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A Patients Guide To Avoiding The Common Traps You Will Encounter When Looking For
A Solution To Your Fibromyalgia

You’ve been diagnosed with fibromyalgia so NOW WHAT? Your body aches… your fatigued and tired… you can’t sleep, your body goes through periods of constipation and diarrhea, and your head feels ‘fuzzy’.

As you seek answers and solutions to bring your body back to where it should be… where it once was… here are 7 common mistakes that patients and doctors make that result in YOU, as the patient, suffering more and longer, and there is no reason for you to suffer at all. Hopefully this Guide will serve as a valuable resource that will help you avoid these mistakes, and get the information and help you deserve.

Accepting ‘Fibromyalgia’ As The Label For All Of Your Symptoms.

The truth is… your body is sick. What commonly happens is that when no simple explanation can be found for your symptoms you get labeled with fibromyalgia. When you first got diagnosed you may have been happy to finally have something to call it, a name to refer to your symptoms by. It’s scary having symptoms that nobody can explain. It leaves you with  angst and worry. Your mind wonders if there is some underlying process that is more serious, and when you finally get that fibromyalgia label you let out a sigh of relief.

Soon you probably realized that this fibromyalgia label did not lead to a straight forward treatment or solution.

A diagnosis that gives a set of symptoms a name, but does not lead to a solution is not helpful. If you are not careful every single new symptom you have will be attributed to your ‘fibromyalgia’ and therefore not explored properly. You need a doctor who will be explore all of the specifics of how your body is truly functioning, from a big picture, functional approach.

So if you have already been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, then don’t get stuck in that trap where everything is now ‘fibromyalgia.’ You still deserve to be cared for, taken seriously, and respected. Don’t let that diagnosis be the excuse for doctors to just brush everything off, and stop looking for answers.

Falsely Believing That All Of The ‘Correct’ Tests Have Been Done, And That Everything On Your Lab Reports Is ‘Normal’.

This is a huge trap fibromyalgia patients fall into, that you absolutely must avoid. Where our Institute is located in Central California, many local fibromyalgia patients have traveled to one of the big diagnostic clinics such as Stanford Medical, Sansum Clinic, or UCLA Medical. They go there, spend a couple days doing tests, and then come out with the same thing they had before: a report that says that the labs are ‘normal’ and a diagnosis of fibromyalgia.

Then the patient is satisfied, feeling that EVERYTHING has been done, and they continue on the path of taking medications or just living with the pain, fatigue, and the rest of the symptoms that go along with it.

The truth is zero functional testing has been done. They may have ran MRI’s and didn’t see obvious abnormalities, they ran the basic blood work and it didn’t appear to be abnormal, and they call it a day. If you accept that everything has been done, then you have lost at that point because you will stop searching for answers and information that will help you. You may  never make it to a doctor who does functional testing, and will look at functional ranges, and put all of the pieces together for you.

Relying Solely On Medications To Manage The Symptoms.

Ask yourself if you really think that Lyrica, Neurontin, Savella, Vicoden, or Cymbalta is actually making your body more functional or healthy? Is it fixing anything?

The answer is an astounding NO. It is covering up some symptoms, and in the process creating side effects that in the long run may be worse than your original set of symptoms.

What about medicine habituation? What is habituation you ask… it is your bodies tendency to develop resistance to a medication. So what used to only take one pill now takes 3 pills to get the same effect.

Plus if you rely on only the medication to try to feel better then the day is going to come, like so many that I have seen, that had their medications just flat out stop working. All of a sudden the symptoms are back, and they are 10X worse. The patient goes scrambling to look for a simple answer… and it doesn’t exist. The body that was sick is even sicker now, and it is really sad to see someone suffer like that.

They could have been working on the cause of their problem, healing, reversing their fibromyalgia symptoms, while they still had the medication if they needed it. Instead they just relied on the medication and their situation can take a turn for the worse really fast.

Going Through Treatments That Are Hyper-Focused On Each Individual Symptom.

