There's new research that the fascia, connective tissue which binds the muscles, causes the muscle pain in fibromyalgia.  This is not a new idea.  In fact, 1904 a physician proposed that inflammation of "white fibrous tissue" that surrounds the muscles was the source of fibromyalgia pain then called fibrosis or chronic rheumatism.  Many fibromyalgia sufferers further these studies by stating, "It hurts on the outside of my muscles not the inside." 

Fascia is connective tissue fibers, primarily collagen, that form sheets or bands beneath the skin to attach and separate muscles and other internal organs. Fascia are classified according to their distinct layers, their functions and their anatomical location: superficial fascia, deep (or muscle) fascia, and visceral (or parietal) fascia. Like ligaments and tendons, fascia are connective tissues, containing closely packed bundles of collagen fibers. Fascia are consequently flexible structures able to resist great tension forces until the wavy pattern of fibers has been straightened out by the pulling force. These collagen fibers are produced by the fibroblasts located within the fascia.

Fascia are similar to ligaments and tendons as they have collagen as their major component. They differ in their location and function: ligaments join one bone to another bone, tendons join muscle to bone, and fascia surround muscles or other structures. This connective tissue around muscle is highly sensitive to pain. In fact, the fascia is about as sensitive to pain as our skin. Needles inserted into the thick outer layer of fascia surrounding the muscle hurt more than needles poked into muscle tissue itself.

The cells of fascia direct the repair process of muscle by secreting more collagen, or "goo" that attracts immune cells to the area of damage.  The muscle tissue and especially the surrounding fascia is continually engaged in a process of damage and repair.  Fibroblasts are continually repairing the collagen network in which they live, just like a spider repairs its web.  Excess collagen and scar tissue can result.  This is why some massage therapists will say to their patients, "You're fascia feels tight and thick."

People with fibromyalgia often say their muscles feel "bruised" similar to muscle soreness.  One study found that an increase in collagen to the fascia may be the culprit.  Comparing specially stained muscle biopsies, researches described a "slight, but significant, increase in collagen surrounding the muscle cells of the fibromyalgia patients."

Chronic activation of the flight-or-flight response may be promoting tension in the fascia of the muscles and lead to tissue damage.  Studies show elevated pressures inside the muscles of fibromyalgia may reflect a flight-or-flight nervous system.  Muscles and fascia may be constantly tensed in fight-or-flight mode and more prone to injury and damage than just from our usual daily activities.  

Fascial dysfunction and inflammation may be the cause of wide-spread muscle pain in fibromyalgia.  Excess tension in the fascia due to activation of the fight-or-flight system may lead to excessive tissue damage, similar to over-exercised muscles.  Too boot, lack of sleep, a critical time for body tissue repair and remolding, does not provide adequate repair time for strained and damaged fascia.

These chickpea flour waffles are very satiating because of the high amount of protein (each waffle has almost as much protein as one chicken egg), which also aids in blood sugar regulation, and they taste delicious!

2 c. chickpea flour
2 t. baking powder
1 t. baking soda
1/4 t. sea salt
heaping 1/4 t. cinnamon
2 t. natural sugar
1 1/2 c. buttermilk
6 T. unsalted butter
1 t. vanilla

Begin preheating your waffle maker.

Mix your dry ingredients in a bowl.

In another bowl, mix your wet ingredients.

Whisk everything together until there are no lumps (the batter is fairly thin).

Spray your waffle maker with a thin layer of oil.

Ladle a good 1/4 cup of batter for each waffle (I like setting 3 for cooking).

Repeat five times. Serve immediately!

​That’s right: you can scramble chickpeas! Simply mix chickpea flour, water, salt, and a pinch of turmeric for golden color, and you have the makings of some great scrambled “eggs” without ever breaking a shell. I’m partial to chopped shallots and fresh herbs in my scramble, but just like the egg variety, you can make this your own with the ingredients and seasonings you prefer.

