Why a holistic approach is necessary for fibromyalgia management.

When I say ‘holistic’ I mean taking into account your whole person.  Your whole body. All the systems that are interconnected and affected by each other.  I also include your body as it relates to the outside world. Obviously this all makes sense if you look at some of the potential causes of Fibromyalgia being trauma or exposure to toxins or certain viruses.

It’s important to be able to identify all the ways that you can support your health and healing and some of them come from places that you might not have previously considered. When I work with people one on one I go over their life history and ask all sorts of questions - often they look at me like “um, why are you asking that?” but when I explain how things are so intrinsically linked, the dots begin to join and things start to make a lot more sense.

If you want a quick and easy way to start to be able to look at all the different factors that might be playing a part for you, I have designed a small quiz that will ask some of the questions I might ask you. You can do that here.

Some of the areas that I find most important to look at when dealing with a chronic illness correlate directly with the same areas I would work on if you want to create optimal health.

The most important part (I believe) is really looking at your diet. Your diet is the place where your body gets what it needs to heal. Later I will talk about this in greater detail but as a quick overview your body needs energy and you need to get that energy from somewhere. Your body also needs vitamins and minerals in order to have all of these millions and millions of chemical reactions in your body. The formulation of hormones that make you feel good like dopamine and serotonin along with the chemicals that help you sleep and wake and think and do all of the things you do in the course of a normal day are all dependant on you getting enough energy and enough vitamins and minerals. Most people don’t get them and they pay for it with ill health, depression and anxiety not realising that it is simply their bodies way of telling them it is starving for the things it needs. That’s in a normal person; let alone a person who is fighting the battle of fibromyalgia. So it is super important to have some education around that because the average person doesn’t come anywhere near knowing how to support their body properly through nutrition.

The next part is about avoiding things that are contributing to your ill health. Things like toxins; alcohol, drugs, and right down to some cleaning products and makeup. People with fibromyalgia tend to be more sensitive to the effects of some of these things. Even medication can be a real burden to the immune system so if you’re taking medication and you really haven't looked at that with a holistic physician it’s important to have it reviewed and make sure that you’re not taking one thing to mitigate the effects of another thing. An example would be if you’ve been prescribed the pill to deal with heavy periods, but then you’re having the side effect of anxiety or depression and then you’ve been prescribed an anti-depressant and because you can’t sleep another drug to help you sleep. It makes much more sense to have a more holistic approach to the first problem of heavy periods, looking at that with a naturopath or alternative health practitioner before trying to throw drugs at the problem and then having to deal with the side effects. I hope that makes sense - I am most certainly not anti-medication but I don’t believe that medication should be the first option without thorough investigation and looking at alternatives. So many people are on four or more different medications simply because of this sort of cyclic problem and it is posing serious issues for their body in terms of pressure on the liver and immune system as well as other areas like the brain and the gut.

You can probably start to see a little why having a holistic approach is important so far and I’ve only covered two different areas. I haven’t even touched on hydration or gut health or exercise - all of which are equally important. There are many areas and this is my point. All I really wanted to impress on you today was not the answers to every piece of the puzzle but an overview on how it all really does need to fit together. You need to understand the different aspects of creating health in order to help your body heal.

So what can you do to help yourself learn about all of these things? Well, you can sign up for my mailing list and free download HERE. Through my mailing list and my blog I am sharing all the things that I have learnt over the past few years (and am continuing to learn through my degree in health science). I am constantly researching, learning and creating new content and trying to share that knowledge in a way that is simple, makes sense and is easy to both understand and implement.

I am also coaching clients one on one so if that interests you you can book in for a FREE 15 minute consult by clicking HERE.

I am currently working on a new program that presents all this information as modules and videos so that you can go through them at your own pace. If you’re on my mailing list you’ll be the first to know when that is available. The program will also include monthly LIVE Q&A sessions with me where you can ask whatever burning questions you may have. In the meantime though, if you do have any burning questions please feel free to email me. If you’re on the mailing list simply hit reply to one of my emails and I’ll get back to you as soon as you can. You can join the mailing list and get your free download HERE.

 I’m looking forward to meeting you all and wish you the best of luck on your journey.

xomc