If you were diagnosed with fibromyalgia more than a year ago, then it is likely that you have already experienced this. As part of your symptoms you may have achy shoulder pain for example. So your doctor sends you to physical therapy for your shoulder… thinking that the source of the problem is in the shoulder. Most likely the physical therapy did very little, if anything to help the shoulder.

The next symptom is maybe insomnia, an inability to sleep. You get sent to a sleep specialist to do sleep studies. They may give you a night time breathing devise, or give you sleeping pills. Again this is treatment that is aimed at a particular symptom, and is totally ignoring the fact that there is something more… something more connected going on inside your body… and this approach will not create true and lasting change or healing for you.

Avoid falling into this symptom treatment trap, and find a doctor who will take a WHOLE person approach. Fibromyalgia is a functional breakdown in multiple body systems, and until someone is willing to take a step back, and look at everything, all at once, you are going to suffer at the hands of ineffective treatments.

Not Taking Your Health Care Into Your Own Hands.

We are trained in our society to believe that doctors know best, and that when we go to a doctor we are getting the best care. It’s true, doctors are doctors because they care about people. They want to help them, you included. But doctors now function in a health care model designed to treat emergencies and simple, straight forward, conditions.

With something as complex as fibromyalgia syndrome, you have to grab the bull by the horns and take charge. It’s your life… your body… that is at stake. It is a question of will you accept the status quo, and get pushed through the system, getting pills, disrespected, and mistreated, or are you going to empower yourself, find answers and information that is going to help you reverse this condition once and for all.

It’s up to you. Nobody is going to care about You more than you YOU will. Today is the day… seize the day… take action… you deserve to feel well, and if you don’t believe it, then nobody else is either. They will let you continue on, accepting a label that consigns you to a life of pain.

Doing Nothing And Thinking It Will Not Get Worse.

A common myth, perpetuated by many sources, is that fibromyalgia does not get worse… you have nothing to worry about. This is just not true. Studies have shown that fibromyalgia patients have greater than normal grey matter loss in the brain, and this loss of brain material gets worse the longer you have been diagnosed. This links into the brain and neurological piece of this puzzle.

If you sit around and wait for this to just go away on its own, or you just think you can do nothing and it will be OK… you are falling into a trap. Avoid it at all costs. The functional abnormalities are only getting worse, and you are making your recovery harder.

Not Finding A Doctor Who Treats You As A Whole Person and Has A Complete Functional Approach

All of the other 6 Fibromyalgia Treatment Traps, revolve around the Fact that fibromyalgia is:

A Functional problem that cannot be treated like a simple infection, broken arm, or disease. There is something wrong in your body, likely multiple functional shifts, that can be found, and reversed, if the proper testing and treatment are done.

Can be reversed if the doctor takes a step back and looks at the big picture.

And finally if you you don’t take control and find a doctor who is going to put the pieces together for you, then you will continue to get the same treatment, and same poor results.

Now that you are armed with this knowledge , you can find out if the practitioner you see is considering the functional connections between the immune system, hormone system, neurological system, metabolic system, and gastrointestinal system, and whether they are running functional tests to tie it all together.

At the end of the day you want a FUNCTIONAL DIAGNOSIS, you don’t want a label that just describes your symptoms but doesn’t describe WHY you have those symptoms. You owe it to yourself to work with a doctor who is going to do that for you.

Fibromyalgia as it is defined… as a group of symptoms with no known cause, cannot be cured, because how can you cure something that cannot be defined? But when you break it down to a functional diagnosis then Fibromyalgia Can Be Reversed.

At the Boydston Institute, we are known world-wide for our work with fibromyalgia. Our institute was designed to avoid all of these treatment traps, and help fibromyalgia patients reverse their fibromyalgia. We accept limited numbers of patients into our program each month because we are so thorough we must ensure that each patient gets the attention that is required.

To learn more about how to apply to our Neuro-Metabolic Solutions Program, CLICK HERE.

To Learn more about applying to our Neurometabolic Solutions Program CLICK HERE

Glenda previously shared a progress update with us about 5 weeks into care (Glenda’s 5 Week Update). This progress video was taken approximately 5 months after the onset of care.

