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Over the last twenty-five years, I've talked with countless fibromyalgia patients about their experiences with the mainstream medical system. Many of them had long accepted mainstream medicine as their only option for health care. Practically all of them ended up in frustration and despair over the failure of that system to help them. They felt that the prospects for ever recovering their health were worse than dim; their outlook seemed dark, ominous, and foreboding.

These feelings, to me, are connoted by the black underbelly of the cloud in the photograph. What has drawn me to the photo again-and-again, however, is the bright sunshine radiating around the dark side of the cloud. This sunshine symbolizes to me the hopefulness that I believe fibromyalgia patients now have reason to feel.

Fibromyalgia patients' ill feelings toward mainstream medicine are justified. That medical system for the most part offers patients only pharmaceutical drugs. But not only do the older "fibromyalgia drugs" (mainly Amitriptyline and cyclobenzaprine) fail to benefit fibromyalgia patients; the newer ones (Cymbalta, Lyrica, Savella, and all the others) benefit patients little if any better.

The failures of these drugs, however, haven't stopped Big Pharma and mainstream medicine from proffering the patients more drugs. Big Pharma has recently targeted fibromyalgia patients as a huge drug market that promises enormous financial profits. New "fibromyalgia drugs" are coming, and the FDA, thirsty for millions in fees from Big Pharma, will approve the drugs for sale. But new "fibromyalgia drugs" will work no better than the older and current ones. The reason is that they don't correct the underlying causes of patients' symptoms. As long as those causes continue to impair patients, the patients will continue to suffer from fibromyalgia symptoms, regardless of what pharmaceuticals they take.

Mainstream medicine clearly has pain-sustaining shortcomings when it comes to fibromyalgia patients. I know this is no surprise to millions of patients.  What many patients may be unaware of, however, is that they no longer have to settle for the dark prospects of mainstream medicine.

I ask fibromyalgia patients to bear in mind a version of a metaphor (a trite one, I admit): that is, radiating around and beyond all dark clouds are bright, warm rays of sunshine. In the health care of fibromyalgia patients, that sunshine is scientifically-based, metabolism-normalizing natural medicine. Many fibromyalgia patients, of course, already know of nurturing radiance of this medical approach. But many others don't. Because of that, one of our new aims at FRF is to spread the word as wide and far as we possibly can.

We'll also spread the word about some new developments in health care. These give fibromyalgia patients good reason to expect to recover their health. The first development is that we've learned the main underlying mechanism of most patients' fibromyalgia. That mechanism is too little thyroid hormone regulation, due either to hypothyroidism or thyroid hormone resistance. Hypothyroidism and thyroid hormone resistance account for all of the symptoms of fibromyalgia and virtually all of the objectively verified abnormalities among patients. I want to emphasize that no other proposed mechanism of fibromyalgia comes even close to the inadequate thyroid hormone regulation hypothesis in accounting for what we know scientifically about the condition.

We've also learned of other underlying factors that worsen or complicate the severity of many patients' fibromyalgia. The most common of these factors are low cortisol, abnormal daytime/nighttime cortisol levels, faulty blood sugar regulation, sex hormone imbalances, pro-inflammatory diets, nutritional deficiencies, low physical fitness, and adverse effects of a variety of prescription drugs.

Clinicians Who Share Our Beliefs about Fibromyalgia Patients. The other development is the increasing numbers of clinicians who understand that fibromyalgia is a metabolic disorder.

As far as I know, the concept of fibromyalgia as a metabolic disorder due to too little thyroid hormone regulation was first proposed almost simultaneously by Professor Jean Eisinger in France and my research group. That was in the early 1990s, and at that time, we precious few others subscribed to the concept. Now, however, countless clinicians share the belief that fibromyalgia results mainly from too little thyroid hormone regulation; they also know that the patient's condition is often worsened or complicated by the other metabolism-impeding factors I listed above. These clinicians also know that integrated metabolic therapies and lifestyle practices enable most fibromyalgia/thyroid patients to recover their health. And the clinicians cooperate with patients who want to use the therapies and lifestyle practices. With so many natural or alternative medicine clinicians sharing our point view on the condition, sunshine may be shed on some 25% of the world of fibromyalgia.

