Doctor Masseuse

Medically Unexplained Syndromes

Fibromyalgia, myofascial pain syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome and other medically unexplained syndromes are terms used by doctors in the context of a diagnosis of exclusion, not an actual disease. In other words, fibromyalgia is more of something the doctor "has" (lack of ability to find a specific problem, restatement of patient's maladies, modern medicine lacking clarity and just putting people in an insurance diagnosis code bucket) than something the patient "has".

The philosophy of trying to prove a negative is interesting. It requires disproving all positives one by one, which is hard enough, and most doctors usually attempt to eliminate the possibility of any specific underlying diseases. Not to blame a given doctor, but the fact that we have medically unexplained syndromes is more a problem with medicine in general. Doctors love pathology (sort of pathological, huh?) and love treating diseases they can help with, not something invisible—which is understandably frustrating to both patient and doctor. But it is an interesting thing to reassure any readers out there about—you are being given a label to move you through the system, not because you "have" an actual diagnosable disease.

Over time, as human knowledge increases it is possible and even likely that these MUS will shrink, instead of effecting 2% of the population, with a single label! In the past, a lot of these sorts of maladies were labeled rheumatism, but now we know which subset is caused by (for example) inflammation from an overactive immune system, and which are still medically unexplained.

Just Because They Can't See it Doesn't Mean it Isn't a Real Problem

And more importantly, it doesn't mean other people don't suffer from the same problem. Really. You are not alone.

This includes other invisible disorders ("with no discernible cause"), such as mental health, nervous illness, phobias, anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic fatigue, even invisible eating disorders, etc. Now I have a lot or more empathy for anyone stuck in a situation that is not completely "their" fault, but they feel like their sole responsibility. (See also various addictions, cyclic self-destructive behaviors, etc.) Please get help somewhere. Reach out. You probably cannot do it on your own, but no one can reach out for you and no one can help you without your full involvement.

The funny thing is, now some of these disorders can be seen by fMRI studies. (But don't expect your doctor or insurance to go to the trouble. In a lot of ways, just asking you questions may be a lot more effective anyway.)

See also Pyschogenic, In Your Head▾.

Mostly Not-So-Useful-Clinically Diagnoses

When I asked my doctor about undiagnosed peripheral neuropathy or small fiber neuropathy he said that there was no way for him to tell the difference between peripheral neuropathy and something central like fibromyalgia or central sensitization, and the treatment would have been the same: psychiatric medicine like citalopram (Celexa) or the like.

When a practicing doctor says that psychiatric medication helps people with fibromyalgia they are not basing this on evidence (*), or if they are, they are not hedging by pointing out the low success rates of such a treatment, just basing it on their experience, which is notoriously flawed because the patients who were not helped do not come back to the doctor who is unable to help them. And when patients do get better they do not come back because why take your car to a mechanic when everything is working great? And even then the doctor would feel happy for the patient instead of drilling them to write a 5,000 word essay on all of the different things they had to do in order to overcome their problems.

(*) The NNT for antidepressants in the management of fibromyalgia syndrome is in the range of 5.0 to 10.0. That means that 8 out of 10 (or 4 out of 5) patients had the same outcome without the drug, and about 1 in 10 got better on their own. According to the conclusions of the systematic review and meta-analysis:

“The TCA amitriptyline and the SNRIs duloxetine and milnacipran are first-line options for the treatment of FMS patients. Physicians and patients should be realistic about the potential benefits of antidepressants in FMS. A small number of patients experience a substantial symptom relief with no or minor adverse effects. However, a remarkable number of patients drop out of therapy because of intolerable adverse effects or experience only a small relief of symptoms, which does not outweigh the adverse effects.”

For those that were helped, we should ask what did the drug do? Mood stabilizing effects and long-term neurological improvements can also come from Consistent Cardio Exercise▾.

Aside from the obvious benefits (blood flow, muscle health, heart health, etc.) consistent exercise has many benefits for the mind, the brain, and the nervous system in general:

• You get a mood boost from endorphins, the natural version of morphine, without the negative withdrawal effects. In fact, it probably raises and regulates your natural endorphin level over time.
• You get a mood boost from the dopamine produced by accomplishing something and seeking new stimulus.
• You keep an important habit going and gain self confidence that you can control your health.
• "Aerobic exercise promotes rapid and profound alterations in the brain," according to this abstract and brain plasticity research.
• Exercise promotes and regulates the release of growth hormones, such as IGF and NGF.
• Exercise (when it is not backfiring) can help you sleep by helping you feel tired, but not fatigued. It can help cut down on the restlessness that comes with a chronic fatigue issue. The benefit of this increase in sleep is also neurological and mood-stabilizing.

