Fibromyalgia 101: What is it? What Causes It? Who Gets It & Why?

Welcome to the Fibromyalgia Summit 0:00

Hi. Welcome. I'm doctor Roger Murphy, and I'm your host of the Freedom from Fibromyalgia summit. So happy that you're joining this for this week of incredible presentations by experts from around the world, sharing their knowledge and steps for helping you overcome the symptoms of fibromyalgia. You know, there's a lot of misinformation about fibromyalgia. And unfortunately, in today's environment, it's really all about learning to live with fibromyalgia. Now, I don't think anybody should learn to live with fibromyalgia.

No one wants to learn to live with chronic pain. Diffuse, achy, sometimes disabling pain, poor sleep, fatigue, brain fog, irritable bowel syndrome, restless leg syndrome,

Fibromyalgia Symptoms and Who It Affects 0:53

and the many symptoms that make up this thing called fibromyalgia. In this summit, you're going to learn strategies that you can implement that will help you get on the right track to start to reverse your fibromyalgia, fibromyalgia is very much overcome with what you can. You can't overcome fibromyalgia. I specialize in fibromyalgia for the last 22 years and have helped thousands of patients around the world get their life back, and you can do the same. I want to share with you a few slides to get us started here.

Let's see if I can pull this up, but I want to share a few slides here to explain a little bit about fibromyalgia. So we look at, some of the symptoms we see. But first of all, I going to share with you that fibromyalgia is a syndrome. So we'll look at that here in just a minute. But fiber is an illness characterized by diffuse, sometimes disabling pain, poor sleep fatigue, brain fog, irritable bowel. But you can also have other symptoms associated with this syndrome, including headaches, anxiety, depression, chemical sensitivities, restless leg syndrome.

These are some of the things that we see in the fibromyalgia community. We know that fibromyalgia is syndrome affects about 4 million U.S. adults now. I think that number is climbing and could be as high as 10%, and also affects 3 to 6% of the people worldwide we see with long hauler syndrome. Now, we're seeing that those, those numbers are probably going to continue to go up. Fibromyalgia affects women between the ages of 20 and 50, and they make up the majority of fibromyalgia patients. Although there are men that have fibromyalgia and I have numerous men that are patients of mine.

And as I mentioned, fibromyalgia is worldwide.

Why Drug Therapy Alone Falls Short 2:44

I have patients certainly throughout North America, every state in, in America, patients in Canada, patients in South America and Africa, New Zealand, Australia. So fibromyalgia is not just an American illness or syndrome. It does affect patient, people around the world. And the criteria to to get the diagnosis of fibromyalgia was developed in 1990 by the American College of Rheumatology. They kind of put fibromyalgia on the map that was taken, 30 something years before. Doctors have started really to accept fibromyalgia.

Unfortunately, we still have some doctors out there who don't believe fibromyalgia exist. And we have doctors. The majority of doctors who don't really understand fibromyalgia certainly don't understand how to help those with the illness. To be able to realistically or dramatically reduce their symptoms. And as you'll learn in the summit, we're going to see that drug therapy alone is is really a dead end for fibromyalgia. And that's not to step on anybody's toes, because I'm not anti-drug by any means.

But for those of you who have fibromyalgia and for some of you, it's been a long, arduous, frustrating journey that you've been on. You've probably experienced that drugs can sometimes be unhelpful, but they can also create side effects in other problems. So what we see with fibromyalgia is it's really hard to drug your way out of fibromyalgia, because if you're taking a drug for every symptom, pretty soon your own half a dozen to a dozen drugs. And we know over a 15 year span, the best surveys show that those taking drug therapy alone don't see much of an improvement in their symptoms.

And in fact, they continue to get worse year after year. Now that's enough doom and gloom, because what I want to share with you is hope. Hope that you can overcome your fibromyalgia like others

Hope, Support, and Overcoming the Syndrome 4:42

who have been able to do so with the with the strategies and techniques and the information that we're going to be sharing with you on this summit. No one should have to learn to live with fibromyalgia, living with chronic pain and fatigue and poor sleep and not knowing. Is this going to be a good day or a bad day? Not knowing if you're going to be able to make plans with friends or family, having an illness, a chronic illness, one that affects you every day, that limits you being able to do the things that you love to do.

So many with fibromyalgia have had to go on disability. They've lost their jobs or their careers. They've oftentimes been, ridiculed or have been made to believe that they're hypochondriacs from family members or friends because those individuals just really don't understand this condition. For those of you that are watching the summit in support of someone who has fibromyalgia, thank you. Thank you so much. This is an illness that many don't understand, and I really want to salute you for being proactive to support, whether it's a family member or a coworker or just a friend who has fibromyalgia.

And you want to know more about this condition. For those of you who have fibromyalgia. Again, welcome. And you're going to learn information that will be life changing for some of you will be life saving. And I can't wait for you to get started listening, watching some of these incredible interviews that will change the paradigm that for many of you, you've been locked in for months or years. The paradigm saying that you just have to learn to live with it. You don't have to learn to live with fibromyalgia.

You certainly can overcome it. However, one of the things you need to really change is the idea of there's a drug or supplement or diet that's going to totally cure you. It just doesn't work that way. The the main thing I want you to have an open mind about is realizing that since fibromyalgia is just a syndrome, a syndrome is a group of symptoms that people have in common. And then we give it a name, irritable bowel syndrome, which is a group of symptoms that these folks have in common bloating, gas, stomach pain, constipation and diarrhea.

Irritable bowel syndrome. Does it cause those symptoms? It's only a name given to describe the symptoms of irritable that people have in common. Same thing with fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia doesn't cause these symptoms. What we want to do is we want to find what are the underlying causes of triggers, of the pain, of the fatigue of the poor sleep of the, brain fog of the fibro flares. Once you can start to uncover and learn about what are the triggers that are causing the symptoms, now you can take the steps with the right information to be able to correct the underlying causes.

We want to treat the root causes and not just treat the symptoms. And that's what you're going to learn in this summit. So I'm really excited to have you join us for this, this, week of informative, life saving, sort of life enhancing presentations and thank you so much for being a part of the summit. For those of you who are battling fibromyalgia, we've got answers for you. For those of you who are just curious, what is fibromyalgia or maybe wanting to support someone, a loved one or a coworker or a friend who has fibromyalgia.

Welcome and thank you. I salute you for being here.