What is life like for a person who feels pain all over their body from the moment they get up in the morning? What can they do if they become fatigued from any activity? Coping with day-to-day life if you suffer from fibromyalgia is difficult. We offer you some guidelines to improve your quality of life.

The fibromyalgia is an atypical disease: causes chronic pain and is not degenerative, but it is not curable and its causes are not known. This does not mean that the symptoms of the disease are always present in the lives of the people who suffer from it. There are many steps we can take to have a good quality of life and they all have a common characteristic: they require a strong commitment from the patient to their lifelong health.

• The role of food. A deficiency of some nutrients can increase pain or lead to increased muscle stiffness. That is why it is important to eat foods with calcium such as milk, shellfish, spinach or chard, and foods containing magnesium such as almonds, pistachios and sunflower or pumpkin seeds.

The consumption of foods rich in Omega 3 is also recommended because it reduces inflammation and has antidepressant properties, which is important for balancing patients' moods. Omega 3 is contained in salmon, tuna, mackerel, chia seeds and walnuts.

The raw vegetables have The nuts also have great antioxidant power and provide alkalinising minerals and healthy fatty acids.

• Stress and fibromyalgia.  It is accepted that one of the triggers of fibromyalgia is stress. There are people who lose the ability to adapt to stressors, either gradually or in the face of a defined event. The diversity of symptomatology that coincides in these patients makes it possible to establish some common features of the disease, but it is always different because the stressors in each patient are different.

A study by the Department of Psychology at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, published in the journal Psicothema, concluded that people with fibromyalgia were less able to recover from stressors and that modulation in cognitive processes could help them to find moments of rest and focus less on pain and difficulties. As the study's author José Luís González Gutiérrez put it, "to the extent that a person perceives greater control over herself, she is more likely to find an appropriate balance between stress and recovery.".

On the other hand, the symptoms of the disease themselves generate stress in those suffering from the disease. Living with pain and difficulty performing tasks or lack of sleep prevents patients from managing daily routines properly and causes great frustration and stress among patients.  

What can we do to manage stress? Techniques such as yoga or tai-chi teach us to stretch physically and improve mobility, improve breathing and its effects on heart rate and improve sleep, which is so important for restful sleep.

• The role of biological medicine. Beyond making a diagnosis based on symptoms and "labelling" a disease, biological medicine search for the causes of the ailment. Although we know that stress is a trigger for fibromyalgia, the predisposition to suffer from this pathology depends on other factors that may be present in the organism and which we at Biosalud Day Hospital analyse:

Biological medicine in the treatment of fibromyalgia

The factors that we take into account in Biosalud Day Hospital to design a treatment for fibromyalgia are:

• Viral or bacterial infections: Although the causal relationship is not documented, more and more specialists and researchers are linking infections with fibromyalgia. In fact, at Biosalud Day Hospital we have found that in most cases of fibromyalgia, there is in fact an infection, which is caused by a infection with the bacterium borrelia that triggers all the symptoms of rheumatic disease.

• Metabolic disturbances: various endocrine disorders can cause severe pain and fatigue, so it is important to check for hypothyroidism, adrenal insufficiency or growth hormone deficiency.

• Capacity of mitochondria to manufacture energy: Myopathy is often one of the first symptoms of mitochondrial disorders. This inability of the mitochondria to produce energy would be the cause of the muscle weakness or heaviness in the muscles characteristic of fibromyalgia.

• Heavy metal poisoning: These substances are present in the air we breathe, products we consume (cosmetics, paints, water, pesticides, amalgam fillings...) and different elements that surround us every day. Chronic pain, depression and insomnia are symptoms of heavy metal poisoning, and are also typical of fibromyalgia.

• Ph of the indoor environment: When the body functions best, it has a balanced pH. And how can it be regulated? Diet is one of the best ways and, in the case of fibromyalgia, most patients report intestinal problems or some kind of food intolerance. Foods to eliminate from the diet include eggs, dairy products, sugar, soya, caffeine and chocolate.

The foods that help to alkalise the body from oily fish - its high Omega-3 content has anti-inflammatory and antidepressant effects, red fruits - with antioxidant properties -, broccoli, algae, onion or daikon turnip or pumpkin seeds, are some of the foods that we can introduce in our diet every day. They will help us to get better in the face of fibromyalgia.

With all these factors analysed, it can be seen that our approach to the treatment of fibromyalgia with biological medicine is holistic. It is just as important to know the patient's lifestyle habits as it is to carry out a rigorous battery of analytical tests to study all the aforementioned parameters. The treatment we design based on the results will always be personalised and will allow our patients to say goodbye to pain.