3/4  cup water
2/3 chickpea flour
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4  teaspoon fine sea salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/3 cup minced shallots
1 tablespoon chopped fresh, flat-leaf parsley leaves
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
Freshly ground black pepper

In a small bowl, whisk the water, flour, turmeric, and salt until smooth. Let stand for at least 10 minutes or for up to 1 hour.

In a medium skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the shallots; cook, stirring, for 4 to 5 minutes, until softened but not browned.

Pour the chickpea batter into the skillet; let it cook, without touching it, for 3 to 5 minutes, until the edges begin to set. Using a spatula, break up the mixture to resemble scramble eggs. Add the parsley and basil; continue to cook, stirring, until the scramble appears set.

Season to taste with pepper and serve immediately.

​A lonely Florida dentist is confronted by a figure from the past bringing news that sends him on an eventful journey of discovery.

​"Serial Killer with Piers Morgan" delves into the minds of depraved serial killers for the first time. These are individuals who haunted communities for decades, and viewers are given access to maximum security prisons to discover what drove these people to kill. Morgan meets with victims' families and law enforcement as he seeks to understand the actions of these killers and what it took to race against time to stop them. Mark Riebe and Lorenzo Gilyard are some of the people who are interviewed.

​Wracked with guilt after the brutal death of his wife, Stanley Hill inflicts his own brand of revenge after the killers escape justice.

​A city teenager travels to Montana to go hunting with his estranged father, but the trip becomes a battle for survival when they encounter a grizzly bear.

​Four years after the Battle of Gallipoli, Australian farmer Joshua Connor (Russell Crowe) travels to Turkey to find his three sons, who never returned home from the war. When he arrives in Istanbul, he meets others who have also suffered losses: hotelier Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko) and her son, Orhan, who befriends Connor; and Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdogan), a Turkish officer who fought against Connor's sons and now may be their father's only hope in finding closure.

​After his wife and injured daughter disappear from the emergency room, a man becomes convinced the hospital is hiding something.

​Chicago librarian Henry De Tamble (Eric Bana) suffers from a rare genetic disorder that causes him to drift uncontrollably back and forth through time. On one of his sojourns, he meets the love of his life, Claire (Rachel McAdams), and they marry. But the problems and complexities of any relationship are multiplied by Henry's inability to remain in one time and place, so that he and his beloved are continually out of sync.

​Madonna's former bandmates discuss her formative years as the drummer for the Breakfast Club.

​When her idyllic vacation takes an unthinkable turn, Ellen Martin begins investigating a fake insurance policy.

Flight or Fright is a collection of sixteen short stories (and one poem) that tap into one of the most common fears; fear of air travel. Stephen King and his co-editor Bev Vincent have created an anthology featuring stories about the fear of flying and all the terrible things that could happen during air travel.

​Fibromyalgia is not a great condition to have at any time, but it’s especially frustrating when the holidays roll around. The stress of Thanksgiving festivities can bring on flare ups, and as if that’s not enough, the tempting foods that aggravate fibro are beckoning to you from the Thanksgiving table.

Whether you are going to see family out of town or you will be the one hosting the event, you need to plan things so that your stress and fatigue are minimized.

Cooking for a large crowd can wear anyone out, especially if you suffer from fibromyalgia. Follow these tips to make the holiday more pleasurable for you:

First, see if someone else can take over hosting Thanksgiving dinner. If not, purchase a complete holiday meal from a food merchant or grocery store. It can be very affordable, breaking down to as little as $6 per person, depending on how many guests you have.

Recruit family members to bring dishes in potluck fashion. Or, if you can afford it, you may consider hiring a caterer to prepare the Thanksgiving meal in your home.

If you’re cooking yourself, spread out the food preparation and cooking over a few days, so you don’t have to do it all at once. This can be more doable for you and you can take rest breaks as needed.

Don’t forget to ask for help if you need it. If you cannot tackle the housework, hire a maid to come in. If this is not feasible, the family can live with a little dust! Assign clean-up duties for several members to help with so you are not left with a disaster.

