Your Life-Your Choice ISSN 1488-0253 May, 2001 Issue 73 Letter From the Editor Affecting approximately 3.7 million people in the United States over age 18 is a complex, chronic condition called Fibromyalgia. The pain of Fibromyalgia is typically a scattered aching or burning feeling from "head-to-toe". In fact, my sister describes it as “feeling like wet cement”. The amount of pain will vary from day to day and from one individual to another. Although both genders and all ages can acquire FMS, the highest number of instances are among older women. Fibromyalgia is difficult to diagnose and treat because there are a number of symptoms associated with FMS (Fibromyalgia Syndrome), and they are not necessarily consistent among all patients. Stiffness is very common, especially after long periods of being in the same position, ie. sitting, standing, or sleeping. Weak muscles are common and can also cause dizziness or dysequilibrium. Gastrointestinal problems are also commonplace and may include abdominal pain, and bloating or additional conditions like IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). Some patients also have difficulty swallowing food. Fibromyalgia patients sometimes experience frequent migraines and may also suffer from TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint), which also produces also jaw and facial pain. The hands and feet are often suseptible to numbness or tingling. Another condition known as "Raynaud's Phenomenon" can also be prevalent in those suffering from FMS. This is a sensitivity to the environmental temperature; some may feel unusually cold or unusually warm compared to others in the same environment. Dry, itchy, or blotchy skin are among the skin problems that may be experienced. Dry eyes and mouth are other inconveniences. Some people experience chest pain and may be inflicted with additional conditions involving the heart and/or muscles in that area. All chest pains should be directed immediately to your local health care provider. Increased sensitivity to light, noise, odors, and weather conditions can deeply affect Fibromyalgia victims. In fact it is common to have allergic-like reactions to many substances, including medications. There are 18 tender points on the body that are assessed to determine a fibromyalgia diagnosis. There are so many varying symptoms that are also reflective of several other diseases that it is necessary to do a thorough analysis before coming to a definite conclusion. An x-ray accompanied by a complete medical history and physical examination by a qualified physician are essential elements in a correct diagnosis. Just as the indications of Fibromyalgia differ from one patient to another, the treatments will have to be unique in each case. People respond differently to the similar therapies and medications. From a "natural remedy" perspective, there are numerous options available. Acupuncture has proven to be quite successful in addressing the pain from musculoskeletal conditions as well as other Fibromyalgia symptoms. Massage Therapy, Chiropractic, Osteopathy, and Craniosacral Therapy are gentle, non-invasive, hands-on treatments that seemingly enhance the bodies self-healing abilities. Gentle stretching helps to relieve muscle tension and spasms. This is so beneficial that there have been several videotapes specifically designed for Fibromyalgia patients. Low-impact aerobic exercise will prevent muscle deterioration. Walking, using treadmills and exercise equipment are instrumental in maintaining muscle tone. It may be necessary to incorporate the guidance and/or assistance of a professional like a physical therapist or a chiropractor throughout this regime. A physical therapist can also provide Posture Training. This is often required to re-educate muscles and/or joints that have become misaligned. A qualified therapist trained in the Alexander Technique can provide Movement Training so you can train your body to move effectively while reducing pain. The pain, fatigue, and frustration that accompanies Fibromyalgia victims creates a significant amount of stress both emotionally and physically. Stress management programs should be an important aspect of your health program. Biofeedback, Meditation, Breathing Exercises, Progressive Relaxation, Guided Imagery, all are treatments that are helpful in reducing stress. Following a carefully planned nutritional program will be helpful in your quest for wellness. This regime will likely include antioxidants and vitamin supplementation as well as wise food choices. Careful elimination of certain foods may be necessary. For this aspect to be successful, you will need to work very closely with a nutritionist who is comfortable working with FMS patients. The uniqueness of this health issue is further demonstrated in that no one nutritional plan will be successful for all Fibromyalgia patients. Until next time... Stay well. Sources: National Fibromyalgia Partnership, Inc http://www.fmpartnership.org/FMPartnership.htm The International Alliance of Educators (IAHE) http://iahe.com Brigitte Synesael Editor of Your Life-Your Choice Make it your business to be informed! No one cares more about you than YOU. http://www.Life-Choices.com =========================================== ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE: 1. The Heart of Advocating for the Hospital Patient's Highest Good 2. Tea Tips - When Did We Start Drinking Tea? 3. Living Longer, and stronger *** Please rate this Ezine at the Cumuli Ezine Finder. http://www.cumuli.com/ezines/ra20413.rate =========================================== Section 1 The Heart of Advocating for the Hospital Patient's Highest Good by Laurel Duran, CMT bluecord@amigo.net http://www2.amigo.net/bluecord It is a widely known fact that patients who have the shortest hospital stays and recovery periods are those who actively express what they want or don't want while they are in the hospital. These patients are often considered to be “troublemakers” by hospital caregivers because their unique needs do not fit into the hospital’s currently ordered system, and extra effort would be required of the staff to meet these special needs. It is also a known fact that the patients with the longest hospital stays