Zen Meditation for Fibromyalgia Pain

I have just read an abstract from the American Psychology Association entitled "Cortical thickness and pain sensitivity in zen meditators".

Why does this interest me? Because, since being diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and for many years prior to diagnosis, I've been searching for ways to rid myself of the pain that rules my life. I've been looking for, in particular, ways to reduce the amount of pain I live with on a daily basis. Yes, we can take a pill or eight, we can go through expensive phisiotherapy or other treatments with little or no lasting effectiveness.

What this article is suggesting is that by utilizing and "practicing" Zen Meditation, you can reduce the severity of the pain signals in your brain and raise your tolerence to pain so that long-term practice of meditation can effect the level of pain experienced.

The results of the study found that a group of 17 meditators compared to a group of 18 control subjects (non-meditators) had significantly reduced their pain sensitivity by practicing meditation daily.

Meditators were found to have thicker cortex in the dorsal anterior cingulate and bilaterally in secondary somatosensory cortex. Lower pain sensitivity was associated with thicker cortex in affective, pain-related brain regions. Results suggest that pain sensitivity is related to cortical thickness in those pain-related brain regions and the lower sensitivity observed in meditators could be the product of alterations to brain morphometry from long-term meditation practice.

Overall I have found this to be true, but one thing is clear, practicing meditation can take a short while to get the hang of and for chronic pain sufferers it should be used in conjunction with other types of energy healing modalities, of which I have found Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to much more effective on the time element as it can get to the root of emotional traumas easier and much faster, together with the fact that EFT is much faster to get the hang of and there are simply 1000's of free and low cost resources to help find the quickest route to emotional freedom.
I'm not saying that Fibromyalgia is all in your head (NO-WAY!), but I believe it can be triggered by emotional trauma and stress. Free Energy Healing is in my opinion, the best way to treat Fibromyalgia as long as you can stay focused on your goals and be consistant & congruent.




Article:
Cortical thickness and pain sensitivity in zen meditators.
Grant JA, Courtemanche J, Duerden EG, Duncan GH, Rainville P.

Département de physiologie, Université de Montréal Centre de recherche en science neurologiques, Montréal, QC, Canada. joshua.grant@umontreal.ca
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2010-01983-010

How Fibro Fog Clouds Thinking and How to Break Through It - New Solutions for Fibromyalgia - Health.com

Here is a very good article that I had the pleasure to read recently. Actually, the link was sent to me from my aunt Dolores - one of the few people in my life that actually try to understand what we go through daily. Cheers!
How Fibro Fog Clouds Thinking and How to Break Through It - New Solutions for Fibromyalgia - Health.com

A Letter from Fibromyalgia

I have recently joined a forum with others who live with Fibromyalgia and found this letter posted there. This letter will tell all those who don't know, the daily problems we are up against and how we feel, at least on many a day.
It is not meant to be a whiny excuse for people to feel sorry for us! We don't want that, just a little belief would be nice.

A LETTER FROM FIBROMYALGIA

Dear Miserable Human Being,

Hi, my name is Fibromyalgia, and I'm an invisible chronic illness. I am now ‘velcroed’ to you for life. Others around you can't see me or hear me, but YOUR body feels me. I can attack you anywhere and anyway I please. I can cause severe pain, or if I am in a good mood, I can just cause you to ache all over.
Remember when you and Energy ran around together and had fun? I took Energy from you and gave you Exhaustion. Just try to have fun now! I also took Good Sleep from you and in its place gave you Fibro Fog (a.k.a.)Brain Fog.
I can make you tremble internally or make you feel cold or hot when everyone else feels normal. Oh yeah, I can make you feel anxious or depressed, too. If you have something planned, or are looking forward to a great day, I can take that away too. You didn't ask for me. I chose you for various reasons: that virus you had that you never quite recovered from, or that car accident, or childbirth, the death of a loved one, or maybe it was those years of abuse and trauma.

