Fibromialgia

 

Fibromialgia

Sommario

Si chiama fibromialgia ed e' una malattia poco conosciuta. Forse l'origine e', ancora una volta, psicosomatica

Descrizione

Di questa malattia esiste tuttora una scarsa conoscenza, nonostante la sua considerevole diffusione. Recenti studi hanno appurato che ne soffre una donna in eta' fertile su quattro, mentre e' meno diffusa negli uomini.
Caratterizzata da dolori muscolari estesi e da affaticamento cronico, la fibromialgia colpisce prevalentemente donne in eta' lavorativa, specie se sottoposte a forti stress oppure se impegnate per lunghi periodi davanti al computer in posizione rigida.
Non si tratta di una malattia ben definibile e identificabile attraverso chiari elementi.
L'estrema diversita' dei sintomi che comporta la fa intrecciare con molte altre malattie. Le uniche caratteristiche accomunano tutti i casi in cui si manifesta la fibromialgia sono:

- una sofferenza muscolare che tende a peggiorare;
- l'ipossia (poca concentrazione di ossigeno nel tessuto muscolare).

Alle persone colpite da fibromialgia sono spesso attribuite altre malattie che presentano sintomi simili ma di cui in realta' esse non soffrono. Questo perch, la malattia e' ancora in parte sconosciuta e quindi le radiografie e i comuni esami di laboratorio, il piu' delle volte, non riescono a metterla in luce. La diagnosi di fibmmialgia puo' pertanto essere formulata soltanto clinicamente, cioe' sulla sola base di una visita medica di tipo specialistico.
Origine complesse
L'origine di questa malattia e' dibattuta: secondo alcuni, la fibromialgia non e' altro che una forma estesa di reumatismo psicogeno (cioe' originato dalla psiche); secondo altri, invece, non ha alcuna origine depressiva o ansiogena e a dimostrarlo sono gli scarsi risultati ottenuti con i trattamenti psicoterapeutici. La vera fibromialgia, cioe' quella primaria, va percio' considerata come una malattia che deriva da un insieme di cause sia nervose, sia neuroendocrine*, sia di postura scorretta, che si riflettono tutte sui muscoli.
La fibromialgia sembra essere favorita anche da una qualita' della vita inadeguata.
Tra i probabili fattori che la favorirebbero rientrano:
- le turbe del sonno, che potrebbero predisporre alla fibromialgia in concomitanza di altri fattori (come, per esempio, stress, sedentarieta'),
- l'attivita' lavorativa, che, obbligando a tenere posizioni scorrette e protratte nel tempo, contribuisce a nuocere a tutto l'apparato locomotore*.
E' UN TIPO DI REUMATISMO
Classificata nel gruppo dei reumatismi extra-articolari (cioe' di quelli che non colpiscono le articolazioni), la fibromialgia e' una malattia a carico dei muscoli, dei tendini e del tessuto adiposo (grasso) sottocutaneo che tende a estendersi a piu' zone del corpo con il trascorrere del tempo.
Vi sono sostanzialmente due tipi di fibromialgia:
- quella primaria, dove il malato risulta sano ai normali controlli da laboratorio. Questa malattia si caratterizza infatti per la completa normalita' sia dei comuni test di laboratorio in uso per la diagnosi delle malattie reumatiche sia delle indagini radiologiche come ad esempio la Tac, la Risonanza magnetica e l'ecografia;
- quella secondaria, in cui i sintomi compaiono nel corso di altre malattie che possono definirsi principali, benche' spesso nascoste. In questo caso, gli esami di laboratorio e/o radiologici forniranno un valido indirizzo per scoprire la presenza di eventuali alterazioni di vario tipo.

Come si manifesta

La fibromialgia, se si associa ad altre malattie, e' definita secondaria. Spesso si manifesta con:

MALATTIE DI TIPO REUMATICO: spondilite anchilosante (infezione localizzata della colonna vertebrale), artrosi grave e generalizzata; artrite reumatoid*;

INFEZIONI E INFIAMMAZIONI CRONICHE: tubercolosi, malattia di Lyme (infezione dovuta a un germe: colpisce prima la pelle e poi da' disturbi neurologici e cardiaci); aids;

DISTURBI ENDOCRINI: ipotiroidismo*; ipopituitarismo *, infezioni da brucelle o salmonelle;

ALTRI TIPI DI MALATTIE: osteoporosi; tumori; lassita'* legamentosa.
Ognuna di queste malattie necessita di cure molto specifiche, diversificate anche a seconda delle persone che ne sono affette e del loro atteggiamento.
Il dolore e' eccessivo rispetto alla gravita' della malattia in se'; questo fa pensare a disturbi del malato nell'ambito della percezione del dolore. Da un punto di vista fisico, chi soffre di fibromialgia presenta diversi sintomi:
- dolore muscolo-scheletrico diffuso, ovvero non localizzabile in zone precise del corpo;
- discreta rigidita' dei muscoli (minore distensibilita' e scarsa capacita' di rilassamento) e delle articolazioni piu' accentuata nel tronco;
- presenza di tender points*, e cioe' di punti dolenti, sia spontaneamente sia alla pressione.
I sintomi classici per considerare una persona un malato di fibromialgia e' stata approvata di recente e comprende:
- dolore diffuso da almeno tre mesi;
- dolore alla palpazione in almeno 11 dei 16 punti dolenti.
Piu' rara e' invece la presenza di affezioni localizzate come i cosiddetti trigger points, o punti grilletto, che dolgono solo alla pressione.
Si tratta di bande o noduli muscolari piu' duri, che hanno una maggiore consistenza quando sono palpati.
I punti dolenti
Nella fibromialgia sono coinvolti i 'tender points', punti che, se premuti, generano dolore.
Ecco quali sono.
I SINTOMI PRIMARI
Le manifestazioni della fibromialgia primaria possono essere suddivise in tre gruppi: il primo racchiude i sintomi tipici della malattia; il secondo comprende quelli piu' caratteristici e il terzo i sintomi che sono presenti solo a volte.
Principali:
- dolori diffusi da almeno tre mesi,
- punti dolenti.
Caratteristici:
- sonno leggero, non ristoratore,
- astenia* generalizzata,
- rigidita' mattutina.
Frequenti:
- cefalea (mal di testa),
- dismenorrea (mestruazioni dolorose),
- disturbi intestinali,
- ansia e depressione,
- difficolta' a muoversi,
- variabilita' dei sintomi in rapporto a fattori climatici o ambientali.
Altri disturbi
Alle manifestazioni tipiche di dolore, si possono associare anche sintomi meno ovvi, come l'astenia* (e la sensazione di stanchezza al mattino, anche dopo lunghe ore di sonno), artralgie*, mal di testa e una riduzione dell'attivita' fisica abituale anche del 50 per cento.
I sintomi sono accentuati da alcune attivita' che mettono in moto la muscolatura: tra queste, nonostante cio' che si e' abituati a pensare, ci sono anche attivita' sedentarie, come l'utilizzo del computer.

