Dr. Robert Boydston, Fibromyalgia Fresno Doctor, elaborates:
There are many proposed mechanisms for the pain associated with fibromyalgia. Patients with fibromyalgia have pain all over their body, much like a flu that just never goes away. Any touch is perceived as a very painful stimulus. The same touch that would just feel like, well ... a "touch", can be excruciating.
It is customary to greet people with a handshake, but in my practice I am very mindful not to shake hands very firmly because I don't want to create extra pain for my patients. They are there for me to assist in ending their pain and I understand the pain and struggle they go through, treating primarily fibromyalgia patients at the Boydston Institute.
A term that you may encounter as you read about fibromyalgia is hyperalgesia. The -hyper means increased and -algesia means sense of pain, so that hyperalgesia simply means increased sensitivity to pain. Currently all research points to a central nervous system mechanism for this pain sense. Naturally this seems obvious. Fibromyalgia patients do not have muscle changes when researchers studied, through muscle biopsy, the painful ternder points in fibromyalgia muscles. Fibromyalgia pain is also not related to pain or tissue damage. So the only structure that can account for this increased level of pain is a problem with the brain.
Researchers have actually shown that fibromyalgia patients have decreases in grey matter (brain cells). This is a scary thing for those with fibromyalgia because they have been previously led to believe that fibromyalgia is self limiting and non-progressive. These brain studies show the opposite is true, with grey matter losses continuing as time goes by.
So now researchers and drug companies acknowledge that fibromyalgia has a brain mechanism so they want to design drugs that start manipulating neurotransmitters, and different brain functions. Clearly there is going to be side effects, long term and short term, whenever you start to chemically alter the brain. Many patients may not discover the extent of side effects until they become part of a class action lawsuit 10 years down the road when the true long term side effects of today's latest drugs begin to surface.
So what impacts brain function? A lot of things. Hormone imbalances, blood sugar disturbances, oxygen imbalances, anemia's, dysbiosis, autoimmune reactions, and many more. It is not likely that a drug is going to provide an actual solution. Band aid .... maybe. Fix, cure, solution ... certainly not. There is just too many factors. Patients really need a doctor willing to treat them like a whole person, and take a comprehensive approach with the goal of restored function. At the Boydston Institute, that is exactly the approach we take.
I have the pleasure of consulting with fibromyalgia patients from all over the world. If you would like to learn more about his comprehensive, all natural approach, you can get a complementary copy of his special report titled: "Fibromyalgia: New Research and Treatment Options".
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