Well, anyway, I'm here to stay! I hear you're going to see a doctor who can get rid of me. I'm ‘ROFL’ (rolling on the floor laughing)! Just try! You will have to go to many, many doctors until you find one who can help you effectively. In fact, you'll see many doctors who tell you ‘it’s all in your head’ (or some version of that). If you do find a doctor willing to treat this ‘non-disease’, you will be put on pain pills, sleeping pills, and energy pills. You will be told you are suffering from anxiety or depression, given a TENS unit, told if you just sleep and exercise properly, I will go away. You'll be told to think positively, poked, prodded, and most of all, you will not be taken seriously when you cry to the doctor how debilitating life is for you every single day!

Your family, friends, and coworkers will all listen to you until they just get tired of hearing about how I make you feel, and that I'm a debilitating disease. Some of them will say things like "Oh, you're just having a bad day", or "Well, remember, you cant expect to do the things you used to do 20 years ago," not hearing that you said "20 DAYS ago"! Some will just start talking behind your back, while you slowly feel that you are losing your dignity, trying to make them understand, especially when you are in the middle of a conversation with a ‘normal’ person, and can't remember what you were going to say next!

In closing, you've probably figured out that the ONLY place you will get any real support and understanding in dealing with me is with Other People With Fibromyalgia! They are the only ones that will understand your complaints of unrelenting pain, insomnia, fibro fog, the inability to perform the everyday tasks that ‘normal people’ take for granted.
Remember, I'm stuck to you like Velcro – and I expect we'll be together for the rest of your life.

Have a nice day!! (ROFL),

Fibromyalgia

Author Unknown;

If you are the author and claim copyright to this writing please contact me with your claim
and I will attribute this work to you or remove it if required.

Super Foods to make a difference!

I have found a great site for those of us living in the UK.
It is called Detox Your World and everything they sell is only sold to enhance your well-being.
Now, you may be suffering from Fibromyalgia or Chronic Pain or may know and look after someone that does then check them out.
One of the best things I've found out about dealing with Fibromyalgia/Chronic pain is that if you begin to clean your body from the inside, it does make a difference to how I feel on a daily basis!
That's where Detox Your World come in, as you may know, not everything works for everyone the same. At least here you can find many, many different ways to heal yourself and let's face it your doctor does not have all the answers!
I do not have an affiliation with this company, but I would if one was offered, it is that good! So, do your own investigation with them and you will be happily surprised.

Questions and Answers About Fibromyalgia

Today is one of those days, more like a day that can be marked as getting nothing done. So the one thing I can do is sit here at the PC and search for more answers to this enigma which is Fibromyalgia, so I found this in my travels and thought you might be interested to find there are people actively searching for answers to our invisible problem.
I will keep functioning! I won't be forced into living a life of "I can't" or "I better not", I am a fighter and I'm fighting MAD!
That said, you might find this website helpful, I did.

Parkinson's Drug Eases Fibromyalgia Pain - MedicineNet.com Medical References for Patients

There is a really good report, which I am going to ask my doctor about. We'll see if he knows about this and his opinions.

Monday Blues

Yes, it's Monday again and for some reason my body says AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
I just found out about something that gives me a good feeling though, it's called Melatonin and sounds like it would be worth a try.
What is you ask? Well from the website where I found the information, it says that it is a hormone (N-acetyl-5 methoxytryptamine) which is produced by the pineal gland during the night, stimulated by darkness but also inhibited by light.
The main focus of using this hormone is on sleep disturbances, S.A.D., depressive disorders, cancer therapy and neuroendocrine disorder, so fibromyalgia does fit in with these problems.

In fact, a pilot study was conducted at the University of Buenos Aries, Argentina on fibromyalgia patients and was found to have a significant effect for;

1. Sleep disturbance
2. Fatigue
3. Pain symptoms

during the 4-week study 19 of the 21 fibromyalgia patients that took part were found to have reported at day 30 a significant improvement in the tender point count and severity of pain at selected points as well as improved sleep! They were given 3 mg at bedtime.

I don't know about you, but this sounds like good news. They did state that double-blind placebo controlled studies are needed. I am going to give it a try!

The best part of this whole thing is no adverse effects were reported. One thing is that if you take Prozac (flouxetine), it should not be taken at the same time as they don't mix and can counteract each other.

You can find the article here.