Established Fibromyalgia Treatments Focus On Masking Symptoms Rather Than Healing

AUSTIN, Texas - Aug. 11, 2015 - PRLog -- If you or someone you know is diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, their doctor will likely prescribe one or more of the established drugs for the treatment of Fibromyalgia. Lyrica®, Cymbalta® and Savella are some of the most common ones.

Lyrica® and Cymbalta® have been proven to decrease pain and some of the symptoms of Fibromyalgia. This type of treatment, to ease the pain, may certainly be needed. However, before you consider one or more of these medications as your sole treatment plan, there is more you really should know about it.

FIRST: The Side Effects

While these medications do relieve some of the symptoms, it does come at a cost in other side effects. These side effects vary from person to person, but pretty much everyone has some.

There is a much longer list of all side effects, including those that are “rare”, “very rare” or “occasional”. But just those listed as the “more common” side-effects include: “accidental injury, bloating or swelling of the face, arms, hands, lower legs, or feet, blurred vision, burning, tingling, numbness or pain in the hands, arms, feet, or legs, change in walking and balance, clumsiness, confusion, delusions, dementia, difficulty having a bowel movement, difficulty with speaking, double vision, dry mouth, fever, headache, hoarseness, increased appetite, lack of coordination, loss of memory, lower back or side pain, painful or difficult urination, problems with memory, rapid weight gain, seeing double, sensation of pins and needles, shakiness and unsteady walk, sleepiness or unusual drowsiness, stabbing pain, swelling, tingling of the hands or feet, trembling, or other problems with muscle control or coordination, unusual weight gain”.

SECOND: Length Of Time You’ll Take These Medications

Short answer: For the rest of your life, with likely increasing dosages as efficacy wanes over time, common for many drugs.

Several years ago a study conducted by the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research found that there was a definite need to limit the use of prescription medications for treating Fibromyalgia and that these medications, as a sole form of “treatment”, were not making people well.

In this study, thirty-nine patients with Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) were interviewed about their symptoms at the very beginning of the study. Twenty-nine of those same patients were interviewed again 10 years later. Of these 29 (median age of 55 at second interview), all had persistence of the same FMS symptoms. The percentages of patients with pain or stiffness, sleep difficulty and/or moderate to severe fatigue were pretty much the same as on the initial testing 10 years prior.  And 79% of these patients were still taking medications to control their symptoms 10 years later.

However we can conclude that these drugs don’t fix anything, they only mask. And masking the symptoms may be needed for a while, but masking as the only treatment simply means that you are sentenced to a lifetime of pain and trauma with the added side effects of long-term use of these drugs.

THIRD: How Many People Does This Affect?

Current estimates of those suffering from Fibromyalgia range from over 5 million to upwards of 15 million people in the U.S. alone.

Fibromyalgia is big business with revenue from Fibromyalgia drugs now ranking in the billions.

According to a new market research report released by Global Data, “Driven by sales of Lyrica, Cymbalta/Xeristar and Savella, the Fibromyalgia drug market will experience 4.2 percent annual growth through 2018.”  Currently a 1.4 billion dollar per year market, it is estimated to increase to 1.8 billion dollars by 2018.

That’s a LOT of people who are suffering that are following a “treatment” that is riddled with serious side effects and which will have to be taken for their entire lifetime in ever increasing quantities.

FOURTH: Is It True That Fibromyalgia Comes From Overactive Nerves?

The ads for Lyrica® now say, “Fibromyalgia is thought to be the result of overactive nerves.”

First of all, just look at how this is carefully worded - "thought to be the result of". Well, "thought to be" means exactly what it says – thought, not fact, not scientifically proven. It actually means that someone or several someones think that this is so.

It also begs the question what causes these "overactive nerves"?  No one knows that either.

The truth is that Fibromyalgia is still referred to as a syndrome because there is no known cause and this is still the case. (An illness is referred to as a syndrome [rather than a disease] if there is no known cause).

SO WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?

One of the smartest things you can do is to have an advocate who has battled Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue or other applicable chronic illnesses and has been through it all already. This will likely be someone who has suffered their own pain and fatigue and who has done extensive research and their own trials.

They would have traveled thousands of miles to seek out top-of-the-line clinics to see highly reviewed top doctors and specialists that have worked with these chronic illnesses for years. They would have followed numerous treatment protocols, read pretty much every book on the subject and tried every imaginable supplement as well as many different drugs that were purported to help. Well, there is a such an advocate who has done exactly that.

Among the vast amounts of over-hyped treatments and protocols, she was able to find little gems and pearls of wisdom that actually were incredibly helpful. As a result, she says has been able to regain her health and get her life back.

Diagnosed with Fibromyalgia over 15 years ago at the Mayo Clinic, she has been carefully documenting everything that she’s found to be most helpful in actually recovering her health throughout vast tomes of research and multitudes of trials.

To that end she has put all of this information into a simple and straightforward book that has just now been made available on Amazon as a Kindle e-book.

The book is entitled: Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue and Chronic Illness; Navigating through the confusion and deception, isolating the truly effective, science-based treatments to get the real solutions to recover your health and take back your life!, by Debbie Baumgarten.  Here’s a link to it: http://www.amazon.com/Fibromyalgia-Navigating-confusion-s...

There is also information available on her website along with a blog to continue to warn, alert and advise on new information as it becomes available. The website is: www.FibromyalgiaFree.org