Terapia

Un decorso variabile
La fibromialgia e' una malattia cronica, per la quale non si puo' parlare di guarigione completa.
Non ha tempi definiti e prevedibili: la 'lunghezza' delle sue manifestazioni e' assai variabile e puo' alternare periodi in cui si manifestano i dolori e periodi in cui si sta bene.
Due sono i fattori che incidono sul decorso della i malattia:
- il grado di coinvolgimento emotivo e psicologico del malato,
- il rapporto che si instaura con lo specialista.
Piu' specialisti
La sindrome fibromiatgica va diagnosticata e trattata da medici specialisti diversi, ovvero:
- il reumatologo,
- l'ortopedico,
- il fisiatra.
Questi specialisti devono stabilire prima di tutto se lo stress oppure la tensione emotiva che il malato presenta sono la causa della fibromialgia o se, al contrario, sono la normale conseguenza della malattia.

Tre approcci
Molto spesso, la fibromialgia deve essere attaccata su piu' fronti: la cura non e' unica, ma va suddivisa in piu' trattamenti che soltanto se eseguiti insieme con costanza, danno i risultati sperati. Specialmente nel caso della fibromialgia primaria, la cura si basa su tre cardini fondamentali: un approccio psicologico, uno fisico e uno farmacologica.
Inoltre, la fiducia del malato nei confronti del proprio medico riveste un aspetto fondamentale per il successo della cura.

Farmaci

Farmaci e sostegno
Il primo approccio di cura e' fondato su una completa e chiara spiegazione della natura e delle cause della malattia. Il medico deve essere in grado di far conoscere alla persona le origini del suo disturbo; deve poi ribadire l'importanza di rispettare non solo la cura farmacologica ma anche gli esercizi fisici e le regole di comportamento piu' opportune. Inoltre, e' importante il supporto psicologico del medico stesso, che deve spronare e tranquillizzare il malato.
Due sono i farmaci usati: gli antidepressivi triciclici a basse dosi (10-30 g di amitriptilina al giorno, oppure dotiepina o ciclobenzaprina); gli antidolorifici, specialmente gli antinfiammatori non steroidi (Fans), come l'acido acetilsalicilico (Aspirina) o il nimesulide.

Questi sono alcuni farmaci che possono essere utilizzati per allei farmaci viare il dolore.

Antidepressivi: Triptyzol 25 cpr. 25 mg, fascia A; Adepril 30 conf. 10 mg, fascia A.

Fans: Voltaren 30 cpr. 50 mg. fascia A; Naprosin 20 cpr. 750 mg, fascia A.

Analgesici: Tachipirina 20 cpr, 500 mg, fascia C.
I farmaci citati sono una libera scelta redazionale.

Consigli

Abitudini corrette
Di norma, l'approccio dei malati di fibromialgia ai farmaci e' piuttosto problematico, spedalmente in chi ha alla base un forte conflitto nevrotico, cioe', secondo i dati, circa il 25 percento delle persone interessate. E' fondamentale, invece, la partecipazione del malato, per cui e' di solito necessario che il medico lo istruisca e insieme rassicuri. Escluse le forme secondarie, da curare in modo specifico tenendo conto della singola malattia, la cura tende al rilassamento dell'apparato muscolare, attraverso bagni in acqua calda prima di dormire, l'assunzione di antinfiammatori e antidepressivi leggeri a piccole dosi. E' anche importante eseguire esercizi muscolari in scarico, vale a dire sul tappeto, in piscina o con la cyclette. L'esercizio aerobico, cioe' la ginnastica aerobica, da' benefici duraturi anche se non immediati: il programma ideale puo' essere una sessione di 20 minuti di marcia sul posti in acqua alta fino al torace, per tre giorni alla settimana.
CONSIGLIATO:
analisi del sangue, esami strumentali, ginnastica, psicoterapia, farmaci
SCONSIGLIATO: posizioni scorrette e stress
PER ALLEVIARE TENSIONE E RIGIDITA'
Ecco 8 esempi di esercizi utili e semplici da effettuare ideali per sciogliere i muscoli. Ognuno di essi deve essere ripetutto per 10 volte.
8 esercizi a casa
Es. 1: sdraiati, ginocchia flesse, mani dietro il capo, portare il mento verso il torace.
Es. 2: sdraiati sul dorso, ginocchia flesse e un poco divaricate, le mani dietro il capo, ruotare la testa, flettendo il collo in avanti.
Es. 3: in piedi, inclinare a destra e sinistra la testa. Aiutarsi premendo dolcemente la mano sulla testa.
ES. 4: seduti, piedi, ginocchia e braccia come nell'illustrazione; piegarsi in avanti e tornare indietro.
ES. 5: seduti con ginocchia flesse e mani che le afferrano, dondolarsi avanti e indietro.
ES. 6: sdraiati, ruotare i piedi prima verso l'esterno e poi verso l'interno.
ES. 7: sdraiati, ginocchia flesse, portarle verso l'esterno e l'interno.
ES. 8: sdraiati sul dorso, poirtare gradualmente verso l'esterno e verso l'alto prima una gamba poi l'altra.

Indirizzi

Per documentarsi sulla Fibromialgia consultare anche questi siti:
http://www.fibromialgiaterapia.it/
http://www.fibromyalgia.it
http://www.sindromefibromialgica.it

