Fixing my Fibromyalgia

After reading more about Dr. Teitelbaum's approach, I went and bought his book, and I'm trying out the SHIN protocol. The first three weeks you focus on sleep, pain management, and nutrition. It gets more complicated after that, with weeks 4-8 focused on detecting and correcting hormone imbalance, and weeks 9-20 focused on rooting out any hidden infections.

For the sleep thing I've started taking Suntheanine, which has been awesome for daytime nervousness and anxiety. For me this is a big deal because my social anxiety is a real aggravating factor with my FMS and keeps me from doing a lot of things that I would otherwise enjoy. As for sleep, I'm not sure yet. The first few days it didn't seem to help, but I just started taking a larger dose at bedtime and it seemed to work last night, so we'll see. I also brought the foam mattress topper down from the guest room and put it on our bed, and that seems to be helping too.

For nutrition I'm taking a bunch of supplements, but the most important one, according to Dr. Teitelbaum, is D-ribose. It's a sugar that your muscles need to repair themselves and people with Fibromyalgia usually don't produce enough on their own. So I take it three times a day, and I should start seeing results by 2-4 weeks.

The pain thing is trickier. Tylenol doesn't work, Ibuprofen makes my stomach bleed, and I'm avoiding prescription pain killers. The idea is that the supplements should eventually start helping with the pain. In the meantime I'm just doing the same things I usually do - try to wear my sneakers for good support, take lots of hot baths, don't over exert myself, use O24 for localized pain, etc.

I'm remaining cautiously hopeful about this treatment plan. I've been down this road before, and I never get the amazing results promised. But this SHIN thing takes such a broad approach...and if nothing else I'm already thrilled with the Suntheanine. We'll see!