The Simplest Way for Managing Fibromyalgia in 2022 part one

Last Updated on March 19, 2022 by melissanreynolds

While there is no cure for fibromyalgia, I do believe we have loads of management options at our disposal. In this post, I will share the simplest ways for managing fibromyalgia in 2022. With loads of resources for you to explore further as needed.

Here’s the gist of it:

There is no definitive cause which means there is no cure.

Also, no one treatment helps everyone.

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So what should we be focusing on?

1. Learning what we can (this helps us to do the rest)
2. Reducing or removing perpetuating factors
3. Managing our whole of life stuff (gentle movement, good nutrition, sleep, stress management etc.)
4. Targeting symptoms

Every single one of these categories takes time and energy. I know.

I also know that it isn’t helpful to have too much information thrown at us at one time. So I am going to share more about each of the four parts of this framework over the next few posts.

In This Post We Look at Managing Fibromyalgia through Learning

Learning is important. We need to know what we are dealing with. It also helps us to dispel the myths we will come across and make good decisions for treatment options.

Patient education is usually the first step in pain management programs. “Education in self-management has enabled patients to control symptoms and become partners in care with their health providers.” Education programmes for fibromyalgia patients: description and evaluation (1994)

This paper says, “Higher self-efficacy was associated with less pain and less impairment on the physical activities measure after controlling for demographic and disease severity measures.”

Self-efficacy involves knowing what you can do to help yourself and why so that you can do it. It empowers you to work with your medical team proactively, which also improves outcomes.

What do you need to know?

This is not exhaustive, but a good starting point is:

• What fibromyalgia is.
• What symptoms are fibromyalgia (and what might be caused by something else).
• The current hypothesized contributors to developing fibromyalgia.
• The recommended treatment options.

So where do we start?

Affiliate notice: Please note some of my links are affiliate links. If you make a purchase using one of my links, I may make a commission at no extra cost to you.

You are exhausted, in pain and overwhelmed. How do you start? Choose one book to read, here’s my favourite five fibromyalgia books.

I always recommend From Fatigued to Fantastic (2020) by Dr Teitelbaum and The FibroManual (2016) by Dr Liptan. They are both written by doctors who have fibromyalgia themselves, are easy to read and I follow their advice.

You could also check out YouTube. There is a doctor from a pain clinic in who has loads of easy to understand videos. See Dr Furlan’s video on Fibromyalgia here.

I wrote the eBook Melissa vs Fibromyalgia: My Journey Fighting Chronic Pain, Fatigue and Insomnia and created worksheets to help you take the learning and make it practical. You can grab the bundle here. If you want it physically you can grab that here.

What is the most important thing? Learn and DO. Pick something and try it. Or discuss it with your medical team, depending on what it is.

Managing Fibromyalgia Summary

I know that none of these things are that simple. But I hope that having the framework of learning, reducing or removing perpetuating factors, looking at whole of life stuff and then targeting symptoms helps you to get a sense of what to do next.

As you may have noticed, I have created a ton of resources of all of these areas. So if you need more help be sure to go through these links and the rest of the blog.

If you want a shortcut with the worksheets that can help you with your plans, check out the Melissa vs Fibromyalgia eBook and worksheet bundle.

There is a lot of information here, so the simplest way to get started is to choose ONE area and focus on that area only for the time being.

Good luck friend and let us know how it goes.