Foods That Chronic Pain Sufferers Need to Avoid

January 19 2010 | 114,937 views | + Add to Favorites

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Chronic pain is a pervasive issue and fibromyalgia is a very common form. It is a chronic condition whose symptoms include muscle and tissue pain, fatigue, depression, and sleep disturbances.
Recent data suggests that central sensitization, in which neurons in your spinal cord become sensitized by inflammation or cell damage, may be involved in the way fibromyalgia sufferers process pain.
Certain chemicals in the foods you eat may trigger the release of neurotransmitters that heighten this sensitivity.
Although there have been only a handful of studies on diet and fibromyalgia, the following eating rules can’t hurt, and may help, when dealing with chronic pain.
Limit Sugar as Much as Possible. Increased insulin levels will typically dramatically worsen pain. So you will want to limit all sugars and this would typically include fresh fruit juices. Whole fresh fruit is the preferred method for consuming fruit products.
If you are overweight, have high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes, you will also want to limit grains as much as possible as they are metabolized very similarly to sugars. This would also include organic unprocessed grains. Wheat and gluten grains are the top ones to avoid.
Eat fresh foods. Eating a diet of fresh foods, devoid of preservatives and additives, may ease symptoms triggered by coexisting conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
It’s also a good idea to buy organic food when possible, as it’s best to avoid pesticides and chemicals. However, fresh is best. So if you have to choose between local, fresh, non-organic and organic but wilting – go with fresh, and clean properly.
Avoid caffeine. Fibromyalgia is believed to be linked to an imbalance of brain chemicals that control mood, and it is often linked with inadequate sleep and fatigue. The temptation is to artificially and temporarily eliminate feelings of fatigue with stimulants like caffeine, but this approach does more harm than good in the long run. Though caffeine provides an initial boost of energy, it is no substitute for sleep, and is likely to keep you awake.
Try avoiding nightshade vegetables. Nightshade vegetables like tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant may trigger arthritis and pain conditions in some people.
Be Careful with Your Fats. Animal based omega-3 fats like DHA and EPA have been touted as a heart-healthy food, and they may help with pain, as well. They can help reduce inflammation and improve brain function. At the same time, you want to eliminate all trans fat and fried foods, as these will promote inflammation.
Use yeast sparingly. Consuming yeast may also contribute to the growth of yeast fungus, which can contribute to pain.
Avoid pasteurized dairy. Many fibromyalgia sufferers have trouble digesting milk and dairy products. However, many find that raw dairy products, especially from grass fed organic sources, are well tolerated.
Cut down on carbs. About 90 percent of fibromyalgia patients have low adrenal functioning, which affects metabolism of carbohydrates and may lead to hypoglycemia.
Avoid aspartame. The artificial sweetener found in some diet sodas and many sugar-free sweets is part of a chemical group called excitotoxins, which activate neurons that can increase your sensitivity to pain.
Avoid additives. Food additives such as monosodium glutamate (MSG) often cause trouble for pain patients. MSG is an excitatory neurotransmitter that may stimulate pain receptors; glutamate levels in spinal fluid have been shown to correlate with pain levels in fibromyalgia patients.
Stay away from junk food. Limit or eliminate fast food, candy, and vending-machine products. In addition to contributing to weight gain and the development of unhealthy eating habits, these diet-wreckers may also irritate your muscles, disrupt your sleep, and compromise your immune system.

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Chances are good that someone in your family or your circle of friends has fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia affects 10 million Americans, which is 2% to 4% of the population. Alongside diabetes and heart disease, it has become one of the most pervasive 21st Century diseases.

If you have fibromyalgia, then you already know how frustrating it is to manage, and how confusing it is to sort through all the conflicting nutritional advice about how to eat.

The fact is, there's little scientific evidence to support any single eating plan that will work for all fibromyalgia sufferers.

You’ve probably read:

• Eat more whole grains. Then, avoid grains altogether.
• Eat fruit of all kinds. Then, some fruit increases pain.
  
• Eat fresh, organic tomatoes. Followed by, tomatoes and other nightshade vegetables will make you feel worse.

Confused yet about how to stock your refrigerator?

The problem is that fibromyalgia is a complex array of symptoms involving widespread pain and fatigue and has multiple causative factors. No one treatment is effective for everyone.

Kent Holtorf, MD, the medical director of the Holtorf Medical Group Center for Endocrine, Neurological and Infection Related Illness in Torrance, California states:

“We’re at the point now where we know diet plays a role in this disease—it’s just not the same diet for everybody. And not everybody is helped in the same way.”[i]

Fibromyalgia requires an approach that is as diverse as the disease.

So, if you have fibromyalgia, you aren’t that different from everyone else in terms of your nutritional needs. Your diet must be tailored to your own genetic composition.

So, where do you start?

Nutritional Typing a Crucial Step for Fibromyalgia

The best starting point is determining what nutritional type you are, so that you will know how your body reacts to food. I have condensed my nutrition plan into an easy to follow eating plan that progresses in three stages, from beginner to advanced.

Nutritional Typing is not a diet. It is a way to determine which of three basic groups you fit into: Protein Type, Carb Type, or Mixed Type.

I have found that eating this way seems to help decrease or eliminate fibromyalgia symptoms. However, it is also clear that eating in accordance with your nutritional type alone is not the complete answer to symptom relief.

My Dietary Ten Commandments

Although there is no “one-size-fits-all” diet, there are dietary guidelines that I consider absolute—fibromyalgia or otherwise.

1. Avoid artificial sweeteners. Aspartame, in particular, has been known to trigger fibromyalgia-type symptoms, and if you have the disease already, it will only make it worse. Artificial sweeteners could be responsible for part or even all of your symptoms. (You can read more about this in my book Sweet Deception.)

2. Eat a varied diet of fresh, organic, whole foods that are as close to their natural state as possible. Whole fruits and vegetables are rich in antioxidants, which have anti-inflammatory properties[ii]. The more colorful your produce, the better! Go for those deep oranges, reds, purples and greens.

3. Eat as many raw foods (“living foods”) as possible for their enzymes and biophotons. I try to eat at least 80 percent of my food raw. Cooking food to above 118 degrees F destroys enzymes and reduces nutrient uptake.

4. Drink plenty of pure, filtered water that is fluoride-free.

5. Avoid all additives, preservatives, and processed foods.

6. Avoid sugar and caffeine, including sodas, fruit juices and energy drinks.

7. Eliminate or strictly limit alcohol consumption.

8. Make sure you are eating enough long-chain animal based omega 3 fatty acids from fish or krill oils. Omega 3s decrease inflammation, joint pain, swelling and stiffness and are natural pain reducers, in addition to providing many other health benefits.

9. Coconut and coconut oil have been found to be beneficial to people with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and hypothyroidism.

10. Eat slowly and fully chew and enjoy your food!

Detecting Food Sensitivities

If you are already following these dietary guidelines and want to delve deeper into what foods might be increasing your symptoms, then the next step is refining your dietary plan, within your nutritional type category.

There is some evidence that people with fibromyalgia experience fewer symptoms if they eliminate one or more foods that are the most common triggers for food allergies or food sensitivities.

Sensitization refers to a gradual change in how your immune system reacts to a particular substance, often resulting in an allergy.

In “central sensitization,” your entire central nervous system becomes sensitized to a substance, and this happens to be one of the proposed mechanisms for fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, in terms of how your body amplifies pain signals[iii].

Fibromyalgia sufferers are particularly vulnerable to becoming centrally sensitized to certain foods, causing an immune reaction that exacerbates their symptoms.

The most common things in your diet that will cause a problem are corn, wheat, soy, dairy, citrus and sugar. The top three worst offenders are pasteurized milk, soy and gluten (wheat and other grains).

In one study of 17 fibromyalgia patients, nearly half experienced a “significant reduction in pain” after eliminating corn, wheat, dairy, citrus and sugar.

Other Important Factors to Remember

Here is a checklist of the most significant ones you might need to address:

• Sleep disruption is almost always a significant problem with fibromyalgia.

• Exercise is known to ease the pain of fibromyalgia and is an extremely important aspect of your daily routine. In one study by Harvard researchers, after exercising for 20 weeks, women with fibromyalgia reported improved muscle strength and endurance, and lessening of their symptoms including pain, stiffness, fatigue and depression.

• In my experience, nearly all fibromyalgia sufferers have some form of underlying stress or emotional component that contributes to their condition. My favorite tool to resolve this is meridian tapping technique (MTT) (also referred to as EFT).

