We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give! –Winston Churchill
Monthly Archives: November 2012
The Bliss Molecule Formulation
I’ve always loved chocolate and now I have an excuse to eat more!
Reblogged from THE BLISS MOLECULE FORMULATION
What is it about the sound of the name?
Even hearing it whispered makes you feel good.
Choc….o….late….
Choc….o….late….
It releases neurotransmitters. We can take it quite literally when we hear that we have “chocolate on the brain.”
So, what does it do?
Let’s start with endorphins. These little babies are natural pain and stress fighters. It seems that eating chocolate releases endorphins. Hmmm…so far so good.
Serotonin. It seems that chocolate (semi-sweet or dark) releases and increases levels of serotonin. This is a neurotransmitter that works to regulate mood, sleep arousal and pain. Hmmm….again….the higher the serotonin level the happier we are. I can tell you that I’m VERY happy when eating chocolate. The downside? Can’t drink milk with our little pieces of chocolate, or as I prefer, enveloped in a nice cookie. OK…I can live with that.
Phenylethylamine. Commonly known as PEA. It’s a chemical that makes you feel happy. OK..I’m with them on that. It seems that chocolate is loaded with it. It also has a half life of 5 to 10 minutes so it stands to reason that we should shove as much as possible as quickly as possible!! It’s also called the love drug because we experience the same feeling…..
Anandamide. It is a lipid that it very similar to THC. THC is a chemical found in marijuana. Anandamide and THC both activate the same receptor that gives us a feeling of well being. Didn’t we feel like that in college?? Anyway, I feel very happy with chocolate.
One thing about chocolate.
It contains a chemical called theombrine. While it is mildly diuretic and similar to caffeine, IT IS TOXIC AND POTENTIALLY FATAL TO DOGS. Their heart and central nervous system can be compromised. They don’t metabolize it as quickly as their humans.
So, other than that, it sounds pretty good to me. Plus, it melts in your mouth, not in your hands. Actually, when I eat chocolate I feel comforted and loved. Amazing, isn’t it? The power of a little morsel of yum.
When you’re always in pain a little chocolate sounds like a plan.
Celtic Quote of the Day
I’m feeling very thankful for another good day today and felt this was appropriate. It’s a traditional Celtic prayer.
May God grant you always…
A sunbeam to warm you,
A moonbeam to charm you,
A sheltering angel, so nothing can harm you.
Quote of the Day
Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.
–Charles Schulz
Morgan Freeman Interview
I stumbled upon this amazing article on Morgan Freeman and wanted to share it. I didn’t know that he has fibromyalgia due to a bad car accident 4 years ago. He can’t really use his left arm anymore and that’s where the pain is the worst for him. His outlook on life and fibromyalgia is just amazing. He’s a complex, contradictory person that we can learn a lot from. He’s a wise man living in pain just like us.
My favorite part of this article is:
“I’m very concerned about longevity. I don’t want to die because I’m stressing over bullshit. There’s lots of shit to do, so when I have a chance to do less, to do nothing, that’s what I do.” He says something else, low and guttural, and once again, I cannot hear him. He grabs his left arm, winces through what appears a supreme flash of pain.
Read more: Morgan Freeman Interview – The Dark Knight Rises Morgan Freeman – Esquire http://www.esquire.com/features/morgan-freeman-interview-0812#ixzz2CDY3numW
Thankful
I did an aquatic therapy session on Saturday that included my first experience with hypnosis. I’m not sure if I will be able to describe what I experienced on Saturday. I’ve never experienced anything like it before in my life. Since then, my pain has dramatically reduced. It’s like the pain has receded back to my head. I have a headache and my neck hurts but my body feels loose and nearly pain free. I’m a 2 or a 3 on the pain scale the last couple of days instead of starting at 5 and going up as high as 10 every day. At the moment, I’m at a 1 which to me is nearly pain free. I don’t know what the transformation was I went through on Saturday. I don’t know how long this feeling will last. I don’t know anything other than I am extremely, totally and completely thankful for this reprieve from my pain. I’m going to ride this wave as far as it takes me. I’m going to take it one step at a time and try to hold this feeling of lightness that has come over me as close to me for as long as I can. I feel like I should celebrate this. I also feel like I should cry tears of gladness. My mind is blown by the last few days. I just hope and pray (something I haven’t done in a while) that this feeling lasts, that this reprieve from pain lasts as long as possible.