Not Knowing Whom to Turn to

I am sure I am not the first to be frustrated with the medical establishment and the gap between their promises and suggested remedies, and those of the "alternative medicine" crowd, who also promised much which did not pan out.

Who actually knew what they were talking about, based on reality and hard evidence? For example, multiple physical therapists gave me exercises as a prescription, stretching or "strengthening" usually the core or hips, which is notably not the issue for a chronic pain problem (see: this entire article). Not that the suggestion to keep the body moving is a bad one, it's just the details are oversold. (The warm-up (motion maintenance) exercises and resistance exercises themselves are useful, when done on a regular basis, but their effects can take months or years to appear.)

Paul Ingraham of PainScience.com deserves ample credit for filtering through the BS on all sides but still offering actionable and practical, and more importantly, effective advice. He keeps everything up to date with recent research, yet he is not trying to overwhelm you with all the new results of studies that over-promise cures or are too expensive to try for yourself.

Limited but Actual Usefulness

While we are on the rocky ground of What Worked for Me, I think it is worth mentioning that over-the-counter analgesics and sleeping aids, such as diphenhydramine, can help break the cycle by allowing a chronic pain sufferer to feel like they are getting through their day on their own and not trying to "push through more daytime pain with painkillers" but using them selectively to force their system to calm the heck down when they go to sleep at night. Bonus points for using lower doses, or using them every other day to keep them more potent. I would be shocked if this was not one small but very important factor in my own recovery. Getting those two years of better sleep was critical.

Note that this is not medical advice. And always follow the dosing instructions on the labels and never take for longer than it says without consulting your doctor. But then again, your doctor may give you advice that contravenes the labels, which is also potentially dangerous (unless you are doing lab work that can detect and prevent any long term or fatal problems). Acetaminophen (Tylenol, Paracetamol) is a very effective drug and safe at listed doses, a poison with very useful side effects, but very dangerous very quickly.

Also, doctors will tell you that inflammation is the problem, but it is not that simple, and again, even "label-safe" use of anti-inflammatories for a long period of time is dangerous.

Pain v. Pain Plus Suffering

In Buddhism, there is a phrase the Second Arrow or the Second Dart. The first arrow is shot by someone or something else (injury, pain, heartbreak, the vicissitudes of life), the second arrow is the one you keep shooting into yourself, as you re-experience, resist and resent the first arrow (obsessing over the past, worrying about the future, indulging in a pity party, recoiling from the first arrow, wishing reality was something that it isn't).

If you think of the first arrow as the pain signal itself, it is a natural thing to experience unpleasantness (emotional recoil, the second arrow) along with the pain signal. However, it is possible to practice experiencing pain as pain only, and not as pain plus suffering. You can learn to acknowledge but not be affected by it. You are not pretending it does not exist. You are just seeing it for what it is: all smoke and no fire, but what a lot of smoke it is.

Suffering: the Present and the Future

When I say it takes practice, I mean that the mental recoil to pain is a split-second, nearly-unconscious, visceral response, probably rushed along by the autonomic nervous system▾, affected by stress, mood, anxiety. At least, it feels that way. It takes retraining over time for the different parts of your personality, mind, and neurology to have a more robust, slower, more thoughtful and conscious (mindful) response to muscle pain and daily stress.

A lot of my suffering involved grieving over who I thought I was and what I thought I would do with my life, and how the pain changed my plans for the future. The pain and suffering were so intertwined I did not understand that it was possible to separate out these two strands, and that I did not have to let the pain constantly remind me of all that I was missing out on.

Meditation Resources

Meditation can help you live in the present and get your head out of the future, because it trains you to give your mind room to simply be. You learn to be less judgmental, especially of yourself, and you learn that your mind is not equivalent to a constant internal monologue: that another very important part of your being/soul/mind, your variable feelings, can be acknowledged and accepted for what they are—not good, not bad, just feelings. You can learn to avoid denying your feelings, or smothering them with words from your internal narrator, while also avoiding letting your emotions take you for a ride, when the internal narrator grabs the mic and starts catastrophizing.

For more on mindfulness and a secular (and science-backed) approach to meditation, read about or listen to Noah Rasheta's Secular Buddhism podcast, complete with a 15-minute meditation MP3 (both guided or audio-only, i.e. timers).

For more details, read the ebook of Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana. It is carefully explained and made clear what meditation is, what is isn’t, and what the goal is.

You can also find a book at your library about different approaches to meditation for a western audience, Wherever You Go, There You Are by John Kabat-Zinn.

When the first doctor I went to (a really crummy GP who ran his office like something from the movie Brazil) evaluated me, he told me my pain was psychogenic (also known as psychosomatic). The frustration with modern medicine would have sent me straight into the arms of alternative medicine at the time if I had not already been a bona fide scientific skeptic.