• Check your vitamin D levels. Some of the new research on vitamin D shows that low vitamin D can worsen fibromyalgia, among other things. It has also been shown that sunlight is a natural painkiller.

All it takes to feel better is a little willingness to make a few lifestyle changes, and perhaps explore some alternatives to what you’ve been doing.

You can’t ever predict which little change is going to be the heavy hitter—so you might have to go through a little trial and error. But when you do find it, a little tweak can be a game changer!

 

Why this Single Organ Powerfully Dictates Whether You're Healthy or Sick

March 18 2012 | 465,173 views | + Add to Favorites

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Visit the Mercola Video Library

By Dr. Mercola

The interview above features Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, a Russian-trained neurologist with a full-time medical practice in the UK.
She treats children and adults with autism, learning disabilities, neurological disorders, psychiatric disorders, immune disorders, and digestive problems, using her Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) Nutritional Program.
Below, I also interview Caroline Barringer, a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP), who is an expert in the preparation of the foods prescribed in Dr. McBride's GAPS program.
We first met at the November 2011 Weston Price Wise Traditions event, where we had the opportunity to enjoy some amazing fermented vegetables that her company prepared for our dinner.
I started incorporating them into my own diet and after a little over a month of daily use, was surprised to find that this minor change has dramatically decreased plaque formation on my teeth, which has been a chronic problem for me.
Caroline has been involved with nutrition for about 20 years, and is now one of Dr. McBride's chief training partners, helping people understand the food preparation process.
The importance of your gut flora, and its influence on your health cannot be overstated. It's truly profound.
Your gut literally serves as your second brain, and even produces more of the neurotransmitter serotonin—known to have a beneficial influence on your mood—than your brain does.
Your gut is also home to countless bacteria, both good and bad. These bacteria outnumber  (ultrapassam) the cells in your body by at least 10 to one, and maintaining the ideal balance of good and bad bacteria forms the foundation for good health—physical, mental and emotional.
The challenge is to identify strategies to optimize that bacterial population, so that you can live in a beneficial, symbiotic relationship where they nourish you, help you fight disease, and optimize your health. This is where the GAPS Nutritional Program comes in.

"Heal and Seal" Your Gut to Reverse Disease

I have been a strong advocate of nutritional therapies for many decades. That certainly gets you to a level of health, but the introduction of fermented foods, and the "heal and seal" process that Dr. McBride has developed can help take your health to the next level. So I'm thrilled to announce that we'll be conducting a series of interviews and videos expounding on these principles.
I'm firmly convinced that if we can share this information with enough people and reeducate them about some of the most important basic processes that have been abandoned over the years, large amounts of people will start to recapture their health!
Here, we begin by discussing the basic principles for how to implement the GAPS program. GAPS stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome. It also stands for Gut and Physiology Syndrome.

"In terms of Gut and Psychology Syndrome, we are talking about the functioning of the brain of the person," Dr. McBride explains. "Any dysfunction of the brain is usually connected to what's going on in the digestive system. In Gut and Physiology Syndrome, we're talking about the functioning of the rest of the body. Hippocrates… made a statement that all diseases begin in the gut. The more we learn now with all our modern scientific tools, the more we realize just how correct he was."

In terms of Gut and Physiology Syndrome, we're talking about all forms of autoimmunity and inflammatory diseases and conditions, such as:

Multiple sclerosis	Type 1 diabetes	Rheumatoid arthritis	Osteoarthritis
Lupus	Crohn's disease	Ulcerative colitis	Chronic skin conditions
Kidney problems	Urinary conditions	Allergic and atopic conditions	Degenerative conditions
Chronic fatigue syndrome	Fibromyalgia	Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)	Inflammatory bowel diseases

If you're suffering from any of these conditions, or virtually any other health challenge, you'd be wise to implement the GAPS program. While Dr. McBride's book is called Gut and Psychology Syndrome, the nutritional protocol for addressing physiological and psychological conditions is identical. She is working on a second book, which will be called Gut and Physiology Syndrome, but in the meantime; please refer to her original book, as the practical dietary information will be the same.

"Once you heal and seal your gut lining, and once you make your digestive system healthy and working properly again, you'll be surprised how many various symptoms in your body originated from your digestive system. Most [symptoms] start disappearing, because the health and the disease are usually born inside your digestive system. That's where they originate from," she explains.

What is the GAPS Nutritional Protocol?

The GAPS protocol is designed to restore the integrity of your gut lining.

"Our digestive system is lined by very specialized cells, which are called enterocytes. These little cells only live for a few days," Dr. McBride explains. "They live for two or three days. Then… they die, get shed off, and get replaced by new, healthy enterocytes. The cell regeneration process in your gut lining is a very active process.
… We have a real chance to heal and seal our damaged gut lining thanks to this wonderful process of cell regeneration. But here's the catch: in order for your body to give birth to healthy functioning baby enterocytes, it needs two factors. It needs building blocks for them, because they're made out of certain nutrients (proteins, certain fats, vitamins, enzymes, and other active molecules)… Second, it needs the whole process to be orchestrated by the beneficial microbes in your digestive system; by the beneficial healthy gut flora."

People with GAPS have neither of those factors. They run out of building blocks due to improper nutrition, which prevents the proliferation of new, healthy enterocytes, and their gut lining is overpopulated with pathogenic bacteria, virus, fungi, worms, protozoa, and other pathogenic microbes. As a result, the beneficial microbes are virtually nonexistent, and the balance of good and bad bacteria is dramatically skewed.

"In animal experiments… when they sterilized the digestive tract of the animals, they found that the whole cell regeneration process in the gut lining goes completely wrong," she says. "The travel time of the baby enterocytes doubles… Enterocytes are born already mutated, and some of them turn cancerous. They are unable to fulfill their functions: breaking down the food and absorbing the food appropriately.
We have to provide those two factors for the gut lining to heal and seal. We need to drive out pathogens and replace them with beneficial flora. And we need to provide all the building blocks for the gut lining to give birth to baby enterocytes. That's what GAPS Nutritional Protocol does."

The Two GAPS Diets

The GAPS Nutritional Protocol contains three factors:

1. Dietary intervention, designed to feed the cell regeneration process and allow your gut to rebuild healthy enterocytes
   
2. Probiotic supplements, to reseed your gut with healthy bacteria
   
3. Detoxification

Here, we will focus on the dietary portion. The GAPS Diet is structured into three stages:

1. GAPS Introduction Diet
   
2. GAPS Full Diet
   
3. Weaning off the GAPS Diet

However, you don't have to follow that order. The GAPS Introduction Diet is structured in six stages, where foods are introduced gradually. It requires a lot of time, patience and perseverance. The Full GAPS Diet provides a much wider range of foods for you to choose from, and is therefore an easier place to start for many.

