10-25-24 Mandy talks Fibromyalgia

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This texture, asked Mandy, how did you cure your fibromyalgia?
Let me talk about this for just a couple of minutes.
Number one, about five years ago, was before COVID. I
started having horrible, horrible, horrible crippling pain in my back,
in my hip. I missed work from it. A couple

(00:20):
of days. I had to call in sick because I
couldn't get out of bed. It was horrific, absolutely horrific.
And thus began my visit to I feel like every
specialist in the history of specialists. I went from doctor,
structural doctor. First, I saw hip doctor, orthopedist. Everything's fine,
back doctor. He actually said, we don't see spines that healthy.
And in the meantime, I am in crippling pain. And

(00:44):
I'm not really a baby about pain. I mean, I'm
pretty good about pain. But it was crippling pain, the
worst pain I'd ever had in my entire life. And
so finally one doctor says, you may have rheumatory arthritis
that runs in my family. I go, great, Finally I
was excited that that could be it. I was like, yeah,
I mean, I'm not wanting rheumatoid arthritis because I know
what it's about But so I go to a rheumatologist

(01:06):
and he does all these tests, more tests. At this point,
I've had like gallons of blood taken out and have
X rays of every part of my body and nobody
can tell me why I'm in crippling pain. And I
go and he says, well, the good news is your
inflammation markers are very low. You don't have rheumatoid arthritis.
And at this point I am crying in the doctor's
office because there's no answer to what is going on.

(01:27):
And he says, but I think you have fibromyalgia, to
which I responded, that's not a real disease because I
just thought it was whiners. I'm just I look back
now and I'm probably was like judge some people harshly
because I really was just like, suck it up, Buttercup,
you know, this is come to find out. And that

(01:49):
doctor was very very nice, gave me a diagnosis, but
didn't really give me any help. Didn't really he gave
me some information, it was just really outdated and old
and didn't seem to be helpful at all. So I
did what I did I do, and I went on
the internet and I started looking at medical studies around
the world, and I found a guy in Mexico City
who had been studying fibromiologia specifically for thirty five years.

(02:11):
And after thirty five years of all these different hypotheses
of what causes this and all these different issues, he
had come to the conclusion that fibromialgia is a stress
related illness, and as a stress related illness, there's nothing
to treat except the underlying stress. And this was me.
I was like, well, I'm not stressed. And then I
had to come to terms with the fact that, for

(02:31):
a lot of reasons that have to do with my
personality type, my childhood, I was one of those people
that was never going to let you see me sweat.
I think if you asked people in my past, have
you ever seen Mandy freak out about anything. There's been
one time where I freaked out, and that was when
my dad had a stroke. I freaked out, but luckily

(02:52):
I was at home, so I could freak out at home.
I don't freak out. I don't panic. It's like when
things start to get crazy, I'd drop into a lower
gear and then I'm just like, nope, we can work
this out. It's the vulcan side of me, or at
least I thought. Then I started going, well, wait a minute,
what if I'm actually just not allowing myself to admit
that I am having stress, I am not recognizing that stress.

(03:14):
What if all of these things, What if I'm not
handling stress at all, and by not handling at all,
I've made myself physically ill. Now that was something to
wrap my head around, because there's a big part of
me that's like, that is not a real disease. But guys,
I am not exaggerating when I tell you that. The
next day, when I woke up and said, Okay, if

(03:36):
this is a stress related illness, I'm willing to try
anything else. If they had told me I needed to
go on fifty medications, I would have absolutely done it
if it made the pain go away. So I said,
I'm just gonna figure out how to do this. I
doubt this is again how I roll. I downloaded podcasts
on how to manage your stress. I listened to other people,
I read books. I read books on stress related illnesses,

(03:58):
which I did not realize were as common as they are,
very very common stress related illnesses. And I started when
I started to feel stressed instead of blowing it off,
and Chuck probably got sick of this. I would walk
into my husband and I would say, here's what I'm
stressed about, and I would list off whatever I was
stressed about. But for me, just saying whatever it was

(04:21):
was a big part of stress management, just recognizing that
I had stress. And within a week all the pain
went away. And then I started thinking, well, maybe this
is the placebo effect, right, Maybe I've just convinced myself.
But then I thought, if I can convince myself not
to have pain, perhaps my body convinced itself to have pain.
And just so you guys know, and part of my
medical study reading on fibromyalgia, they have done multiple studies

(04:46):
where they actually are doing a functional MRI on people's
brains while they are actually having a fibromalagia attack, and
their brains are lighting up in the same exact way
that someone experiencing horrible physical pain from an injury does.
So it's not your brain is really creating that response

(05:08):
in your brain and it manifests itself in a variety
of ways, and stress related illnesses are one hundred percent
of thing. And now I tend to go to it
first when people say I've got this. Whenever anybody says
the doctors can't figure out what's wrong, then I'm like,
have you considered that it might be a stress related illness?

(05:28):
Because I am now beyond a true believer in this.
I absolutely feel it when I am in the middle
of something, or if I'm having a challenge that I'm
working through in any way, shape or form. If I
don't catch it, I start, the pain starts to come
back between my shoulder blades and then it moves down

(05:49):
into my spine and hip. And I'm telling you, guys,
it is like being in a car accident. That's the
only way I can describe it, and not knowing why
was making me absolutely in I mean good gravy, absolutely nuts.
So that's the story. I mean, it's for me, it's

(06:09):
been a stress related illness. I've now shared this with
other people who suffer with fibromyalgia, and some of them
have had great success in figuring out how to manage
their stress. And everybody manages their stress differently. You just
have to find a healthy way to manage your stress
and not rely on ignoring it or self medicating or

(06:31):
any of those other things. That we normally do for
managing stress. So here's how I manage stress really quickly,
and then I will never talk about this again. I
have to exercise every day. I must get some form
of exercise every day. Yesterday I didn't get to work
out in the morning. I went home yesterday afternoon, and
Rake leaves because I'm telling you, Rake and leaves that
that counts. That counts. And then I have to make

(06:53):
sure I get as good as sleep as I can get.
And when something causes me stress, I say, this is
really causing me stress, which for me is enough. So
there you go. That is how I cured my fibromyalgia.
And I realized there's a lot of people out there
that spent a long time not being believed for this.
And I hope just by having this conversation, if this

(07:15):
happens to someone you know, at least you will go
maybe this isn't a figment of their imagination, because I
live through it and I'm here to tell you it
is no joke. I mean no joke.