When I hear this now, I think "all pain is psychogenic" since all pain is top down. Pain is generated by the brain. If you are a doctor, do me a favor, and if you mean based-in-psychiatry or brain chemistry or mood disorders or mental health or emotional pain then say so. Don't use a vague truism, since all pain is generated by the psyche! (Evidence: general anesthetics are not analgesics (pain killers) yet the patient does not experience nor remember pain because they are unconscious. Pain is generated by the brain, but not when you are in a medically-induced coma.) Also, dear, doctor, make sure to mention someone is not a bad person because of this, they are just stuck in a trap. Just like someone with clinical depression or bipolar disorder is not a bad person for being unable to pull themselves out of an invisible▾ (to current medical technology) but just-as-real situation.

The funny thing is, this diagnosis was actually not totally off the mark, he just did not tell me what to do about it.

Mind-Body Connection

Sometimes people offer easy solutions to complicated problems, as if you can solve anything interesting in a day. In that spirit, you cannot think your way out of pain and fatigue all up front ("Vague Positive Thinking"). But you can practice changing how you think about things, and over time, change how your system responds, and that can be effective. Without a positive attitude, coupled with reasonable expectations and a feasible strategy, I would never have gotten to the point that I am at. Notice that it took more than just positive thinking, and notice that the strategy did not have to be rock-solid, just feasible (and based on reality), and I had to be willing to experiment.

In fact, sometimes the positive thinking followed the action, because some of my experiments started to succeed, which gave me confidence and energy and the capacity to expand my experiments.

See also Mindfulness▾ and Autonomic Nervous System▾.

Understanding the autonomic nervous system was helpful in understanding why pacing was so important, how adrenaline, stress, and pain interact, and why insomnia made everything so much worse. (And why exercise resistance can make it hard to reestablish an exercise habit, since exercise causes adrenaline/norepinephrine plasma increase in proportion to exercise intensity.) You can have a chronic autonomic nervous system dysfunction (usually caused by chronic or acute stress) without having a diagnosable disorder (assuming this applies to you and doctors have ruled out other narrow causes).

According to Wikipedia,

The autonomic nervous system is a control system that acts largely unconsciously and regulates bodily functions such as the heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, pupillary response, urination, and sexual arousal. This system is the primary mechanism in control of the fight-or-flight response and the freeze-and-dissociate response.

Note that it says that the system acts largely unconsciously. But we all know that conscious input can effect it, for example stage fright (butterflies in the stomach) which some experience as projectile vomiting! Experienced performers still get nervous before shows but their system has just learned to experience the adrenaline ride as excitement, instead of gut-rending panic attack. And novice performers, when faced with a large crowd for the first time, often let their nerves get the better of them, despite "trying really hard" not to be nervous. It takes training and experience, not something that can be done "consciously" all at once up front.

However, we also know that we can have conscious control of our breath (duh!) but many of us do not use this to our advantage. That is part of why deep breathing for sustained periods of time, on a regular basis, can help stop our nervous system from freaking out. It really does work and it really is mind over matter.

The autonomic nervous system has two branches: the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is what might try to save your life if you are being chased by a wild bear. A big kick of adrenaline and whoosh: you are running faster and jumping higher than you thought possible. If you escape the bear (or whatever acute danger) you can enjoy the bitter taste of adrenaline in your mouth as you catch your breath and your heart finally calms down. The parasympathetic nervous system cleans up the mess.

With chronic stress the parasympathetic nervous system may be overtaxed and unable to compete with a hyperactive sympathetic nervous system. However, this is one of the ways that recovery can happen over a period of a few years: strengthening the parasympathetic nervous system and calming down the sympathetic nervous system. Some evidence that this might be what is happening? A mostly recovered "fibromyalgia" sufferer who has a weird muscle pain flare up during an emotionally stressful event, such as a vomit-inducing election or mistakenly buying a lemon of a used car. Said individual may still suffer from nervous illness and feel extreme widespread pain occasionally, though they may have better coping mechanisms, habits, mindfulness, and a system that recovers faster and returns more quickly to an overall higher average level of wellbeing and higher mood. They may not be able to control their mood completely, but they can get back on the horse, and go back to daily habits that move their life forward and restabilize quickly.

If you have ever traveled and had jet lag, maybe been hungry, and felt that you are dreaming, that you are disconnected from your body, but you know you are awake, the psychology term for this is depersonalization. That was certainly a symptom I had along with pain, fatigue, insomnia, etc. Worth mentioning since knowing the name of something helps you search for or read about it. It was never a big issue for me, just something I noticed occasionally, along with the pain and fatigue.