and recovery periods are those who passively accept whatever care they do or do NOT receive while in the hospital. These patients are often considered to be “good patients” by hospital caregivers because they do not present a challenge to the hospital’s currently ordered system, and their needs require no extra staff effort. Twenty years ago most hospital patients fit into the second group of passive recipients. Not so today. Dissatisfied hospital patients are much more likely to act on their discontent via medical malpractice suits. By default rather than compassionate choice, hospitals are increasingly expected to pay attention to the wants and soft-touch needs of the patients as voiced by patients’ families and friends. Out of this radically different “patients come first” priority, the role of PATIENT ADVOCATE has blossomed. After my car crash and resultant broken neck and quadriplegia, because I was in a weakened state, my family and closest friends acted as my advocates while I was hospitalized. Out of their love for me, they took turns being at my bedside where they consulted with AND STRONGLY ADVISED doctors, nurses and other caregivers on my behalf, using all the diplomatic tenacity they could muster. I was very fortunate that my advocates put my needs first and willingly risked their personal popularity with hospital staff. This required them to speak up clearly at times when my care began to fall from the staff’s priority list. My advocates procured the nourishing foods I wanted and needed to rebuild my spinal cord, rather than accepting the heavily processed meals standardly given to patients. They gave me pain-reducing bodywork and supported me unconditionally when hospital staff either ignored me or insisted I ingest drugs to suppress my intense pain. And the most important benefit my advocates brought to my miraculous healing process was the fact they I KNEW I had their support backing me up, and that I was not alone in facing my very difficult but completely self-driven healing process. As medical staff regularly told me that my quadriplegia was incurable and permanent, my advocates encouraged me to believe that I WOULD walk again because that is what I believed! And so I did. I believe that I wouldn’t have achieved such positive self-healing results without the unconditional and unselfish support of my own Patient Advocates. Facing serious illness and injury is truly a family affair, a community affair. If any of us must embark on healing from serious illness or injury, we must rely on those family members, friends or even professional consultants who are willing to unconditionally advocate for our best interests. The essentials that any Patient Advocate must focus on are based on answering one simple question: “What does the patient need to receive in order to maximize her healing potential?” Each patient naturally has very specific needs, some of which are: eating nourishing and enjoyable food; receiving condition-specific nutritional supplements; receiving relaxation and pain reduction therapy; receiving meditation and visualization therapy; receiving pleasure experiences such as bodywork, music, entertainment and spiritual enrichment, all of which lie outside the scope of surgery and drugs; and receiving ongoing emotional, psychological and spiritual support that is hopeful, positive, and completely honoring of the patient’s constantly changing needs. The best Patient Advocates will offer their patients the freedom to utilize these options or not. The best Patient Advocates want what the patient herself wants. When the patient can act as her own Advocate, all the better. But when that is not possible, making full use of Patient Advocates is an essential key to healing success. ----- Read about Laurel Duran on our Meet the Team page; http://www.Life-Choices.com/team.html ********************************************* Our sponsors make this newsletter FREE to subscribers. Please take a moment to visit them. ********************************************* Stop snoring with Snoreless An all-natural product designed to make you stop snoring!. Top Reasons to Try Snoreless. Ø Gentle throat mist provides a full night of quiet sleep. Ø Completely safe to use each and every night! Ø It's all natural with no side effects. Ø Eliminates 97% of the noise associated with snoring. Ø Inexpensive. (pennies per night) Ø Peppermint flavor also helps alleviate 'morning breath'. Ø One bottle is several months supply. Ø Great results for 9 out of 10 snorers. Ø 100% Money Back Guarantee! Stop snoring with Snoreless! 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From then onwards the world loved tea and even had fights over it, including the "Boston Tea Party" when it was dumped into the harbour to protest English taxes on it. Ice tea was first made in 1904, during a heat wave in St. Louis. The first tea bags were made by New Yorkist William Sullivan, in 1908. So drink the wonderful varieties that are to be had, for your health, it makes you feel good, as they say in my native England.......'ave a cuppa!!! --- http://www.life-choices.com/cj/tea.html ***************************************** Our sponsors make this newsletter FREE to subscribers. Please take a moment to visit them. ***************************************** PROVEN Spiritual Healing System Learn how to take control of your body and protect yourself from sickness. This spiritual healing system will show you how spiritual healing works, how to heal yourself and others, and find more meaning and purpose in your life. Go to http://www.spirituality-4-all.com for more details. *************************************** The NutriCounter can help you to lose weight quickly, moderately, or slowly and be able to stay with it literally forever. You will look great, feel great, and be healthier than ever! And you will still be eating the foods you love! You WILL get the results you are looking for. Guaranteed or your money back - no questions asked. http://life-choices.com/cj/nutricounter.html *************************************** Section 3 Living Longer, and stronger By Dr. James Kojian M.D. kojian@earthlink.net As a longevity specialist, I invite you to improve your way of thinking regarding your own