"That's the diet that you reach and stay in for about a year, or sometimes longer, until all your digestive problems have gone and all the other problems in your body and brain have gone. When you have achieved full health, then you can move into the third stage of coming off the GAPS Diet, where you can gradually start introducing foods that are not allowed within the GAPS Nutritional Protocol.
Some people start from the GAPS Introduction Diet and follow through the stages, while others start from the GAPS Full Diet. Then they try the GAPS Introduction diet later, if they feel that there's more healing to achieve in their body and they're now organized to do that… So, it is up to you which diet you want to choose."

Which GAPS Diet is Right for You?

Here are some brief guidelines that might help you choose. The GAPS Introduction Diet is best if you are prone to:

Chronic diarrhea	Leaky gut syndrome	Depression	Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Chronic digestive symptoms such as flatulence, pain, aching stomach, mixed stools, burping or reflux	Severe food allergies and food intolerances	Attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder	Multiple sclerosis

The introduction diet can help clear those symptoms rather quickly. However, this diet is far more restrictive, and can be more difficult to follow than the Full GAPS Diet. You may do better with the Full GAPS Diet if you:

• Are very busy and cannot put aside enough time for cooking and organizing your meals
  
• Travel frequently

It's important to realize that even if you do not experience any specific digestive problems, you may still have abnormal gut flora. It is extremely common these days, unless you have a pristine diet, have not used antibiotics, and aren't taking birth control pills or other medications.

"It's just that their digestive system is compensating for it [the abnormal gut flora]," Dr. McBride explains. "The human body has an amazing ability to compensate for the problems. The body can work around the problem for a very long time before it starts giving you signals that something's wrong, and that's the problem. The signals are the symptoms! For example, you can have cancer in your body for 20 years and there are no symptoms. Until the first symptom appears, the body compensates. It works around it."

Basic Principles of the Introduction Diet

The Introduction Diet is divided into six stages. Below are the first three. According to Dr. McBride:

"These three factors ensure that the gut heals much quicker… That is why people who follow [the Introduction Diet] find that their food allergies disappear much quicker. We have many people who have healed themselves and have removed their food allergies and intolerances completely. Now they can eat foods which they could not even touch before. The same happens to people with inflammatory bowel conditions and other severe digestive disorders, and to any person who got serious digestive symptoms."

1. First, fiber is removed from the diet, because it feeds microbes. The human digestive system is not designed to break down fiber. Instead, it ends up undigested in your bowel, where the majority of your gut flora resides. If your gut flora is healthy, ie dominated by beneficial, probiotic species, then these microbes will feed on the fiber and proliferate.
   
   This is slightly counterintuitive as people and health care professionals consider fiber universally beneficial. I was one of them and in medical school in the 70s was known as Dr. Fiber for my widespread promotion of fiber. However if your gut is filled with pathogenic bacteria and/or yeast and fungi, fiber will actually make your symptoms worse as it is a non-specific growth factor for intestinal bacteria, and does not discriminate between pathogenic and beneficial bacteria.
   
   So, if your bowel is predominantly dominated by pathogenic microbes, pathogenic microbes will feed on fiber and proliferate, making whatever health problems you have worse. The digestive system of those with GAPS is predominantly populated by pathogens, which is why fiber must be carefully eliminated from the diet, for a period of time, to help starve out the pathogens.
   
2. Second, probiotics are incrementally added in, because without their presence, no healing can ever occur in your digestive tract. This is done in two ways: through probiotic and fermented foods, and therapeutic-strength probiotic supplements
   
3. The third factor: introducing the building blocks for your gut lining, which promotes healthy enterocyte reproduction to rebuild the integrity of your gut lining.

"You will find that in children with learning disabilities, in the first and second stage, the bedwetting usually stops; the eye contact starts coming back; the hyperactive behavior reduces automatically; the child becomes more "with" you; he becomes more alert," Dr. McBride says.

When you move on to the third or fourth stage (which includes more solid foods), some of the original symptoms may recur. If that happens, it means you (or your child) is not ready to move to the next stage yet. Just back-track to the previous stage, and stay there for another couple of weeks, until the symptoms recede. Then try moving into the next stage again. Remember, this is a natural healing process, which can take time.

"Adults usually take longer to heal than children. In children it can happen quite quickly, but it depends on the toxic load and various other factors.
Many people have to do this dance of step forward, step back, step forward, and step back for several months," Dr. McBride says. "Some people have to follow the introduction diet for up to 18 months… before moving into the Full GAPS Diet. This is usually the group of the most severe people such as those with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, ME, multiple sclerosis, and people with more severe degenerative conditions. In the majority of people, particularly the children, the introduction diet takes a couple of months maximum."

Is a No-Plant Diet Safe Long-Term?

As you can see, the Introduction Diet is devoid of most plant foods, unless well cooked and low in fiber. This may seem like a harmful way of eating, considering how vegetables are touted as the most important part of a healthy diet. But according to Dr. McBride, there's no cause for alarm.

"I have patients who have done best on a completely no-plant diet," she says. "I have people who have been on a no-plants diet at all; purely animal foods. They eat meat, fish, eggs, and yogurt. That's all. They don't eat anything else. They have no vegetables, fruits, grains, and nothing of plant origin at all for 18 months, two years, and two and a half years, and they do beautifully.
These are usually people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, bipolar disorders, schizophrenics, or people with other conditions.
Whenever they try a little bit of a vegetable, a little bit of plant matter, they get their manic symptoms back. They get their other psychiatric problems back… These people learn quite quickly. They listen to their body, and quite quickly they know what works for them or what doesn't. Everybody's different. It depends not only on your constitutional genetics, but it also depends on what kind of toxins you have stored in your body, where they're stored, and what methods your body is using to clear them out, and various other variables."

Primary Foods of the GAPS Introduction Diet

The following foods are the staples of the GAPS Introduction Diet:

• Homemade meat stock
  
• Homemade bone broth
  
• Soups with well-cooked, deseeded and peeled vegetables, such as zucchinis and squash. If you're cooking broccoli or cauliflower, remove all the stalks and fibrous bits. Avoid using fibrous vegetables such as celery and those from the cabbage family
  
• Homemade fermented yoghurt (using either raw, grass-fed milk, or store-bought organic, full fat milk if you cannot find raw milk) and whey
  
• Fermented vegetables (in cases of severe digestive disorders, Dr. McBride recommends starting on the juice only, as the fiber of the vegetables may be too much to handle for a compromised digestive system. From there, slowly work your way up to consuming small amounts of vegetable, such as sauerkraut or cabbage)
  
• Raw egg yolk from organically-raised, pastured hens

Dr. McBride discusses many more details of the GAPS diet in her interview, so for more in-depth information and instructions on how to prepare many of these foods at home, please listen to the interview or read through the transcript.

Rethinking the Raw Food / Vegan Diet Trend…

Dr. McBride introduces a concept that is contrary to what most health-minded people have learned, including myself. I've been a staunch advocate of consuming all foods in their raw state, or as near raw as possible, as much as possible. My general recommendation has been to consume about 80 percent of your food raw. Dr. McBride disagrees, explaining that all-raw is not necessarily ideal.

