeneration, muscle and joint pain. It causes fatigue and brain fog.

           

Ever wonder why your brain stops working at times?

Our gut also takes punishment from all of the antibiotics that get over prescribed whenever we visit physicians. Each round of antibiotics we take kills virtually all of the precious bacteria inside our intestines. Some of them survive in the nooks and crannies of the intestinal walls but most get destroyed. These are our little army of digestive workers whose job it is to break down our food, unleash the vitamins within the food, produce hormones, and control our immune system. These essential bacteria are the gatekeepers to protecting our bloodstream from infectious foreign invaders. Our healthy gut  bacteria do that work so that our body can use our food. Antibiotics sacrifice all of our good bacteria so that we can hopefully kill the bad bacteria. Could you imagine how your company would survive if all the workers were wiped out on the same day? It would probably fail.

This is what we do to our body.  We keep doing this over and over and over and over every time we take antibiotics.

Most of us are completely unaware of what we are doing to ourselves. We actually think our gut is designed to process all of these sugars and chemicals and antibiotics. We also expect it to keep us healthy at the same time. It can’t handle it and it breaks down. What happens is it gets thin and it literally gets holes in it. We take our gut for granted and we don’t even realize it.  Eventually when the gut gets some  “wear and tear” on it disease starts to set in. If the gut isn’t happy then ultimately nothing can be happy either.

If it’s so important – what does leaky gut actually look like?

             

 

Here are some diagrams showing what a leaky gut wall looks like.  When it gets weak toxins get through it.

         

 

Okay. This is overkill. I think you get the point. When our gut gets damaged our body cannot run itself. Sickness and pain is a result of this condition.

 

Now, what do we do about this?

                 

 

Humans are designed to eat veggies, a limited amount of meat, nuts, a little bit of fruit, and drink water. We have been eating this way for 200,000 years. Only in the past 100 years did all this sugar and antibiotics business start. When we stray far away from the organic mainly vegetarian diet that we are genetically supposed to consume we start getting into trouble. Notice that I didn’t say we should eat bread, cheese, pasta, or ice cream, or any dairy. Or coffee.

      Human beings function really well when we stick to eating these foods

Genetically we share the same diet as our cave men ancestors. That is where our DNA is from. We have evolved culturally but our body is designed to run on their diet. The Cave Man diet consisted of whatever vegetables and fruit they could find during the day. They ate what meat they could hunt and kill. I doubt they ate meat every day. I know they didn’t have three meals a day.  Ultimately I think when we went away from this diet we set the stage for disease. Our diet has changed and we get sick.

        How many times per day would you eat?

When we eat multiple meals a day that are full of sugars, breads, pastas, dairy and cheeses it is harmful to our digestive health.  These things irritate our body. When our gut gets irritated is becomes hyper sensitive to things. It becomes overactive- even to the slightest things.  This hypersensitivity of the gut can cause whole body to become hypersensitive.  A hypersensitive body has an overactive nervous system and…  an overactive nervous system describes the symptoms of Fibromyalgia.

           

Let me put this in a different way.  Our bodies run on what we put in it.  You body is like a sports car.  If you put junk gas in a sports car then it runs like junk.  When our diet consists of unhealthy junk it causes our bodies to run like junk.  If you have Fibromyalgia does it feel like your body is running like junk?  Junk in – junk out.  If your body aches and hurts all over then take a good honest look at what you’re feeding it.  If you hurt all over then you might be running on some bad gas.

Now that we’re having an honest and open discussion about diet -here’s even more bad news.  We might as well get all the bad news out now.  There will be no sugar coating it here.

Here’s the medicine…

In order to feel better you are going to have to change what you eat.  There- it’s all out in the open.  If we want to get over these conditions at some point we have to accept responsibility, change our ways, and get over it.

      When it’s time to make a change you’ll know it.

Adding insult to injury – Not only are you going to have to change, but the foods you really crave are probably the ones that are making you feel bad!  Now isn’t that a kicker?  What foods do you crave? Do you crave bread or pasta?  How about Diet Coke?  Do you need a daily chocolate fix?  You’re craving these things for a reason.

We’ve got to figure out why.

You mean my favorite food can be bad for me?  My buddy…

I have noticed in practice that human beings seem to crave the very things that our bodies don’t process well.  It defies logic.  The things that we crave are the worst things for us.  They are what is keeping us sick.  Our body has problems with processing it yet we want it around all the time.  (This might hold true with relationships as well.  Think about it…)

In order to truly get better we will have to address these food cravings at some point.

             

Here are the 4 most common foods wrecking our gut health and causing fibromyalgia – GLUTEN (bread/pasta), DAIRY, Artificial Sweeteners (Nutra Sweet, Equal, Splenda) and SUGAR.  Antibiotics are the next thing that wrecks your gut.  Antibiotics might even do more long term overall damage to the gut than our diet.

What do we crave?

         Genetically modified wheat eats holes in our gut.

                  

Gluten and cheese can be addictive, as they contain trace amounts of naturally occurring Morphine.

Glutomorphin is the morphine derived from digesting wheat.  Casomorphin is the morphine derivative from digesting from dairy.  Just be aware that these foods have an opiate effect on the body.  

Did you ever know someone addicted to bread and dairy?  Maybe they are craving the morphine.

Stop consuming all of these products immediately if you have digestive problems or fibromyalgia and want to recover.  These are practical changes that you can start immediately.  Cut out the sugar and carbohydrates.  This means no ice cream, bread, buns, Red Bull or Monster drinks.   Stop using the pink, blue, and yellow artificial sweeteners.  Stop eating pizza, cheese, and fried foods. None of the foods I mentioned are making you healthy at all.

If you truly want to get to feeling better then these are the things that need to change.  Our gut does not like these products and they have become staples in the American diet.  We poison our gut every time we consume them and these are the products that people crave!

     

It’s not easy to change. Most people are emotionally attached to these foods.  One main problem with making these changes is that people think eating these foods is normal.  Think of the cave men- if they didn’t eat it we shouldn’t either.  Cave men didn’t make bread.   The human body runs on colorful vegetables- not white bread.  Think about it- there’s not even any color to bread.  It’s all white.  What is the nutrition in that?  Stop it.

In order to rebuild the gut you first have to stop abusing it.  It will never get better until you remove the things that are irritating it.  The body is designed to heal.  Rebuilding the gut takes some time.

 

If you are having problems with Fibromyalgia or the gut then come in and talk to us.   We will help you understand the challenges of gut health and we will come up with a plan to address your individual needs.  Once you understand how it works you can face the challenge of healing it.

Be prepared to have to work and make some changes in your lifestyle.

FYI –

150 lbs of extra added sugar per person per year is the American way.  That’s the amount of added sugar that average American consumes every year.  This is what 150 lbs. of kid looks like.  This is how much added sugar we eat (in 2015)  – and it’s going up because we just keep eating more sugar every year!

     150 lb. kid

150 lbs. of sugar is an added 266,239 calories to our waist line every year.