The most precious diamond in the world may be buried four miles deep. The primary lesion or cause may lie buried under a tonsillectomy, appendectomy, broken leg, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and three bouts of strep throat. In spite of the fight your body has made and the fact that it has survived, and is still sick, proves the initial cause is yet to be found and corrected. In the nineties, this would have been called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In the coming years, this will be called Syndrome X.

What goes with Fibromyalgia?

Commonly associated symptoms of Fibromyalgia include:

· Fatigue

· Irritable Bowel Syndrome

· Sleep disorders

· Chronic headaches

· Jaw pain

· Cognitive or memory impairment

· Muscle pain or morning stiffness

· Painful menstruation

· Numbness and tingling in the extremities

· Dizziness or light headedness

· Skin or chemical sensitivities

Pain - The pain of FMS has no boundaries. People describe the pain as deep muscular aching, throbbing, shooting, and stabbing. Intense burning may also be present. Quite often, the pain and stiffness are worse in the morning and you may hurt more in muscle groups that are used repetitively.

Fatigue - This symptom can be mild in some patients and yet incapacitating in others. The fatigue has been described as "brain fatigue" in which patients feel totally drained of energy. Many patients depict this situation by saying that they feel as though their arms and legs are tied to concrete blocks, and they have difficulty concentrating, e.g., brain fog.

Sleep disorder - Most FMS patients have an associated sleep disorder called the alpha-EEG anomaly. This condition was uncovered in a sleep lab with the aid of a machine which recorded the brain waves of patients during sleep. Researchers found that most FMS patients could fall asleep without much trouble, but their deep level (or stage 4) sleep was constantly interrupted by bursts of awake-like brain activity. Patients appeared to spend the night with one foot in sleep and the other one out of it.

Sleep lab tests may not be necessary to determine if you have disturbed sleep. If you wake up feeling as though you've just been run over by a Mack truck – what doctors refer to as unrefreshing sleep – it is reasonable for your physician to assume that you have a sleep disorder. Many FMS patients have been found to have other sleep disorders in addition to the alpha-EEG, such as sleep apnea (as well as the newly discovered form of interrupted breathing called upper airway resistance syndrome, or UARS), bruxism (teeth grinding), periodic limb movement during sleep (jerking of arms and legs), and restless legs syndrome (difficulty sitting still in the evenings).

Irritable Bowel Syndrome - Constipation, diarrhea, frequent abdominal pain, abdominal gas, and nausea represent symptoms frequently found in roughly 40 to 70% of FMS patients. Acid reflux or gastroesophogeal reflux disease (GERD) also occurs with the same high frequency.

Chronic headaches - Recurrent migraine or tension-type headaches are seen in about 70% of FMS patients and can pose a major problem in coping for this patient group.

Temporomandibular Joint Dysfunction Syndrome - This syndrome, sometimes referred to as TMJ or TMD, causes tremendous jaw-related face and head pain in one quarter of FMS patients. However, a 1997 published report indicated that close to 75% of FMS patients have a varying degree of jaw discomfort. Typically, the problems are related to the muscles and ligaments surrounding the jaw joint and not necessarily the joint itself.

Other common symptoms - Premenstrual syndrome and painful periods, chest pain, morning stiffness, cognitive or memory impairment, numbness and tingling sensations, muscle twitching, irritable bladder, the feeling of swollen extremities, skin sensitivities, dry eyes and mouth, dizziness, and impaired coordination can occur. Patients are often sensitive to odors, loud noises, bright lights, and sometimes even the medications that they are prescribed.

Aggravating factors - Changes in weather, cold or drafty environments, infections, allergies, hormonal fluctuations (premenstrual and menopausal states), stress, depression, anxiety and over-exertion may all contribute to symptom flare-ups.

The traditional healthcare system is focused on identifying or naming the condition. The name given to the set of symptoms will then establish the treatment. The treatment is focused on the diagnosis, not on the patient’s specific physiological expression. In short, our functional medicine approach is “physiology based” and the traditional healthcare model is “condition based”.

It is important to understand that the way the body works does not change to suit a current philosophy of a diseases cause and effect. Neurology, physiology and anatomy in the human body does not change. They have meaning and cannot be ignored or changed to suit a particular philosophy. By understanding the cause, you will understand the effect. Each rationalizes into a procedure that we hope will eliminate the cause of disease and alters the effect back to normal health. We do not hide our procedures under the ancient light shade of Latin. We feel that the functional medicine approach, through careful examination and analysis must be conclusive enough to prove pathology, and careful enough to prove the elimination of pathology. Pathology is simply aberrant physiology. We deal with aberrant physiology in functional medicine.

Getting well is a process of having the causes removed.

People adapt their behavior to meet the needs of their internal and external environments. The 18 tender points are the result of a pattern generated as a consequence of compensation from a sacroiliac slip separation. Patterns generated as part of the neural circuitry throughout the human body, are modulated to adapt to the body’s needs and surroundings to maintain homeostasis. The resultant distortion of the body impairs the mobility and motility of the organs and impairs circulation of the body fluids (cerebrospinal, blood and lymph). Dysbiosis (fermentation, putrefaction, sensitization and deficiency) occurs causing and increasing the inflammation in the body. Inflammation caused degradation of the connective tissue throughout the body. To compensate for the body’s poor connective tissue, adhesions form throughout the body to provide support while further impairing circulation. This will make you stiff and lose your flexibility.

This is truly a chicken and egg dilemma. The incremental insidious development of the various factors make it impossible to pinpoint an exact cause. Since no primary cause can identified healthcare providers look at Fibromyalgia from their specialties point of view. Their description of Fibromyalgia then become the story of the seven blind men describing an elephant, each describing their part according to what they feel, unable to realize the whole body.

Let us take the blindfolds off. In doing so, we can see the various contributing factors and understand how each is interrelated and connected. However, to do so there are some guidelines to understand. Sacro Occipital Technic has Working Laws used to understand the human body.

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