In the first part of this arti­cle, I began to sum­ma­rize some of the main points of agree­ment about fibromyal­gia that are emerg­ing as a sci­en­tific con­sen­sus.  You can catch up with the first part of the arti­cle here.

Here are some fur­ther impor­tant points about fibromyalgia:

1. Another aspect of fibromyal­gia is “dysau­tono­mia”.  That means your auto­nomic ner­vous sys­tem is off balance.
2. The “auto­nomic nerve sys­tem” refers to the out­go­ing nerve sig­nals that con­trol so-called “auto­matic” func­tions – such as diges­tion, the cal­iber of blood ves­sels, heart rate – basi­cally, all inter­nal processes.
3. The auto­nomic ner­vous sys­tem has two basic sub-components that we call the sym­pa­thetic and parasym­pa­thetic sys­tems.  They coun­ter­bal­ance each other to con­trol bod­ily action.
4. The sym­pa­thetic sys­tem revs us up in the face of a threat or to chase down that ante­lope we’ve just spot­ted across the savan­nah.  When the sym­pa­thetic sys­tem is at a peak, more blood is sent to the mus­cles and less to the diges­tive tract, for instance.
5. In con­trast, the parasym­pa­thetic sys­tem enhances our abil­ity to digest food, rebuild our tis­sues, and heal from an injury.
6. In our mod­ern age, doc­tors take it for granted that most patients will have too much sym­pa­thetic acti­va­tion.  A physi­cian is almost never wrong in advis­ing a patient to med­i­tate, prac­tice relaxed breath­ing, chew food more slowly, lis­ten to relax­ing music, etc. – activ­i­ties that enhance parasym­pa­thetic tone and calm down our fight or flight reactions.
7. The typ­i­cal fibromyal­gia suf­ferer is an even more extreme exam­ple of auto­nomic imbal­ance.  Your sym­pa­thetic sys­tem is fly­ing high and your parasym­pa­thet­ics are overwhelmed.
8. There’s a new gen­er­a­tion of drugs out there for fibromyal­gia.  They’re not pain reliev­ers like aspirin or ibupro­fen – those drugs tar­get the periph­eral pain sig­nals com­ing into the brain from the rest of the body.  The newer fibromyal­gia drugs are cen­trally act­ing – they tar­get the way the brain processes pain.
9. The best treat­ment for fibromyal­gia is highly cus­tomized and takes into account the spe­cific symp­toms you’re expe­ri­enc­ing and, impor­tantly, the psy­choso­cial dimen­sions of your situation.

Based on this sci­en­tific knowl­edge and my many years’ expe­ri­ence treat­ing patients with chronic pain, I’ve sum­ma­rized key treat­ment rec­om­men­da­tions.  I’ll cover them in Part 3 of this article.

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Deepen Your Body of Knowledge

Fibromyal­gia and Chronic Pain, Part 1

Fibromyal­gia and Chronic Pain, Part 3

Dr. Lavine’s Detox Diet 2013

Neu­ro­Tac­tile Therapy