Dress comfortably for the environment so you are not too hot or too cold. Dressing in layers will help keep you comfortable, as you can take off layers as needed.

Don’t feel guilty if you need to get away to a quiet part of the house to relax.
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Cut corners, like buying the pie crust already made. Other time- and energy-saving tricks include buying pre-made cranberry sauce or frozen bread to bake. If there is someone who thinks something has to be done a certain way and you’re not up to it, they can be responsible for it!

Use paper plates; this may not go over well with some people but it is a great way for keeping clean-up less of a hassle.

Thanksgiving Traveling to see family can be just as much stress as hosting, with the traffic on the roads and rushing to get to your destination. Here are some ideas for holiday travel:

• Call ahead and let your host know you will need a break once you arrive to their home. They need to know you will not be able to jump right into helping out when you get there.
• Take extra medications and supplements with you to have on hand. This is helpful in case you end up staying longer than you had planned.
• If you are traveling a long way try to leave a day early. It is best to have at least one day of rest before the holiday festivities.
• Contribute without having to do too much work by offering to supply a centerpiece or help out financially to provide food or dessert for the Thanksgiving feast. This way you avoid wearing yourself out, but you have helped out in an alternative way.

​Those who deal with chronic pain issues need a bit more guidance than your average Joe.  For those sufferers, friends and family members often leave an unintentional deaf ear when needed the most.  It is not that these individuals intend to leave us astray, but rather they can't fully comprehend the daily tasks of trials and tribulations that leave us drained and anxiety ridden. 

It is at these times that prayer is most needed.  By allowing your life's path to be by guided by God takes the onus of control off your back.  As you well know, life offers no control.  If we have control for the moment, it is often fleeting, leaving us without a moment's notice.  After all, there are times in life we must go with the flow, drift on the river of intent, and hope it leads us to peaceful grounds.  By questioning and admonishing what is happening to us only leaves us with a life of regret.  And, as you well know, stress causes more pain, and that you can do without.  Put your pain in someone's arms, allow your life to be guided, ask God to come in, and pray each moment you need him most.  You will be amazed at how often your prayers are answered and peace is blessed upon you.

If you need some spiritual inspiration, God's Message Today offers a Monday's Blessing Blog.  I write this blog, too, as an outlet to aid my own spirituality.  I realized at the onset of this illness I needed a higher power to get through life's daily nuances prayer has amazing attributes and can help you battle that fire in our souls.

Dr. Mehmet Oz offers this advice, "Regardless of what motivates people to pray, there's no denying that a lot of people do it. One study shows that 36 percent of people use complementary and alternative medicine, but that number almost doubles when prayer is included in the definition. Those respondents say they use prayer for their own health and to help others. Even more telling: Of those people who said they prayed for
health reasons, 70 percent said that prayer was helpful. Why? Seems like it may work through several different mechanisms:- It relaxes: A form of meditation (no matter what your religious preferences), prayer helps to slow breathing and brain activity, and reduces heart rate and blood pressure. All relaxing, all good.
- It's positive: Let's face it. When you pray, you typically don't finish feeling like you want to rap somebody's ankles with a wooden spoon. You leave being filled with peace, joy, and other emotions that are worthy of being printed on holiday cocktail napkins. There's some evidence that these emotions lead to positive physiological responses throughout the entire body. Our stress hormone levels prepare for a peaceful existence. Perhaps more importantly, our immune system becomes less agitated so chemicals like proinflammatory cytokines, which act like kerosene on a fire, are not driving our joints and arteries to overreact to every biologic stress inside us. The result: A less inflamed, more beautiful place to live.- It's better than nothing (i.e. the placebo effect): I'd be remiss in my reporting if I didn't say that some of the benefits derived from prayer can simply be accounted for because the person feels like it's helping, whether it's physiologically helping or not. Placebo effects have been shown to account for 70 percent of the benefit
in some procedures. My stance here is that thinking you're doing something to help yourself is a big part of prayer anyway." He recommends reading You Being Beautiful.

