New ways to fight pain of fibromyalgia

By Jennifer A. Reese

May 3, 2005 | Faith Ryan wakes up at 6 a.m. Saturday to make her breakfast: four tablespoons of Epsom salt and three cups of lukewarm water. She waits. Half an hour later, she heads for the bathroom. She finds seven crystal stones in the toilet bowl. An hour later, 17 more stones.

Nancy Williams, a journalism teacher at USU makes her breakfast by adding 10 times the recommended amount of MSM, a dietary supplement, to her juice and drinks it down, contorting her face because of its sour taste.

Ryan doesn't know what's wrong with her. When she first went to her internist, a doctor who studies the body's internal organs and systems, Ryan explained her symptoms. She could feel a pain directly below her rib cage, felt a bloating the size of a grapefruit on the right side of her stomach, she was weak and she had frequent headaches and joint aches. Her doctor did some tests, but could find nothing wrong with her, but prescribed some medicines to ease the pain.

Williams had trouble sleeping, her body was always in pain, her muscles sore, she had little energy and she suffered from emotional stress. She started taking Ibuprofen to ease her pain.

"I feel my body is 110 years old, my joints hurt and I have muscle pain in my legs," Williams said.

Both Ryan and Williams suffer from symptoms of a disorder called fibromyalgia.

The Yahoo health Web site describes fibromyalgia as "a common condition characterized by widespread pain in joints, muscles, tendons, and other soft tissues. Some other problems commonly linked with fibromyalgia include fatigue, morning stiffness, sleep problems, headaches, numbness in hands and feet, depression and anxiety."

According to the National Fibromyalgia Association, more than 10 million people suffer from fibromyalgia and 5 percent of the world suffers from the disorder.

Ryan began suffering from all the side effects of the drugs she took.

She began to get nauseous, her eyesight went blurry and her body would become extremely shaky. Ryan thought she'd rather be shaky, nauseous and have blurry vision than feel the pain of the disorder. Then one of her friends suggested she try alternative medicine.

Williams had been taking up to 800 milligrams of Ibuprofen every day for over five years. When she found that the side effects of that drug included heart attacks and stomach bleeding, she wanted to change her way of relieving the pain.

Nancy said, "I was worried about it, I was looking for ways to cut my Ibuprofen."

She was afraid that she might begin to suffer from those effects, so she looked into alternative medicine. Williams said with the MSM supplement, the only side effect is gas, and that effect is rare.

Williams was explaining her symptoms and conditions to her friend who is an English professor in North Carolina when her friend recommended the MSM supplement. William's friend gave her the Web site and Williams looked it up. Williams found a lot of her information on the official MSM Web site at www.msm.com.

"I was desperate, nothing helped," Williams said. "If I take MSM, I'm actually able to walk again."

Ryan's neighbor recommended a type of doctor who would be able to sense what was wrong with her, a kinesiologist. When another of Ryan's friends found out doctors didn't know what was wrong with her, she suggested going to an iridologist, a person who studies eyes and the connection eyes have with the body's function. Ryan decided to take her friends up on the offers. She went to each of the doctors and told them of the symptoms she had. The iridologist looked deep in her eyes and told her that she should take some herbs that would help with the problem that was in the liver. The iridologist gave Ryan a list of herbs to take that would help.

Ryan also went to an acupuncturist, a small Japanese man who spoke broken English. He came out into the room, rubbed his hands together and said, "I fix you." He tried, and the problem went away temporarily, but the appointment was expensive and Ryan did not want to pay the expensive fee regularly to get rid of the pain. She wanted something she could do at home and something that she could afford.

Ryan said more people are looking toward alternative medicine because it seems to be getting rid of the problem better than traditional medicine does.

According to the Wisconsin State Journal, "As some patients turn away from drugs, researchers are trying to figure out what alternative treatments can do and who they will work for. Practitioners say they may not always know why these treatments work, but they say that good diet, exercise, herbs, acupuncture or massage probably can't hurt."

Ryan believes that the problem comes from her liver. When the liver is clogged with gallstones, small rock like deposits in the liver and intestine, it is unable to function at its highest potential, leaving the body without full function as well.

Ryan and her husband decided to search the Internet. They knew it was risky, but she was in pain and was willing to try anything that might help get rid of the problem. There is where she found Dr. Andreas Moritz and his book that "seemed to know everything about me."

She ordered it and began learning that something was most likely wrong with her liver. The book described how gallstones can be a cause of many things and that they actually start in the liver. These stones in the liver disrupt the body's potential to fully function. Moritz had described a plan to rid the body of these stones, a flushing method. Unlike Ryan, Williams believes that alternative medicine cannot cure the disorder or problem, but it has been helping Nancy for years. However like Ryan, Williams was in need of something that could help get rid of the pain.

Williams disagrees, "There are conditions you have to live with, pain is one of them."

Williams uses alternative medicine, but instead of following the detoxing method like Ryan, she uses the natural supplements to fight her pain. Williams uses a natural remedy called MSM, which is a sulfur-based product and an MSM is glucosamine in its natural state, and is used to help relieve pain of arthritis.

Ryan's process is a bit different, she began the flushing process on the one year "anniversary" of the first day she felt sick. Ryan said it is to be done every three weeks until all the stones leave the body. She has been flushing for six months. Ryan said it can take up to 50 flushes before the body is completely clean of stones.

"Today I'm yellow," she said. Her skin was the color of margarine.

She begins at 6 p.m. by drinking only the Epsom salt solution. She drinks it again at 8 p.m. She is not allowed to eat anything except fruit, plain oatmeal and plain rice. At 10 p.m. she has the olive oil and grapefruit mixture and goes straight to bed. She wakes up at 6 a.m. the next morning and takes another drink of the Epsom salt mixture, then again at 8 a.m. Then, her body begins to flush out the stones.

There are other ways people have dealt with fibromyalgia using alternative medicine. The Journal described different methods of how people use alternative medicine to ease the pain of the disorder. Acupuncture is becoming popular too.

"Now, that I am getting this much relief from acupuncture, I'm going to talk to my doctor about tapering off the Celebrex," Peck told the Journal.

The form of acupuncture described in the Journal consists of 20 minutes electrical stimulations. Then, needles are inserted into the body, then smaller needles, then the process is over. According to the Journal, doctors think acupuncture is effective because it sends signals that increase blood flow and lymphatic drainage.

Ryan sits down Saturday afternoon and feels relieved, her skin has turned back to its normal pink tint and has energy again. Williams gets ready for a good night's sleep.

Ryan said of her flushing system, "If this thing makes me 100 percent better, I'm going to wonder why in the world is this not out there?" Williams knows that she won't get 100 percent better from fibromyalgia, but she is satisfied with the results she has found through alternative medicine.

"MSM is the only thing I've taken that has done any good. It's not a magic bullet, but it does seem to give me some relief. Nothing compares to the difference in pain. It's been kind of like a miracle!" Williams said.

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