health. Because of certain advances in medicine, particularly in the fields of prevention and anti-aging medicine, there is now enough documented medical proof to start thinking about preventing many illnesses, reversing many diseases, and pushing the life span envelope more and more. This may require a total paradigm shift for most people and their physicians. Just as communication, computers, building safety, car safety, and everything else has improved in the last thirty years, so has our ability to prevent and treat many illnesses; thus allowing us to all live longer and stronger. The key to this coveted prize of living longer and stronger is the knowledge to do so. As it is, the United States spends the most per capita on health care and yet ! is ranked in the bottom 25 percentile of other industrialized countries of the world, according to a recent study done by Johns Hopkins University. So we are spending the most, and the vast majority of the countries are still living longer and healthier than we are, and our ranking has been getting worse every year. This is more than just a statistic. This study represents millions of hard working men and women who pay the highest health care premiums in the world, only to succumb to illness and death faster and earlier than most people in the industrialized world. This tragedy is played out everyday in this country. A hardworking mother or father, who is getting ready to finally retire, finds out that he or she has some type of major disease, because their doctor had never educated them on preventive medicine. So instead of taking trips around the country, most Americans over the age of 65 take trips to the hospital and pharmacies to ameliorate their preventable illnesses. Moreover, many medical treatments can be dangerous: a recent study found open heart surgery to be deleterious to ones short and long term mental performance, many patients who break their hip die of pneumonia in the hospital, many medication errors are made in the hospital, etc. With this in mind, an ounce of prevention is better than even one and a half ounces of treatment. Preventive medicine is extremely effective because it combats the villain of entropy. Entropy is the root of all evil, and you thought money was. Entropy is a force in nature that pushes for disorganization, for randomness, for the lowest possible energy state. Entropy is why we age, as it wants your organized body to dissolve, break apart and for your cells to become more random. Entropy is why you have to clean your room, comb your hair, and brush your teeth. Entropy is the cause of all the Hollywood and nonHollywood marriage breakups. Since a family is the union of many people, this goes against the basic concept of entropy, as it loves disunion. This force of nature slowly picks apart this union and if you don’t counter it on a regular basis, entropy wins. So if the bad news is entropy, is there any good news? Is there a hero to this tragic story? Actually there is a hero- the turtle. Not the ninja turtles, but just your everyday turtle. Any turtle will do, but for the sake of this article we will use the turtle in the famous Esops fable “The Turtle and The Hare”. By now, you should be asking what does a turtle have to do with combating entropy? Well, as you remember the story, the hare, a wily rabbit, challenged the turtle to a race. As they were racing, the turtle just put his head down and SLOWLY, CONSISTENTLY, METHODICALLY, ran his race, while the rabbit thinking he would easily win, went off on did his silly rabbit things, only to return to the race to find out that the turtle had already crossed the finished line and won. There are no short cuts in life. The prize of good health, of a good marriage, of a good life goes to the SLOW, CONSIST ANT, METHODICAL turtelesque individual. This type of person ALWAYS WINS. This is how we combat aging and entropy: slowly, daily, consistently and methodically. We fight aging using the principles of longevity, anti-aging and preventive medicine. Doesn’t sound too exciting or glamorous? Well, when you are 70 and have enjoyed being in great shape physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially and are ready to party for the next twenty years, traveling the world and living it up, while most of your friends are not, then you will see the power of the turtle. You say," wow, my doctor never told me stuff like this. He just says, ' Here take this pill '". I suggest you go buy your doc! tor a pet turtle. If you are already 65 or over, there are ways to even REVERSE many chronic illnesses? How? You guessed it, slowly, consistently and methodically. We have the scientific evidence now to be able to address these issues methodically, and I will in these series of columns. We will learn how to slowly and consistently battle aging, disease, obesity, wrinkles, hair loss (so I am a little vain, I admit it) and much more. If your not careful, you may even have some fun. I know I am. Your first step in this race is to try to drink at least one to two cups of green tea a day. You may replace your morning coffee with green tea. Green tea is one of the most powerful anti-oxidants in the world. It is a little bitter, so the only company I have found that makes a good tasting green tea is The Tea of Republic. They have very good tasting green teas flavored with all kind of spices. They have a web site, and are sold only in health food stores. Cheers. ----- Dr. Kojian M.D. is a board certified primary care physician with an extensive background in herbs, vitamins and natural health supplements. He is also a member of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. http://www.thenaturalshopper.com //////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Disclaimer All material appearing in this newsletter is provided for educational purposes only. It is provided with the understanding that authors and contributors are not offering medical advice or services. We strongly encourage you to consult with your own physician regarding any recommendations with respect to your own medical condition. Advertisement in the Your Life- Your Choice newsletter does not indicate endorsement on our part. 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