Is Fibromyalgia Real?
Dr. Gates: Okay go ahead.
Dr. Rutherford: Hi, I’m Doctor Rutherford, I’m Dr. Martin Rutherford, I am
a doctor of chiropractic and I am a certified functional medicine
practitioner.
Dr. Gates: I’m Dr. Randall Gates. I am a chiropractor as well as a Board
Certified Chiropractic Neurologist.
Dr. Rutherford: And we treat fibromyalgia. And the topic today is, is
fibromyalgia real? I have fibromyalgia, it’s real. Let’s start off with
that, okay. But the confusion I think is the term; fibromyalgia and the
diagnosis of it. The term is a dumb term, It is a term, but I’m not putting
you down, okay? It’s not a dumb term because it means you don’t have it, or
because it means it’s in your head, it’s a dumb terms because it means pain
in your muscle fibers; that tells you nothing.
The reason it tells you nothing is because to date, the accepted way
of diagnosing fibromyalgia is with, and Dr. Gates maybe gets more specific
than this, with the specific number of points that will tell you whether
you have sensitivity in your muscle fibers or not, and if you have it, they
diagnose you as fibromyalgia, if you don’t, they tell you that you don’t
have it even though your entire life is falling apart.
Fibromyalgia has a very, in our world, fibromyalgia is a very
specific clinical entity. The name is poor, I’d like to change it but it’s
useful for communication. For those of you who have it, it’s not a
psychological problem. All right? It is a neurological problem.
Dr. Gates is going to expand on that briefly. It is a bio-chemical
probably more specifically an auto-immunish problem and immune problem.
Most of our fibromyalgia patients that come in here have gut problems.
Frequently that gut problem is actually celiac, which for those of you who
are familiar with celiac, means that you have a sensitivity to the now
becoming more known gluten protein.
Dr. Rutherford: Or non-Celiac gluten sensitivity.
Dr. Gates: Or you have non-Celiac gluten sensitivity. Usually, you’re
going to have an over-fired sympathetic nervous system, which I think Dr.
Gates is going to address briefly. You’ll usually have something called
central sensitization, again, it’s a neurological issue, it’s a brain
issue, where you have the sensitivity, your husband, your boyfriend, your
girlfriend, your significant other hugs you, it doesn’t feel too good. You
have pain that comes and goes all over your body. And let’s see, thyroid,
guts, immune, central sensitization, and stress. Stress and brain.
This is what creates the abnormal, eclectic, variable symptoms that
you have all over the place and drive you and your endocrinologist and your
other doctors completely bananas, because frequently, all of your tests are
normal. But, you’re not crazy. You have fibromyalgia and it is serious and
we know that you have a lot of problems. You want to jump in on that.
Dr. Rutherford: Yes I do, yes I do. So, at one point fibromyalgia was a
diagnosis of exclusion, meaning you didn’t have rheumatoid arthritis but
you had this pain all over your body. We now know that’s not really true.
We know that there are many things wrong with the fibromyalgia patient.
These are all research studies just printed out from this morning, talking
about certain things going on with the fibromyalgia bio-chemically,
physiologically, and in the brain. To get more specific, we know that
fibromyalgia patients learn pain in their brain.
Yes, the pain is in their head because they’re brain is learning pain
analogous to a child learning mathematical problems. So, you’re learning
the pain largely because many of you have been through extremely stressful
circumstances. That stress has a bio-chemical influence on how your nerves
transmit pain. So, stress, causes your pain nerves to learn pain. All of
you need to get the book, “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.” Just know that. To
understand the mechanism of stress better, because it’s huge.
Dr. Gates: Bob Sapolsky.
Dr. Rutherford: By Robert Sapolsky from Stanford university because it is
the best explanation of how stress affects a human being or another mammal
on the face of the planet it my opinion. And then also you need to know
that many of you fibromyalgia patients have underlying auto-immune problems
or immune inflammation and that immune, inflammation is making the nerves
transmitting to your spinal cord, more sensitive to pain.
Dr. Gates: And Noni juice isn’t going to fix it.
Dr. Rutherford: And that’s why. I don’t know if we can say that.
Dr. Gates: Sorry. I just said it.
Dr. Rutherford: We don’t want to slander anybody. But that’s why so many
of you say – I know, I’m just-
Dr. Gates: We’re looking for data.
Dr. Rutherford: So, many of you say, “Oh, it hurts my muscles so bad, it’s
so tender.” What we now know is there’s really nothing wrong with your
muscles but there are many other things wrong with your biochemistry, with
your immune system, with stress hormones.
Dr. Gates: There’s 20 different things that can cause inflammation, so
that’s why I made that comment. You need to know what’s causing your
inflammation but what you’re looking for here is, is fibromyalgia real.
Yes. These are all the things. And if you have inflammation you need to
figure out what of those things is contributing to your problem that’s
affecting the nervous system that’s causing many of your symptoms.
Dr. Rutherford: And if you want more information on that, we just did an
hour long hangout it’s on powerhealthtalk.com. You can go to the website
powerhealthtalk.com and see this video and many other videos on the
subject. Okay. Thank you.
Dr. Gates: Yeah. You just need to know it’s real.
Dr. Rutherford: Yes, it is real.