I just had to share this feeling with my online support community. I hope to be able to share more about what I’ve experienced and try to put together some suggestions that might help others based on my experience. But for now, my mind is blown and I have a lot of journaling ahead of me before I’m able to share any of this better. So please forgive me if I drop out of the blogosphere for a few days. I’m not going anywhere, I’ve just got a lot of thinking and processing to do.
Soft hugs for everyone.
Impact of Repetitive Activity on Fibromyalgia Symptoms
Impact of Repetitive Activity on Fibromyalgia Symptoms.
Repetitive Activity & Fibro
You know that using the same muscle groups over and over causes pain to build up rapidly in these areas. Ideally, you need to take lots of rest breaks, although this is seldom a feasible option. Once you have experienced this, it’s just a reality of living with fibromyalgia, and you learn to adapt. You are not lazy, nor are you exaggerating your pain response to repetitive activity. But how do you get others to understand what it feels like to live in your fibro body?
A new study by a Canadian team helps substantiate this escalating pain experience.* It also documents that movement-related pain is more severe for people with fibromyalgia compared to patients with chronic low back pain. And better yet, these differences between fibro and low back pain are not related to depression or fear of movement.
The repetitive task study required patients to lift 18 canisters off a table in front of them (just hold it for a second, then place it back down). The canisters were waist high and arranged in three rows. Those in the front row could be lifted without reaching or bending forward. Lifting the canisters in the second and third rows required additional stretching and strain on the arms and back when reaching for them. With each successive canister lift, the subjects rated their pain level and how heavy they perceived the canister to be (some were filled with more sand than others but they all looked identical).
Fibromyalgia patients reported more intense pain than the back pain patients after lifting the sixth through 18th canister. As the number of canisters lifted increased, so did the pain caused by the repetitive activity, and more so for the fibro group of patients. These differences were not due to lifting the canisters longer or faster, as both patient groups performed the lifting task with the same speed.
Strength
“Strength does not lie in what you have. It lies in what you can give.”
I start my mornings off now with a cup of Yogi Detox tea. I love the little bits of wisdom Yogi includes with each tea bag. I took this photo this morning because I thought this little bit of wisdom was a good reminder. Fibromyalgia and chronic pain sufferers are strong because we have to be. We don’t have any other choice but to be strong and keep fighting the pain. Sometimes, I’m not sure where my personal strength comes from. Maybe some of it comes from what I give to my family in friends, despite being in pain. Maybe I’m getting what I gave back several times over.
Never Give Up
I know that I’ve gone through things in my life, traumas even, that I never wanted to go through. I’ve had so many medical issues in my life already and I’m only 29. I’ve lost family members very close to me. I’ve gone through and am still going through very rough, challenging periods in my life. I’ve learned a lot from all of these things, even though they were painful, sad and traumatic. These experiences have changed me a lot. But no matter what, I keep fighting. I get up after ever failure or every time the pain from fibromyalgia knocks me on my butt. I never give up, no matter how tempting that can be some days. I keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward. Life and chronic pain has given me harsh lessons, but they’ve made me the person I am today.
Protected: Quote of the Day
Objective Tests Prove Fibromyalgia is Not Depression
I wanted to share this interesting article with you.
Objective Tests Prove Fibromyalgia is Not Depression.
Tests Prove Fibromyalgia is Not Depression
Fibromyalgia can be distinguished from depression, according to a study by researchers at the University of Sherbrooke in Canada.