"Mother Nature provided us with two groups of natural foods. Obviously, we're not talking about processed foods here. Processed foods… do not serve the human body. These foods do not feed us. They do not cleanse us… They just pollute us, because they have been processed to increase their shelf life… Let's remove those foods out of the equation altogether. We're talking about natural foods… in the form that Mother Nature created them."

These two food groups are:

1. Plants (fruits, veggies, grains, beans, nuts and seeds)
   
2. Animal products (meat, fish, dairy products, eggs)

According to Dr. McBride, the plant foods are primarily cleansing foods that aid in elimination and detoxification, while the animal products are nourishing foods that feed your body and provide the building blocks for your bones, muscles, brain, immune system and other organs.

"When you cook vegetables, their cellular structure gets broken down, and they are much easier to digest," Dr. McBride explains. "They become more of a feeding and nourishing food rather than a cleansing food. Raw fruits and vegetables are indigestible for the human digestive system. They don't feed us; they cleanse us… But as we cook the vegetables, and as we ferment the vegetables, we break down their cellulose structure. They become less of a cleansing detoxifying food and more of a feeding and nourishing food."
"The natural cultures all over the world through the millennia have understood this," she says. "That is why they developed methods to make plant foods more of a "feeding/nourishing" food, and digestible for the human digestive system. The methods that they have developed to make plants more digestible are cooking and fermentation. That is why grains were always fermented or cooked. Fruits and vegetables were fermented and cooked.
When we ferment and cook plant foods, we break down their structure. They become less of a detoxifier… [and] move into the group of feeding/nourishing foods."

The Happy Marriage between Raw and Cooked or Fermented Foods

She goes on to discuss how herbivorous animals are designed to consume the energy of the sun in the form of plants. But in order for most herbivores, like cows, to digest plant foods, they're equipped with multiple stomachs, called rumen, which are filled with microbes. It's these microbes that digest the plant foods, transforming the carbohydrates in the plant matter into short-chain fatty acids.
Humans, however, do not have a rumen.
We only have one small stomach, and, if you're healthy, your stomach contains very minute amounts of bacteria. In fact, a healthy stomach is the least populated area of your digestive system. Instead of microbes, the human stomach produces acid and pepsin, which can effectively break down one group of foods, and that is animal-based foods.

"They're not fit to break down plants at all," Dr. McBride says. "Most plant foods, when we consume them in a raw state in particular, they go all through our digestive system, and they finish up practically undigested in the bowel where the bacteria – that's our equivalent of the rumen – partially break them down and convert them into short-chain fatty acids… and that's the boost to our human metabolism.
But if you try to live entirely on these plant foods, you will run into trouble, as vegans do… In order to feed yourself, you have to consume animal products… meat… animal fat… fish… eggs… good-quality dairy products…
Indeed, in order for us to produce sex hormones, we need cholesterol, because they're made from cholesterol. We require vitamin A and vitamin D. We require a lot of protein. In order to produce sex hormones, they have to eat meat, eggs, and animal fat. If you don't want to produce sex hormones; if you want to be infertile, and if you don't want to have any sexual desire, then the vegan diet is the right diet that you should follow."

This does not negate the need for raw food. We all need cleansing and detoxification. And if your toxic load is high, or if you're overweight, then a period of cleansing, using lots of raw vegan-type foods can be very beneficial.

"But then when the body finishes with that cleansing, it needs to be fed. Following a vegan diet or a vegetarian diet like that for a long period of time is unsustainable and should not be contemplated," Dr. McBride warns.
"It is very important for people to listen to their bodies and to talk to their bodies and figure out, "What do I need right now?" Do I need to cleanse right now, or do I need to feed myself right now? What state is my body in? Maybe I need a mixture, some sort of middle ground between the two, depending on what's happening in my body. "

The Phenomenal Health Benefits of Fermented Vegetables

As mentioned earlier, fermented vegetables are a mainstay of the GAPS diets. In the following video, Caroline Barringer discusses the process of fermenting your own vegetables in some detail, so for more information, please listen to that interview, or read through the transcript. You'll also find more resources at the end of this article.


Download Interview Transcript One thing that many do not realize is that fermented foods are some of the best chelators available. The beneficial bacteria in these foods are very potent detoxifiers, capable of drawing out a wide range of toxins and heavy metals. According to Dr. McBride, the GAPS Nutritional Protocol restores your own detoxification system in about 90 percent of people, and the fermented/cultured foods are instrumental in this self-healing process.

"The cell wall [of the bacteria] have chelators; molecules that grab hold of mercury, lead, aluminum, arsenate, and anything else toxic," Dr. McBride explains. "They hold them until they're removed through stool."

And you don't need to consume huge amounts either. Caroline recommends eating about a quarter to a half a cup of fermented vegetables, or cultured food such as raw yoghurt, per day. Kombucha, a fermented drink, is another great addition to your diet. The key is variety. The greater the variety of fermented and cultured foods you include in your diet, the better, as each food will inoculate your gut with a variety of different microorganisms.

Almost Everyone has Damaged Gut Flora these Days!

"The trouble is that in our modern society, we live in a world where a growing proportion of the population damaged gut flora, because they have been exposed to repeated courses of antibiotics; women are taking contraceptive pills, which damage the gut flora quite profoundly, or any other prescriptive long-term medication. People are taking in toxic substances through their food and drink, and other… environmental influences damage the composition of their gut flora.
As a result, when they are exposed to mercury, lead, other toxic metals, or other toxic substances in the environment, their gut flora is unable to chelate it, and cannot remove it.
It floods into their bloodstream, and settles in the body. Unfortunately, toxic metals have a particular affinity for fatty tissues in the body, so they get stored in the brain, spine, and in the rest of the nervous system. They also target your bone marrow and the rest of the high fat organs in the body… Of course, when they're stored in there, they would cause leukemia, lymphoma, other immune abnormalities, and other problems... "

Dr. McBride has made the important connection between damaged gut flora in women, and developmental problems in their children, especially autism. These GAPS children, who are born with damaged gut flora, are also far more prone to vaccine damage. I believe this may be a major driving force behind our skyrocketing autism rates.
Fortunately, there's a solution.
Restoring proper gut function to pregnant mothers and their babies is really one of the most profound interventions one could have for having a non-brain-damaged child.

"Mothers of my generation who have daughters who are growing up now—now is the time to assess your daughter," Dr. McBride says. "See what her gut flora is like. How is she doing before she's ready to conceive or have children? Prepare them for it to avoid the huge amount of grief in the family of having a grandchild with autism, hyperactivity, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or some other disorder. This is because the proportion of girls with damaged gut flora is growing in our modern world, and they are heading to having unhealthy children."

Additional Resources

In addition to the wealth of information shared in the two interviews above, there are also a number of other resources you can delve into. Dr. McBride's blog contains articles and videos relating to a wide variety of health problems that can be helped with the GAPS diet. I highly recommend getting her book Gut and Psychology Syndrome, which provides all the necessary details for her protocol. We were finally able to convince her to print it in the U.S., so I now offer it for sale in my store. It saves you a few dollars, compared to ordering it from the U.K..