One thing people are curious about is how do our members do after they are done with the initial phase of their care?

I see Glenda now about once a month, or maybe even a bit less, and every time she is in, she is doing BETTER than she was the last time I saw her. The problem is many have experienced different methods of decreasing the pain that were only temporary, and all symptoms came back after the active phase of treatment was over.

With our care, because the custom Neuro-Metabolic Solutions program addresses the individuals unique physiology shifts, we can create a program that leads to more and more progress over time.

Glenda’s Neuro-Metabolic Solutions Program  includes home Brain Based Rehab Exercises, and the dietary and nutritional plan we put in place for her which is supporting and correcting her physiology.

It’s about doing the right things, at the right time, at the right frequency. I am happy that Glenda was willing to share her progress, because it’s not easy to get in front of the camera.

As promised I am going to go over the specific lab findings for the patient we highlighted in (Fibromyalgia Case Study Part 1).  We ordered a lot of tests and almost every test gave us a specific piece of information that is going to help us make specific changes. My point in detailing this case study is to show that simply labeling you with fibromyalgia, and then attributing every symptom to that diagnosis is a disservice to you as the patient.

 So lets dig in and see what we were able to discover that is going to have a huge impact in her life.

1. Stool Mycology Test - this test measures the ratio of good to bad bacteria in the gastrointestinal system. It looks for things like yeast overgrowth, bacterial infections, and parasitic infections. When we received the results of her test, we found that she has pinworms.

   This is a lady who has suffered from "Irritable Bowel Syndrome" for over 10 years. No doctor, and she had been to a lot, had ever done this test to see what was really going on in her intestinal tract. She could have had this pinworm infection for years. The best part is a 3 day medical course of an antiparasitic medication will completely wipe the pinworms out and she will be done with it, but if we would have never checked, then we would have never found it.
    

2. Adrenal Stress Index - We found that she was in a state of adrenal fatigue. Her adrenal glands were not producing cortisol adequately. I suspected that the driver of her adrenal dysfunction was secondary to blood sugar management and also immune / inflammation driven. Keep reading, to see why.
    
3. Gluten Antibody Test (Stool) – this is another important test to run for fibromyalgia patients. We wanted to see if she has a sensitivity to gluten, the small protein found in wheat, barley, rye, and American oats. People genetically sensitive to gluten will have their immune system attack the gluten proteins as if it was a bacteria or virus, resulting in inflammation from nearly every meal, as gluten tends to be in a lot of things we eat.

   She was producing a massive amounts of gluten antibodies, and also had tissue transglutaminase antibodies, meaning she has a full blown autoimmune disease called Celiac Disease. This contant inflammation had created years of stomach irritability that had become unbearable. The treatment for this is simple … a gluten free diet. It may not be an easy thing to do but will make a huge difference in her life.
    

4. Blood Chemistry and Immune Labs - we discovered that this patient was also pre-diabetic which explains the adrenal fatigue. Her immune panels also revealed that she has a pattern of active infection, but combined with the information about the pinworms and gluten, that is the source of the problem. Had we not had those tests we would have had to do more investigating into source of infection.
   
   We are going to have her on a strict diet that will remove refined sugars, juice, and adrenal stimulants such as caffeine. Combined with some powerful adrenal support and insulin resistance supplementation she will completely reverse her prediabetic condition, lose weight, and remove a source of inflammation from her body (insulin is a big inflammatory mediator when in excess.)
    
5. Intestinal Permeability Test - as I mentioned in Part 1 Of this Case Study, we were testing for increased intestinal permeability, a condition called leaky gut syndrome. What we found was the opposite. The Celiac disease had created so much inflammation in her gut that she had decreased intestinal permeability. She had mucous build up in her intestine, and was not absorbing nutrients like she should. As she goes on her gluten free diet this will heal over time.

