Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue – There is Rarely an Elephant on the Elevator

I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia in my early 20s. I was told there was not much that could be done about this other than to get a good night’s sleep, eat healthy, and mildly exercise. I was always looking for that one reason that could have sent me over the edge and cause aches and pains and chronic fatigue. I put up with my symptoms for at least 25 years with some help from a rheumatologist. He prescribed some amitriptyline for sleep and pain at night.

When I became a nurse practitioner nine years ago, I decided to look into integrative medicine to see if this would benefit my own personal health any further. It did. Dr. Spurlock explained his “elephant in the elevator” theory to me.

Like me, there are many new patients with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, and they come looking for that one thing that caused all their symptoms. Dr. Spurlock explained to me that fibro and chronic fatigue symptoms are a result of our body “crashing” so to speak.

Let’s say an elevator has a weight limit of 5,000 pounds. If you put an elephant on the elevator, it will surely go over the weight limit and crash. But, if you put person after person after person on that same elevator until the total weight is over 5,000 pounds, it will crash just the same.

What am I talking about? I am saying that a devastating illness like Lyme disease (an elephant) may be the one thing that causes chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia symptoms but that is not so common (although we do find it!) What more likely may occur is, for example, we develop some infections in childhood that can cause mild to severe, chronic problems (like mononucleosis), our thyroid gland very slowly begins to go downhill and not function optimally, we lack some basic vitamins (like vitamins B12, C and D3), we take on new stresses as we get older (college, marriage, jobs, children), perhaps we have some hidden food sensitivities, and then we have an acute event (like a respiratory infection or an automobile accident.) All of these factors together make us tailspin down to developing an unexplained chronic fatigue and random joint and/or muscle aches that either come and go or just won’t go away.

Chronic fatigue and fibro are most commonly due to a series of events that finally make your body crash. At Renewed Vitality they work to discover as many pieces to the puzzle as possible and fix them to hopefully return your body to full function. I am happy to say that I seldom have symptoms of chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia, but it took a lot of testing and “tweaking” to get to where I am today. They love puzzles and at Renewed Vitality, they will help find all your puzzle pieces to get you back to feeling great.

Sue Miller