Dr. McBride is also training GAPS practitioners, with sessions coming up in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. In the US, there are currently 160 certified GAPS practitioners who are well-qualified to help you to go through the GAPS Nutritional Protocol.
You can find certified GAPS practitioners on www.GAPS.me, listed by country and state.
www.Immunitrition.com is another helpful resource where you can learn more about cultured and fermented foods. If you're so inclined, you can also find information about how to become a Certified Healing Foods Specialist here.

Diet Helps Fibromyalgia

November 07 2001 | 22,677 views | + Add to Favorites

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People with fibromyalgia may experience reductions in their symptoms if they eliminate one or more foods from their diet.
Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition, often accompanied by depression and fatigue, in which a person feels pain in the muscles and tissues surrounding the joints.
Nine in 10 fibromyalgia patients are female.
While the cause of fibromyalgia is unknown, researchers have found pain-processing abnormalities in the spines and brain stems of some people with fibromyalgia.
In the study, investigators reviewed medical charts of 17 fibromyalgia patients who agreed to eliminate common foods from their diet such as corn, wheat, dairy, citrus, soy and nuts.
After 2 weeks without eating any of the potential food allergens, nearly half of the patients reported "significant reduction of pain," and 76% reported a reduction in other symptoms such as headache, fatigue, bloating, heartburn, and breathing difficulties.
After the food elimination phase of the study, the patients were then instructed to reintroduce a particular food every 2 or 3 days and monitor their reaction to the food.
Some of the reactions to foods were pain, headache, and gastrointestinal distress. The most common problem-causing foods or ingredients for the patients in this study were corn, wheat trigo, dairy, citrus and sugar.
Annual Meeting of the American College of Nutrition in Orlando, Florida October 2001

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

This is no surprise to most readers of this newsletter. I do find that following the eating plan seems to help most of those with fibromyalgia. I have not found expensive blood tests for food allergies to offer much additional benefits than just simply following the eating plan.
However, it is quite clear that most people with fibromyalgia will not have complete relief of their symptoms even if the follow they diet perfectly.
This is because in nearly every person I have seen with fibromyalgia there is an underlying emotional component.
Bioenergetic normalization of previous emotional traumas is the single most effective treatment I know of for fibromyalgia at this time. There are many different techniques that can be used here, but EFT is my current favorite.
NST is also another powerful tool that works quite synergistically with the eating plan and energetic balancing. It is a series of gentle massage like techniques that has profound and quite amazing muscle normalization effects.
Unlike massage or most manipulation or adjustments, the benefits seem to be long lasting and generally 3-10 sessions are all that are required for permanent relief as long as one has addressed problem foods and previous emotional traumas.
Related Articles:

Exercise Benefits Fibromyalgia Patients

[M]ost [fibromyalgia] patients are either hypothyroid or thyroid hormone resistant.”

The Simple Fibromyalgia Treatment that’s Nearly Always Overlooked…

February 26 2011 | 302,436 views | + Add to Favorites

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Visit the Mercola Video Library

Dr. John Lowe is a skilled clinician, recognized as one of the leading experts on treating thyroid disease with natural medicine. In this interview, he discusses hypothyroidism and the lesser known thyroid hormone resistance, and how thyroid disease is connected to fibromyalgia.

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Thyroid disease, or inadequate thyroid hormone regulation, is extremely common. According to estimates, anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of Americans have suboptimal thyroid function.
The Difference between Hypothyroidism and Thyroid Hormone Resistance
Hypothyroidism occurs when you produce insufficient amounts of thyroid hormone or when you have thyroid hormone resistance. As a result, your body cannot maintain normal metabolism, and your ability to convert tyrosine to dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine is impaired. This can cause a ripple effect of symptoms, including cognitive dysfunction.
A common give-away that you may be hypothyroid is feeling cold most of the time. This is because your body cannot generate enough ATP molecules to keep the core temperature of your body high enough.
Thyroid hormone resistance began being investigated in the 1950s, yet many endocrinologists still have never heard of it, or believe it’s a rare condition.

“The difference between hypothyroidism where there is a deficiency of thyroid hormone, and thyroid hormone resistance, is that the same amount of thyroid hormone—within the laboratories’ reference range—that would maintain normal metabolism in cells don’t do so adequately.
Those people [with thyroid hormone resistance] need a much higher dosage of hormones—a dosage that would cause most endocrinologists to scream, “You’re going to die of heart attack if you don’t get off that,” Dr. Lowe explains.

Why Lab Testing is NOT the Most Useful Tool for Diagnosing Thyroid Disease

Unfortunately, many if not most conventional doctors do nothing but look at lab test data when diagnosing thyroid disease, and typically ignore signs and symptoms revealed by the patient, such as dry skin or hair loss. Dr. Lowe and I often refer to these as extremist medical technocrats.
However, Dr. Lowe says he’s noticed a revival of sorts of the practice to listen to the patient; getting a list of the symptoms; looking at the patient and touching them.
This can be particularly valuable in the case of diseases like thyroid disease, which is littered with clinical symptoms.
The exclusive reliance on lab tests is actually NOT advisable in this case. In fact, Dr. Lowe discusses why these tests may at times be completely useless for diagnosis. For example, based on three decades worth of work in this area, and two rigorous studies, Dr. Lowe has concluded that the traditional testing used does not correlate with the far more powerful assessment of thyroid hormone in your body, which is your basal metabolic rate.
For more information about that, please listen to the interview, or read through the transcript.

A Forgotten Sign of Thyroid Disease

Dr. Lowe’s interest in the thyroid was ignited about 25 years ago. At the time he used myofascial trigger point therapy to treat pain, taught by Dr. Travell who used it on John Kennedy. Most patients responded favorable to this treatment, but some did not get the typical relief and he started wondering why.

“I went to Travell and Simon’s textbooks and found a huge section on perpetuating factors,” Dr. Lowe says.
“What can make a patient resistant to usually effective myofascial therapy? Among those were nutritional deficiencies. If patients don’t take enough B complex vitamins, various ones can cause neuromuscular hyper-excitability that has to be dealt with. I would give injections of B complex vitamins and would immediately get them on megadoses…
[R]ather than three treatments it might take eight or 10, but I was able to release them as ‘recovered’. But there were some patients for whom none of those usual tactics worked. They kept coming back. The reprieve from pain might be only six hours.”

He finally discovered information that linked myofascial pain and trigger points to hypometabolism, especially due to inadequate thyroid hormone regulation.
The standard tests used today to diagnose inadequate thyroid hormone regulation due to hypothyroidism are the free T3, free T4 and TSH. There’s also a test called TRH (thyroid releasing hormone) stimulation test. Using these tests, Dr. Lowe was able to determine that many of those patients could be diagnosed with central hypothyroidism.

