Fibromyalgia is a household word today. Television and magazine advertisements flood our radio airwaves and glossy pages, raising public awareness. Some promise cures, while others simply claim to help relieve certain symptoms. Well, fourteen years ago, this was certainly not the case. The Internet was in its infancy (as far as public use went) and the barrage of relevant information that the average person now has at their fingertips simply didn’t exist at the time. I know… because fourteen years ago I was suffering… and searching for answers.
My situation back then mimicked that of many others: severe fatigue, muscle and joint pain, mild sore throat, and a general stability of feeling unwell. I remember telling my family and friends, “I wish you could live in my body for just one day…you wouldn’t believe I’ve lived this way for so long!” At the time, she had a two-year-old and a five-year-old who they hoped would exude the vigor and energy they saw in other stay-at-home moms. I saw general practitioners, specialists, acupuncturists, massage therapists, and countless others who even gave me a glimmer of hope to get my life back. Any literature available at the time was nothing but depressing…the most optimistic headline would be “How I’ve Learned to Cope with Fibromyalgia and Try to Lead a Normal Life for the Past Twenty Years.” Gathering the current information at that time just put me in a negative and hopeless state. But, by some miracle, my luck and my mood would change.
Through some remote channel of friends, I found out about a holistic practice in a neighboring state and made an appointment. My particular doctor (yes, a real doctor) was well versed in Eastern and Western medicine and was originally from Russia… and our first date was an hour-long dialogue. The tests administered there were not like the hundreds I’d had previously…saliva test and hair analysis, in addition to blood, urine and feces and sent to a highly specialized laboratory somewhere in the middle of the country. As I waited for the test results, my body was still sick, but my spirit, for the first time, was beginning to heal.
The test results came in…and the blanket category of ‘fibromyalgia’ may have been wrong. The condition I had was adrenal exhaustion and systemic Candida, a yeast overgrowth in the body that can wreak havoc on every major system in the body. Again, back then, no one had ever heard of this, let alone diagnosed it. Today, the web alone has millions of pages dedicated to it. To combat and cure this, I met with the nutritionist at this holistic practice and was put on a very strict diet excluding sugar, breads, starches and many, many other things. Basically all I could eat was protein, vegetables, and occasionally popcorn and rice cakes. I was given quite a few supplements to boost my immune system and normalize my adrenal function. Lastly, my doctor (again, several years ahead of the curve) told me to get the pure Matcha green tea powder due to the antioxidants and numerous healing abilities and to drink the tea twice a day.
Today, fourteen years later, I play competitive tennis three times a week and go to the gym six times a week since becoming certified as a personal trainer. My energy level is high, my stress levels are low, and my outlook on most things is always optimistic. I still wince when I hear the term “fibromyalgia” and wonder if that’s really what these people have inflicted. I no longer follow a rigid diet (I still need my licorice fix often) and now only take two supplements per day. The one routine I’ve never broken is drinking my matcha green tea twice a day, especially since the health benefits go way beyond what I thought years ago.