Change is inevitable on your trek with this new syndrome.  The signs and symptoms of fibromyalgia are diverse.  It is odd the way they can appear and fluctuate in severity depending on numerous factors, such as weather conditions, stress, level of physical activity, poor nutrition, hormone fluctuations, and even the time of the day.  These and other components, when combined with the many different symptoms can affect the complexity of the syndrome. 

Fibromyalgia is a complex syndrome, and its symptoms are complex as well.  Knowing what causes this would certainly make our journey easier.  But, advent research is on the horizon, and will soon develop more effective and sophisticated treatment plans.  Until then, there are many options to explore as seen here on this website that will make your life much easier. 

The good news is, by following many guidelines here, you may find improvement in your condition.  More importantly, it has been noted, that according to individuals who combine natural and appropriate medicinal support, you can actually find yourself in remission!  Take a moment and jot down which of the following symptoms you experience so that as you peruse this site you can find aded relief.

Fibromyalgia Symptoms:

Persistent muscle pain
Fatigue
Joint Pain
Sleep disturbances
Headache
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Fibro Fog
Confusion, impaired attention
Hypersensitivity to chemicals, allergens
Hypersensitivity to alcohol, medications
Mood swings, depression
Anxiety
Numbness or tingling sensations
Painful menstrual periods
Shortness of breath
Vision problems
Carpal tunnel syndrome like pains
Vision problems
Sensitivity to temperature changes
Chest pain like symptoms
Heart palpitations
Frequent infections
Weight changes - gain or loss

So what are you waiting for?  Dig into this site and regain your health!

Sugar is definitely a no-no when speaking to anyone who has implemented Paleo into their diet.  This recipe will also appeases vegan counterparts who are interested in investing in a healthy lifestyle.

Why are dates good for you?

• They may help lower cholesterol. Dates are loaded with soluble fiber, which may help to lower the total cholesterol in your blood.
• They’re good for bone health. Dates contain minerals like selenium, magnesium, manganese and copper, which are thought to keep bones healthy and help to prevent osteoporosis.
• They’re good for constipation. Dates are known for helping to relieve constipation, most likely due to their soluble fiber and magnesium content.
• They’re rich in iron. Dates are a plant-based source of iron, which may help to prevent anemia. (I ate a bunch of them during my second pregnancy, and I managed to avoid anemia like I had during my first pregnancy.)
• They’re good for your skin. Dates contain vitamins C and D, which are thought to help with skin elasticity.

1 pound  dates , pitted (about 4 cups tightly packed)
1 1/2 cups water

In the bowl of a large food processor fitted with an "S" blade, combine the pitted dates and water.

Process until very smooth, scraping down the bowl to make sure all of the dates are incorporated.
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Store the date paste in an airtight container in the fridge for up to two weeks, and use it in your favorite healthy recipes.

If you're gluten free, here's an alternative crust that will definitely be added to your favorite files.  This cornmeal crust is crispy, crunchy can light.  It's a great pizza crust, and it makes a delicious base for chili as well.  To ensure it is completely gluten-free, use gluten-free flour.

3/4 cup plant milk
2 Tbs. fresh lime juice
 1 cup oat flour
3/4 cup fine cornmeal, more for dusting
1/3 cup almond flour
1 tab. ground flaxseed
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. sea salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. 

In a bowl place all dry ingredients.

Add milk and lime juice. Knead lightly with your hands so that the dough is stringy but not sticky.

Spread a large piece of parchment paper on a clean work surface.  Sprinkle some cornmeal on it.  Roll out to 1/4 inch thick.  Use your hands to lightly push dough around perimeter and build up a slight edge. Slide parchment paper with crust unto pizza pan sheet.  Top with your favorite toppings and bake 15-18 minutes.