Other commonly reported symptoms include headaches, unrecuperative sleep, depression, weight gain, and irritable bowel-like complaints. There is no known cause or cure for Fibromyalgia. Generally, treatment focuses on reducing the severity of particularly troublesome symptoms such as localized pain, fatigue, unrecuperative sleep, and depression through drug therapy.
The way that Fibromyalgia has been labelled by contemporary medicine is something quite familiar to westerners. Most people are used to the notion that when certain symptoms occur together they are labelled as particular conditions, illness, or disease such as cancer, diabetes, or Fibromyalgia. These labels are then used to provide treatment that has been known to be effective in providing relief from symptoms in those individuals with the same set of criteria.
Despite this widespread acceptance in the west, not everyone views illness in the exact same way. For centuries, traditional Chinese medicine has viewed disease as imbalance within the elements of the body. Even in North America, holistic views of illness are becoming more widely understood and accepted.
The Whole Health Therapy Approach to Illness
Many of these alternative views take a whole health approach to wellness. Simply put, this means that in order to be healthy every aspect of the individual (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) must be free of issues. Often practitioners describe problems in any of these aspects in terms of energy flow. In this way, instead of noting pain in the area of the liver, one might see that energy to that particular area is blocked, stagnant, or weak. In order for the physical body to heal, these areas of dis-ease must be addressed.
A Holistic View of Fibromyalgia
In terms of Fibromyalgia, whole health therapy methods see individual symptoms as clues to disruptions in the energy of the healthy body. Each clue is meant to draw attention to a particular issue that needs to be addressed by the Fibromyalgia sufferer. Such issues may be physical injury to the site but may also include cell memory of past trauma or unresolved emotional issues. Damage can also be caused by stress caused by living in denial or trying to attain an unhealthy level of perfectionism.
Unlike the view of contemporary medicine, alternative health practitioners approach each person and his or her “Fibromyalgia” symptoms as unique. In this way, therapists work one on one with each individual to create a program unique to the issues that need to be addressed. The actually methods used will depend entirely upon the practitioner’s area of expertise and how these resonate with the comfort level of the Fibromyalgia sufferer.
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