So by going gluten free in her diet, controlling her blood sugar by cutting adrenal stimulants and refined sugar, medical treatment for the parasite, and adrenal and insulin resistance nutritional support, this lady is going to make monumental changes in her life, IF she follow's through on my recommendations.

Of course she also had a brain imbalance that we are going to have to address with Brain Based Rehabilitation

She will be receiving treatments in the office two times per week in the beginning to rehabilitate this. Bottom line, there was definite things wrong with her and we are going to specifically address them. That is how we move from "Fibromyalgia" to specific things we can change.

If you would like to apply to our Neuro-Metabolic Solutions Program, then CLICK HERE to learn how you can apply.

What did you think of the article? Leave a comment below. We would love to here your thoughts.

Most doctors learn the body in chapters. Chapter one-the heart, chapter two-the lungs, chapter 3-the stomach and intestines…you get the picture. That's why there are 'specialists' for each of those book chapters. The problem is that millions of you see specialist after specialist after specialist and you still don't get any better. 

Learning and understanding the body in this way–compartmentalizing it–makes the doctor TOO focused on any one system. He/she loses sight of the big picture.

The BIG picture is that Everything is connected [I know nothing ground breaking, but why is it not put into practice more often?]

Let me give you an example. Gluten intolerance can cause systemic inflammation. The inflammation can cause headaches, mouth ulcers, weight gain or weight loss, poor immunity to disease, and gastrointestinal upset. If this goes untested and untreated long enough it can turn on genes for autoimmune thyroid. The patient will now have fatigue, weight gain, hair loss etc. This can continue and cause hormone shifts, vitamin and mineral imbalances, upset blood sugar regulation, and sabotage hormone balance, and lead to pain.

So what doctor is going to look for the gluten intolerance and autoimmune condition PLUS know how to rehabilitate that person's brain so it functions normally again PLUS know what natural supplementation will modulate the immune attack and support the brain?

That's why I call it THE BIG PICTURE.

Day after day I talk to people suffering with every conceiveable symptom and "diagnosis" you can think of: peripheral neuropathy, fatigue, fibromyaglia, polycystic ovaries, thyroid, multiple sclerosis, autism—and even some conditions that don't have a formal label yet.

And these people have been to the rheumatologist, who sent them to the neurologist who sent them to the " Specialist." And years go by but the person never really gets better. WHY?

Because none of these doctors have taken a step back and looked, seriously, AT THE WHOLE PERSON. All their systems, All the possibilities. All at once. Why waste 6 months, 12 months going to all these different people?

I'm not talking about just medical doctors. Having been through chiropractic college I can say that the same thing happened to me. Fortunately, what helped open my eyes to the bigger picture was neurology. It's a scientific fact that the brain and nervous system control EVERY aspect of your health. In fact, you can't name a body function or body part that the brain and nervous system don't help control and regulate. Hey, this is why I branched into Chiropractic Neurology.

But the reality is, I need to look at everything:

• hormones (female AND male)
• neurology (the brain, peripheral nervous system and central nervous system)
• nutrition (I mean what to eat, not eat, what foods do to the body)
• biochemistry
• neurotransmitters
• toxins (toxic metals, chemicals, environmental)
• genetics (a LOT of people have a genetic piece to their puzzle).
• blood sugar
• digestive system
• respiratory system
• muscles
• bones

How many different specialists would you have to go see to make sure you got a comprehensive assessment? 5? 10?

Like I said, I've had to become learned and proficient with that entire list. There is NO way I would've been able to help 90% of the patient's in my practice without knowing all that. The majority of people that see us have been mismanaged, mis-diagnosed and already seen plenty of specialists.  See one of my fibromyalgia case studies to illustrate this fact.

Our goal is to create great outcomes for our patients like Mary, and Linda you may have read about. Other doctors think I am insane for working with fibromyalgia patients. It is a pleasure to work with fibromyalgia patients because the changes we can make can be phenomenal. I have 4 young kids, and if I going to be away from them to be in my practice I want to make that time count, I want to make a real difference in my patients lives. It's my calling.

So what did you think about this blog post? Leave comments below, and give me your opinion.

