Regain Your Life – Pain Free!

By Contributing Author, Kate Harveston

If you suffer from fibromyalgia, no doubt you scour the internet looking for potential new treatments and cures. Conventional doctors still fail to understand much about this chronic, debilitating pain condition, and while medications exist, the process of finding treatment that works can take years. Often, there are no allopathic medicines that offer much relief.

If you want to ease your suffering, certain natural treatments do work. They may not cure your condition (though for many they have), but they can make it easier to bear. The seven techniques below can offer some relief, so next time the pain grows unbearable, why not give them a try.

1. Give Yourself a Break

When you have fibromyalgia, you grow tired more often than others.

This means you need to give yourself frequent breaks, but doing so the wrong way helps little. Switching from working on your computer to surfing social media on your phone doesn’t unplug your brain from your agony, so strive to completely disconnect from devices during your rest.

Get up and walk around your home or office. Stretch. Or simply close your eyes for a few moments (setting an alarm if you must get back to work). This can break your focus on your pain and help you return feeling refreshed.

2. Move Your Body Gently

If you’re having a bad fibro-flare, going for a jog sounds akin to running on a bed of nails barefoot. However, mild exercise can lesson symptoms by increasing blood flow to aching muscles and delivering healing oxygen.

Be gentle on yourself. Try walking, or, if your trigger points are in your knees, give aquatic exercise a go. The natural buoyancy of the water supports more of your body weight, making movement less painful.

3. Strike a Pose

Certain yoga poses can lessen fibromyalgia pain.

For example, Marjaiasana-Bitilasana, or cat-cow pose, activates the vagus nerve and can ease aching muscles, especially if your trigger points fall along your mid-back. Baddha Konasana, or cobbler’s pose, loosens up the hip joint and strengthens leg muscles surrounding the knees.

4. Tackle One Small Task

When a bad fibro-flare hits, the daily to-do list often goes undone. This can create feelings of guilt and worthlessness, compounding the agony already felt from chronic aching.

Choosing to complete only one chore, such as vacuuming, can double as your daily exercise and assuage feelings of guilt. Maybe you still whip up the family dinner — but recruit your partner and littles to handle cleanup and dishes.

5. Enjoy a Spa Day

For me, when fibromyalgia strikes, the lightest touch feels like Mike Tyson socking me. So, massage does not always work for me in terms of treatment — but when it comes to prevention, I adore it. Who doesn’t enjoy some touch therapy?

Book a massage if money permits. If not, talk to a partner about learning how to practice massage techniques and let them help you.

Alternately, use a high-density foam roller to give yourself a back rub by lying on it on the floor (I recently invested in one, and I love it!).

6. Visit the Pin-Sticker

If the thought of needles makes you squeamish, take comfort. The needles acupuncturists use are so tiny that you’ll barely feel the insertion.

Acupuncture existed for millennia in Asian medicine. Recent research suggests the practice works by activating certain nerve fibers known as afferent fibers through needle insertion and manipulation. As many scientists believe the nervous system plays a major role in the development of fibromyalgia, you could experience significant relief.

7. Get Adequate Sleep

Finally, getting adequate rest benefits everyone, but especially those with fibromyalgia. However, the pain from the disease can make getting comfortable enough to catch some Zzz’s difficult. Plus the cycle of not getting enough sleep can increase the inflammation in the body which is already the major culpriut of the pain.  

Try practicing solid sleep hygiene techniques like going to bed and waking up the same time each day, even when you’re in pain.

If you can’t sleep, get up and read quietly, perhaps while enjoying a cup of lavender or chamomile tea. Taking a warm bath before bed can help ease you into dreamland, too.

Treating Fibromyalgia Pain Naturally

Though many believe there is no cure for fibromyalgia, there are also many who have done just that – cured themselves from the pain using natural therapies including nutrition.

Natural treatments can certainly decrease your pain levels. Plus, they’re free from risks of unhealthy side effects. Next time your fibro flares up and you need quick relief, give the natural treatments above a try! What have you got to lose other than your pain?