“They didn’t have a thyroid gland problem per se where the thyroid gland wasn’t producing a thyroid hormone, but they had either a problem with the hypothalamus or with the pituitary,” he explains.

Some of the clinical symptoms presented by these patients were primarily pain, such as headaches and cervical- or back pain. One such patient became pain-free once she started taking thyroid hormone. That’s what got Dr. Lowe started on the path of treating thyroid disease.

Signs and Symptoms of Thyroid Disease

So, if the conventional lab tests are unreliable, what are the signs and symptoms to look for? As stated earlier, there are some 60 different symptoms (including many that correspond to symptoms of fibromyalgia) that are indicative of thyroid disease—although, remarkably, you won’t find these in the newer endocrinology books.
Dr. Lowe’s web site, www.DrLowe.com, contains a full list of all the signs and symptoms. Here are a few of the most common:

• Fatigue—If you don’t have enough dopamine or have too few dopamine receptors due to inadequate thyroid hormone regulation, you end up with extreme fatigue, which is also a common complaint in fibromyalgia patients
  
• Hair loss
  
• Weight gain--Thyroid hormone controls gene transcription for lipolytic enzymes, which lower cholesterol and break down triglycerides and fatty tissues. If you have enough of these enzymes, they will reduce fat tissues in your body even if you do not diet and exercise
  
• Dry skin, hair, eyes and other mucous membranes
  
• Excess muscle tension and trigger points—For muscles to completely relax, filaments must lengthen and separate, which requires energy (ATP molecules). Low thyroid hormone reduces ATP
  
• Delayed deep tendon reflexes (slow relaxation phase of the Achilles reflex)—Thyroid hormone controls gene transcription for calcium ATPase. When you hit the Achilles tendon and your foot goes down rapidly and then raises back slowly, it’s a sign of hypothyroidism or thyroid hormone resistance. This is due to lack of ATP molecules to provide the energy for the contractual filaments to separate and relax, hence you get a visibly slow relaxation phase of the Achilles reflex.
  
  Here again is a classic thyroid indication that does not correlate with high TSH values. Unfortunately, this test (which used to be an established gold standard in thyroid testing) is no longer used because endocrinologists assume high TSH values must be present for hypothyroidism, which is not the case—but lab testing, like drugs, is big business, brining in billions of dollars

Thyroid Disease and Fibromyalgia, and the Treatments that Work for Both

Interestingly, inadequate thyroid hormone regulation may be one of the primary underlying factors in many patients with fibromyalgia.
Dr. Lowe explains:

“I had prior training as a research psychologist and was able to pull forth that training and enlist physicians on the research team. It was a loose net research team until it eventually became a non-profit organization called the Fibromyalgia Research Foundation.
Seven or eight years ago, I gave a presentation at the Fibromyalgia Coalition International based in Kansas City… I got there late and heard none of the other presentations.
When I gave my presentation, people began saying, “Dr. Lowe, you’ve used the word “integrative metabolic therapies” for getting patients free from chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. It just so happens, every single one of the -- at that point, considered alternative doctors -- have said exactly the same things.”
Through their personal, clinical experiences they had come to the same conclusions we had. If they used metabolic integrative therapies, nutritional deficiencies, anti-inflammatory diet, exercise, getting off medications that impede metabolism, and possibly treating cortisol deficiency, possibly balancing sex hormones, and treating the patients with effective thyroid hormone therapy... They got the patients well.
I said the same thing they had said, but my experience was based on rigorous scientific testing. Their experience was based on intuition and the wisdom that comes from listening to patients and working with them.”

This is yet another potent testimony to the truthfulness of the theory that health is based on a few fundamental principles, and although you will typically address specific aspects of a disease, the bulk of the therapy is the same for ALL diseases:

• Eating a nutritious diet (a low-sugar, low-grain, mainly raw organic diet is optimally nutritious and anti-inflammatory)
  
• Exercising
  
• Normalizing hormones
  
• Avoiding medications (virtually all medications create further imbalances, hence the side effects and deterioration of health)

Creating health really isn’t rocket science. It’s just “returning to basics,” and although it may not be easy, it’s rather simple.

Logic and Deductive Reasoning in Medicine—A Novel Idea

Dr. Lowe’s research team came to the conclusion that the thyroid was involved with fibromyalgia through the use of a method called “deductively formulated theory,” which he calls the “ultimate logic of problem solving.” Unfortunately, this method is virtually never used in medicine, and it’s a rare scientist who truly understands it.
Dr. Lowe explains it as follows:

“[Y]ou take competitive theories or hypotheses about what causes something, then use the methods of mathematical physicists to show which hypothesis tops them all out.
Well, there simply is no competitor to inadequate thyroid hormone regulation that accounts for about 43 of the 46 subjectively verified findings in fibromyalgia -- reduced brain blood flow, inhibitory alpha-2 adrenergic receptors, platelets that cause constriction of arterials and cold fingers... The list goes on.
If anybody looks at the method of deductively formulated theory and compare the inane serotonin deficiency hypothesis, which has been thoroughly refuted, there are no competitive theories.
… Hippocrates wrote about people with these symptoms and said, if these people will get a reasonable amount of physical activity, stop eating the trash the aristocrats eat and start eating vegetables and fruits, they’ll recover. Nothing has really changed there.
What we learned about fibromyalgia patients is that one set of symptoms: chronic aching and pain that lasts for three months or longer, and abnormal tenderness with associated symptoms (there are 12 of them), are all classic hypothyroid symptoms. It’s just another of what we call a clinical phenotype…
[M]ost [fibromyalgia] patients are either hypothyroid or thyroid hormone resistant.”

Thyroid Hormone—The Missing Ingredient in Fibromyalgia Treatment

Dr. Lowe’s extensive experience with treating patients with both thyroid disease and fibromyalgia has led him to come to some startling conclusions. One, that thyroid dysfunction is a component of fibromyalgia, and second, that the conventional thyroid test is typically useless in making a diagnosis.
Instead, he recommends simply treating fibromyalgia with thyroid hormone until the symptoms improve.

“We give patients monitoring forms. One of those forms is the 20 most common symptoms of thyroid hormone over-stimulation,” he explains.
… [P]atients record their basal body temperature and their basal pulse rate. The pulse rate in most of these patients is too low for their levels of cardiovascular conditioning. It’s under-regulation of the thyroid. Some of them are bradycardic (less than 50-60 beats per minute).
If weight is an issue, they measure their weight after getting out of bed before consuming any liquid or solid, along with temperature and pulse rate. We have a lot of symptom severity scales where they estimate the intensity of their symptoms. They fill out this form at least three times a week.
Then, it’s easy for us to chart the data on line graphs. We can see, as the dosage increases, are the data points moving in the right direction? Is the temperature rising properly? Is the pulse rate coming up so that it’s more appropriate to that person’s level of cardiovascular conditioning?”

A one-line summary of Dr. Lowe’s research would be that thyroid hormone is the missing ingredient in the treatment of fibromyalgia that is nearly universally overlooked.