People with fibromyalgia not only have widespread pain, a large percentage also battle depression. This has led some investigators to argue that fibromyalgia might represent a form of depression, but pain system function tests prove otherwise.
The Canadian research team evaluated three groups of subjects: 40 healthy controls, 26 people diagnosed with depression, and 29 fibromyalgia patients. All participants were asked to determine when a heat probe changed from a warm sensation to pain. The ability of the body to reduce the impact of pain was also measured.
Prior studies by the primary investigator, Serge Marchand, P.D., a professor of neurosurgery at the University of Sherbrooke in Canada, have shown that the body’s natural ability to inhibit pain in fibromyalgia patients does not work. When the body is subjected to a lot of discomfort, the spinal cord system should pour out pain-relieving substances to soothe the tissues. This does not happen in people with fibromyalgia, but what about those with depression?
The temperature at which healthy subjects rated the heat probe as painful was much higher than the temperature for the fibromyalgia patients. The depressed subjects fell in between these two groups, so they do have some evidence of increased pain sensitivity, but nothing close to the fibro patients.
Looking at the system that should keep pain under control, the healthy and depressed groups both produced a similar response that led to pain relief. This same system did not work at all in the fibromyalgia patients.
According to Marchand, “This result shows that fibromyalgia can be distinguished from major depressive disorder.” The system in the spinal cord that helps block out pain works efficiently in depressed patients, but fails to function in people with fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia patients often struggle with symptoms of depression, and depressed patients report various pain complaints, such as headaches and back pain. Marchand suspects this overlap in symptoms may be related to the increased pain sensitivity in both groups. Despite this similarity, he emphasizes that the fibromyalgia patients were significantly more heat sensitive because the system in the spinal cord to ease pain does not work.
Source: Normand E, et al. “Pain Inhibition Is Deficient in Chronic Widespread Pain but Normal in Major Depressive Disorder” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 2010; DOI: 10.4088/JCP.08m04969blu.
Pain is a Harsh Teacher, but Has Good Lessons if you’re willing to Learn
It was my birthday last week. My birthday gave me an occasion to think back on the last year, which seems to have flown by. The year has blurred together thanks to all the pain I suffer, but at the same time I realized that where I was for my last birthday and where I am today is like night and day.
This time last year, I was headed into the worst period of my fibromyalgia, the worst I’ve ever felt for an extended period of time. I spent the winter and the first couple of months this year on a sea of pain. I was blind to anything else but the pain. My life was just surviving. There was nothing beyond the pain. I went to work and pushed my body every day to get through the work day. I was locked in fight or flight mode. Adrenaline constantly surged through me. It’s what kept me going each day. I went to work, came home and then crashed. I was lucky to feed myself and my pets before crashing into bed. I’d watch TV then go to bed. I wasn’t sleeping. I would be asleep but it wasn’t restful, restorative sleep. It was constant tossing and turning, constantly waking up from the pain, lots of weird dreams that seemed to keep me from resting. I don’t k now how long I went without a full night of good, quality sleep. Months at least. I would “sleep” and then get up and do it all over again. My weekends were spent resting and trying to prepare myself for the next work week. I wasn’t exercising. My body was getting weaker and weaker. I couldn’t even go grocery shopping. I had no energy for anything like that. My husband had to take over everything. He kept the house clean, the refrigerator stocked, he made most of our meals. He had to take on so much because I couldn’t do anything but lay in bed in pain. I felt worthless because I couldn’t do anything. It took all I had to go to work each day and drive myself home. It was a brutal winter for me.
Dead flowers killed by the weather changing from fall to winter. Last winter was brutal for me and I could not come out of that period the same person as I was before, just like these flowers could not survive the winter but they’ll come back anew and beautiful in the spring.