Another development that fibromyalgia/thyroid patients may find interesting is the growing movement of self-treating patients. This movement arose from fibromyalgia patients' understandable frustration and impatience with the medical system. In this movement, people take full control of their own health and well-being, not leaving these to medical practitioners. They learn what they need to know, often by taking part in Internet groups of self-treating people who share with others what they've learned. And they put their knowledge to work to improve or recover their health. We at FRF praise the self-reliance of these people, and we'll do everything we can to provide information they need to better understand fibromyalgia and the methods they can use to achieve optimal health.

On this page, I've mentioned only our new educational aims, which we are vigorously pursuing. On our mission page, we've itemized our other specific new objectives, which I invite you to consider. If you feel that these objectives are worthwhile, we'll be grateful if you'll help us achieve them by contributing to FRF. Donations to FRF are tax-deductible. Also, after you read about our new objectives, if you have any suggestions or questions, we'll be happy to hear from you. All best wishes to you from the whole FRF team.

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fi·bro·my·al·gi·a
(fīb' rō mī aľ' jē ə), n.

1. Pathology. widespread pain and tenderness, typically accompanied by other symptoms characteristic of hypothyroidism, usually   caused mainly by a thyroid hormone deficiency or partial resistance to thyroid hormone, and often complicated by other conditions such as cortisol and sex hormone deficiencies or imbalances, a pro-inflammatory diet, nutritional deficiencies, low physical fitness, and adverse effects of prescription medications; afflicted individuals usually recover when treated with integrative metabolic therapies and lifestyle improvements, and especially when treated with thyroid hormone therapies other than replacement with T₄ or T₄/T₃.

2. Marketing. a medical diagnosis for a set of symptoms claimed to be of unknown origin and incurable, providing a population of medical-care  consumers motivated by chronic pain to purchase a variety of prescription drugs that are largely ineffective but through media advertising and endorsements by researchers funded by Big-Pharma, provide substantial revenue for pharmaceutical corporations  and the medical researchers the corporations fund.

Light is Shining on Steadily More of the World of Fibromyalgia

Many natural or alternative medicine clinicians now share FRF's point of view point on fibromyalgia.

Our viewpoint is that fibromyalgia is a metabolic disorder, and afflicted patients require metabolic treatment and lifestyle changes that improve metabolism. The most important metabolic treatment for most patients is thyroid hormone therapy other than T4 or T4/T3 replacement. Thyroid hormone replacement (with  dose adjustments that keep the TSH within its current-but-often-changing reference-range) is not effective, according to studies, for some 50% of patients.

In that today, many clinicians share our point of view, most fibromyalgia patients can recover their health. To accomplish that, they must find natural medicine clinicians, alternative medicine clinicians, complementary medicine clinicians, or what ever one wants to call these more effective clinicians. The patients must them work with the clinicians to improve or hopefully fully recover their health.

If you cannot find a cooperative clinician, don't despair. You still have the option of self-guidance to recovery. We at FRF now enthusiastically advocate the self-care approach for fibromyalgia/thyroid patients.

Support of the movement of patient-self-care isn't new. In his early 1989 book titled Chronic Muscle Pain Syndrome (Berkley Books, New York, pages 12-13), rheumatologist Dr. Paul Davidson praised the self-care movement.

Dr. Davidson wrote, ". . . enough is known about fibrositis (termed "fibromyalgia" since late 1989) to permit effective self-treatment to some extent . . ." (Italics ours).

Dr. Davidson also wrote, "Self-treatment has no small significance in this age of enormous medical costs. Whatever sufferers can do to participate in their own treatment represents a great source of self-satisfaction and a saving of consumer dollars."

It's worth noting that Dr. Davidson was aware in 1989 that enough was known about fibromyalgia. ". . . to permit highly effective treatment in most cases." He was referring to treatment by clinicians, and he was right—enough was know at that time to effectively treat most patients. Some ten-years later, however, high-profile rheumatologists who studied fibromyalgia admitted publicly that they had never gotten a fibromyalgia well. These same rheumatologists, to this day, steadfastly refuse to consider that fibromyalgia can be a symptom pattern that results from hypothyroidism or thyroid hormone resistance. Until they do, they'll have continued their record of failing to help virtually any fibromyalgia patients recover their health.