Reverse Fibromyalgia with Natural Medicine / Alternative Medicine - Dr. Arlan Cage, ND

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\f0\fs24 \cf0 Fibromyalgia is a name given to a set of conditions. It basically means
fibrous, achy muscles. And it\'d5s highlighted by pain in the soft tissues\'d1not the joints.
So muscles, where muscles and tendons insert into bones; sometimes on either side of the
spine; and it\'d5s especially common at the base of the skull, the shoulders, the back,
and the hips and thighs. Conventional treatment involves pain-suppressing medications, sometimes
antidepressants, which also can help suppress pain, and mostly they don\'d5t work long-term.
More than half the people who take these for fibromyalgia actually don\'d5t experience
any benefit from the pain-suppressing drugs or the antidepressants. These drugs, long-term,
have side effects: the antidepressants can inhibit your sex drive; they can make you
emotionally flat. The pain medicines often will inhibit your GI tract\'d1you can become
constipated, which leads to other systemic problems as toxins are improperly eliminated
from the body. So it\'d5s basically a no-win situation.\
\ In fibromyalgia patients, what I have found
in my practice is that there are two primary causes: the first is in one hundred percent
of the patients I\'d5ve seen with fibromyalgia\'d1when I test them, they are toxic with heavy metal
poisoning. The second cause is that many, many people in our society are deficient in
the element iodine, and when any tissue in the body becomes deficient in iodine, it will
become fibrous, painful, and can possibly develop cysts and nodules, which are often
found in fibromyalgia patients.\ \
Most people come to my office\'d1they\'d5ve already been given a diagnosis of fibromyalgia,
perhaps by the rheumatologist or some other doctor, or maybe they just don\'d5t know but
they look up symptoms on the internet and think, \'d2Oh gee, maybe I have fibromyalgia,\'d3
and then they find me through my website usually, because I have some extensive information
about fibromyalgia. So when they come in, I do exhaustive health histories when did
it start, under what circumstances? Then we proceed to a physical examination where I
confirm that they do have pain at the classic fibromyalgia trigger points, and then we\'d5ll
proceed into a testing phase: I will test people using what\'d5s called the \'d2provoked
urine test\'d3 to look for the presence of heavy metals, and then I also do a function
test\'d1that\'d5s also a urine test\'d1to look for iodine deficiencies.\
\ When I evaluate the patient and they have
the classic pain pattern with pain at the trigger points of fibromyalgia, I basically
consider all cases of fibromyalgia to involve heavy metal toxicities, and/or iodine deficiencies,
until I prove otherwise through the test results. So far, in every fibromyalgia patient I\'d5ve
seen, I have yet to prove otherwise, meaning they all have heavy metal toxicities, and
usually iodine deficiencies. So that\'d5s where I start\'d1I begin a treatment protocol
aimed at assisting the body to eliminate heavy metals from the body and replacing iodine
at a sufficient dose based on the test results.\ \
In what I\'d5ve found works in my practice is most fibromyalgia patients come in and
they need some kind of improvement in their diet and lifestyle situations, and so I put
them on a very hypoallergenic diet using foods that are low in arachidonic acid and are high
in other nutrients like bioflavonoids, a lot of fruits and vegetables. I then find that
the part of the main therapy I use is intravenous vitamins and minerals in a combination of
something called a Meyer\'d5s cocktail\'d1it involves intravenous vitamin C and B-vitamins,
and a few minerals like magnesium, calcium, and selenium. I\'d5ve had patients who come
in and had to practically crawl into the office, and after one treatment of these intravenous
vitamins and minerals were able to skip out of the office. Sometimes it works that quickly;
usually it can take longer. Because we know of the presence of heavy metals in these patients,
I will always add in some form of oral chelation using some combination of EDTA or DMPS. And
that\'d5s a long-term treatment, and I prefer it over the intravenous chelation simply because
side effects of the chelation therapies are lessened by spreading it out over time.\
\ The ones who test deficient for iodine\'d1I
will add some form of iodine supplement, and it needs to be a combination of both io
\f1\i dine \f0\i0 and potassium io
\f1\i dide \f0\i0 . Different tissues in the body will
need one form or the other, and so proper supplementation will require both forms of
iodine. In some patients who are able to get in three days a week, I will add something
called constitutional hydrotherapy: this is a treatment that involves alternating hot
and cold applications over the torso of the body, combined with an electrical sine wave
stimulation over the liver. And what this does is it stimulates the body\'d5s parasympathetic
nervous system, which is the opposite end of the spectrum from the fight-or-flight response,
and it\'d5s a form of the nervous system used to promote healing. The electrical sine waves
stimulation increases the flow of bile through the liver and actually will accelerate detoxifying
the metals from the body.\ \
Something I have patients do at home is the use of castor oil packs: these are external
applications for about a half hour every evening of a piece of flannel cloth that\'d5s been
soaked in castor oil. And this, too, will accelerate the flow of lymphatic fluid through
the liver and help accelerate the healing. There are a couple things that I will add
in my treatments that will involve basically symptom-control while these other, more root-cause
therapies are having a chance to have their effect. I\'d5ll use homeopathic injections
at the trigger points, which can control pain; and in some patients, I will also include
acupuncture treatments to control the pain. \
\ Well I actually have a great success rate.
Depending upon the severity of the heavy metal burden in each individual patient, most of
my patients will be completely pain-free within six months to a year-and-a-half. If someone
wants to reverse fibromyalgia, they need to start with a natural living lifestyle that
includes whole foods\'d1not processed foods. They need to include supplementation of the
essential nutrients that aren\'d5t in our food any longer, like vitamins and minerals,
and essential fatty acids from fish oil or flax oil. They really need to learn about
detoxification and how to take care of themselves, because our environment does cause us to be
exposed to heavy metals and other toxins on an ongoing basis. And then they need to find
a naturopathic doctor near them who can implement a therapeutic plan based on the principles
I\'d5ve discussed here. \f2 \
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