I took a medical leave of absence from work in April and everything began to change. I had the time to rest and let my body start to heal. I worked intensively with my therapist to work on some of the emotional traumas I’ve experienced in my life that were still causing me stress and pain in the present. We worked on lots of coping mechanisms for me to deal with the pain and things that trigger my pain, like stress. I feel like I examined every part of myself, threw out the parts of me that were now causing me pain, and worked hard to rebuild myself from the ground up. I now have lots of weapons against my pain and ways to control my pain where I had none before. I felt like the pain had knocked me down to nothing and I had to rebuild myself. It was very hard work, but I’m glad I did it. Slowly during my leave, my energy level increased, I was able to exercise every day, my health was better, and best of all, the pain lessened. I’m not sure if the pain actually decreased in severity or if I just learned how to manage it better. I think the biggest change that happened during my leave was that I accepted that fibromyalgia is a part of me now. I accepted that this is my life for now and decided to find different ways to live and have fun despite the pain. Before, I didn’t know you could be in so much pain but still have fun, still enjoy something, still have good days. Now I know that. Now I work hard to have more good days than bad.
Spring tulips — healthy, strong and beautiful, all the things I was starting to regain myself.
Spring turned to summer and I felt so much stronger, mentally and physically. I was back to being a positive person. Despite the pain, I chose to be happy. Some days it’s hard to be positive and happy, but I keep working at it and it gets easier with time. I’ve learned so much in the last year. Pain has changed me, in some ways for the better. I appreciate the little things now. I treasure simple, happy moments with my husband. I never did this before. It was always “go, go, go.” I never stopped to smell the roses, to savor a happy moment, to make a memory. Now I do. And those happy times and memories help get me through my bad days. They remind me that things can be better when I’m miserable from the pain. They anchor me to myself and my life. They keep me from getting lost on a sea of pain again, like I was before.
Now I’m headed into winter again, but for me it still feels like summer. I feel strong and healthy. Things seem vibrant and alive to me in a way they never have before. I feel like a stronger, happy version of myself, despite the fibromyalgia. There is a balance in my life that was never there before. I’ve also learned how lucky I am not to be fighting my fibromyalgia alone. My husband, family and friends all support me in my fight. I couldn’t have come so far without them, especially my husband who has been by my side through all of this and has seen me at my absolute worst. Now I know how lucky I am to have them in my life, to have their support. When you’re in so much pain, it’s easy to feel alone and isolated. But I’m not. I am surrounded by amazing, supportive people who help me deal with my fibromyalgia every day.
Summer Flowers in Bloom. I’ve come along way and now I feel alive again. I treasure the small things now like I never did before.
Pain is a harsh teacher but it has taught me good things. I have more learning to do, but I’m on a good path now and that’s what matters.
Life is never been easy. Otherwise, you will never treasure for what you have.
-Unknown
*All photos taken by the author of this site.
Wisdom from the Tea Leaves
I really am loving the new Yogi teas I’m drinking and highly recommend them. I also love the nuggets of wisdom that come with them. I wanted to share today’s:
“Let your heart guide you”
Wise words for us to remember. Happy Friday everyone!
Thankful Thursdays
I know I’ve missed some Thursdays. It’s been a very stressful couple of weeks at work, and I’ve spent my evenings recovering from my days and haven’t felt like getting on a computer to post something.
This Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for:
- That my family all made it through Hurricane Sandy okay and unharmed. My mom got 8 inches of snow and my brother had wind damage in his area of NYC. He also had to walk to work yesterday and it was a long walk!
- Chocolate. Enough said.
- That my company offers a 30 hour work week. I could not have worked full time the last couple of weeks. Working 6 hour days, and staying late a few days too, was all I could do. I’m exhausted, but I’m not miserable like I would be if I was working full time.
- My new Lazy-boy recliner. Thanks Mom! It’s so comfortable and helps my back and neck relax. I relax in it on my heating pad and veg out in front of the TV. Sunday I even had a long nap in the chair. It was great.
- My husband who made my birthday great this week. He cooked me dinner! It was wonderful to relax while he cooked and then we had a fantastic meal together. He’s a great cook! And he baked me a gluten free chocolate birthday cake! He’s amazing.
Fighting Fibromyalgia 