If you would like to apply to our Fibromyalgia Neuro-Metabolic Solutions Program, then CLICK HERE to learn how you can apply.

My position on this has always been… "there is something definitely wrong, and if we look hard enough, at the right things, we can create a phenomenal outcome for fibromyalgia patients." The patient I want to tell you about today drove a great distance to see me. She was looking for real answers, not just more pills. I don't mean to demean or put down any patients who must take medications to create some resemblance of normalcy, but they DO create long term side effects, and they NEVER, address the source of the problem. Anything that is going to make things more bearable in the short term, are often necessary. You have to get through the day. Certainly though, just getting through the day can't be the long term goal.

So let me tell you about a particular patient I have had the pleasure of beginning to work with. At the onset, after reviewing a lengthy case history, we decided that there was very likely a number of metabolic underpinnings that lied at the root of her pain and other symptoms. So we agreed to run some laboratory tests that would give us great information about her condition. We ran the following tests:

1. Stool Mycology Test - we wanted to check for intestinal dysbiosis (ratio of good to bad bacteria), yeast overgrowth, and any bacterial or parasitic infections. She had a long history of IBS (another wonderful diagnosis that doesn't really tell us a whole lot), and no doctor had bothered to run a similar test like this to see what was really going on.
    
2. Adrenal Stress Index - we wanted to see if her adrenal glands were functioning properly. One of the things the adrenal production of cortisol is important for is the stabilization of blood glucose. Your cells, especially the brain, rely on a steady supply of oxygen and glucose, and patients with adrenal fatigue or dysfunction, have brains that are metaphorically running on "mud".
    
3. Gluten Antibody Test (Stool) – A common source of gut inflammation, and a simple test that lets us know if the body is treating gluten, the protein in wheat and many other grains, as a foreign invader. Also she had marked balance problems and a huge association between gluten antibody production is cerebellum antibody production. Yes, some people will actually start to create antibodies to their own brain, such that every gluten containing meal is causing damage to a critical part of the brain and result in symptoms of vertigo, dizziness, or decreased balance. Of course there are many things that can cause this presentation, but this is a very real possibility.
    
4. Intestinal Permeability Test - This is a test that measures how wide the junctions in the stomach are. A condition called leaky gut occurs when these junctions are larger than normal, allowing large proteins and molecules to pass through the gut lining, and interact with the immune system. This can create major inflammation, and set a person up for an autoimmune reaction or a full blown autoimmune disease.
    
5. Full Blood Chem, Immune, and Metabolic Panels - bottom line was she had a history of autoimmune disease, and a history of gestational diabetes so we needed to see where she was metabolically.
   

So what did we find? Well we had several significant findings from every test. When I go over the findings you will see that there was definitely many things that were wrong with her body, that were specific, and will lead us to very specific action steps to change her life in a profound way.

We are just getting started but in time she will not be the same person ever again if she does what I advise. I am confident she will. In the next post I will share the findings from the tests and what we are going to do to help her. This post is getting long, but I will lay it all out on the table.

Now I don't arbitrarily order these tests. In this case the history necessitated that THESE tests be ordered, and when I show you what we found you will see why. She actually left a little angry, not at me, but angry at the medical system that had pushed pills and band-aids on her, and never really worked hard for her. She has a stack of results to take back to her doctors and "shove in their face" as she put it. I advised her to take the high road, which I really hope she does.

So stay tuned for part 2, where I will share the results and what she will have to do to turn her life around.

If you haven't picked up a copy of our report, that goes through our brain based and metabolic approach to treating fibromyalgia, you can request a copy in the form below:

If you would like to apply to our Fibromyalgia Neuro-Metabolic Solutions Program, then CLICK HERE to learn how you can apply.

Also I would LOVE to have your feedback. Please post a comment below and let me know what you thought of this case study so far.

Linda, a resident of Woodlake, CA, drives 70 miles one way to visit our Institute.

Tell us what you think. Leave a comment below.

If you would like to schedule your initial case review and consultation with Dr. Boydston, Just Click Here.