Metabolic Makeover Chiropractor Dr. David Bailey: 5 Ways To Fight Fibromyalgia
You don't have to take fibromyalgia lying down. You can do something to fight back.
Fatigue, pain, stillness, anxiety, depressions, insomnia, and irritable bowel are all ways your body is telling you that something is wrong. Either something is harming you and needs to be taken away, or something is missing-and needs to be restored.
My core belief is that your body can hear itself-given the right circumstances. Finding those right circumstances is an individual journey, but here are 5 steps to take.
1. Balance your hormones - Cortisol, insulin, and thyroid are the key hormones in fibromyalgia relief. These hormones control your energy, immune system, and even your ability to think clearly. These three hormones interact with each other in complex ways, and a problem with one can lead to a problem with the others.
Intervention: You may be surprised that the most effective and powerful method to create hormone balance is to eat frequent, small meals. Grazing helps restore hormone balance.
2. Fight inflammation: Inflammation can be a big problem in some fibromyalgia sufferers.
Intervention: Stop eating the two most common foods that cause inflammation: simple carbs (including all forms of sugar) and polyunsaturated oils, like corn oil and other oils made from grains.
3. Restore proper digestion: Hormone imbalance or inflammation can wreck your digestion. IBS is a common problem in fibromyalgia. Poor digestion means poor absorption. This means it is difficult to get the nutrition from the food you eat.
Intervention: Eat the best food possible. Eliminate junk foods. Eat whole grains, clean healthy protein sources, and unprocessed natural fats.
4. Elimination: You get sick and tired if you have difficulty eliminating the waste products from your body. Toxins build up and break your metabolism.
Intervention: Drink water all day long. This helps flush toxins from your body. Make sure you get plenty of fiber (15-30 grams per day). Fiber helps you have health bowel function.
5. Fuel the Powerhouse: In every cell there are many tiny powerhouses called mitochondria. In these powerhouses, food is converted to energy you need to move, think, and all other aspects of your life. If the powerhouse is broken or out of fuel - you will suffer from a lack of energy.
Intervention: the powerhouse needs not only calories, but special nutrients, to work and deliver energy. Vitamins, minerals, and enzymes in whole foods contain all the thousands of micro-nutrients you need to run and repair your mitochondria powerhouses. Real foods, not manufactured foods, contain the fuel for your energy system. You may need to supplements with pills what you are missing in your diet.
Make these changes in your diet and lifestyle, and see the amazing recovery a healthy body can make.
3/1/2010 9:00:17 AM
Written by David N. Bailey, DC, MPH
A board certified chiropractic orthopedist, I also have training in functional medicine. I also earned a Masters in Public Health from Texas A&M University Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health.
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