Yesterday as I was doing my daily search for Fibromyalgia information, I came across a website via a news article that was very interesting to me.
A retired professor, Barbara Keddy, has been living with Fibromyalgia for over 40 years and she has a really nice blog I would like all of you to check out. Please leave her a nice comment and tell her I sent you! Click to view her site, Women & Fibromyalgia. I would love to have an opportunity to have Barbara appear as a guest blogger on here so that we can all find out what it was like 40 years ago having Fibromyalgia. Medicine and research have come a long way since then and can you imagine how hard it was living back then with this illness? We think it’s hard now – it has to be a piece of cake compared to 40 years ago.
Naturally, the New York Times article on Fibromyalgia that caused a lot of controversy rattled many CFS & Fibromylagia patients and that includes Barbara. Barbara retired four years ago as a professor from Dalhousie University. Once she retired, she didn’t purchase a rocking chair and waste her life away. She decided to do an in depth investigation on Fibromyalgia. Barbara has not only had a career as a professor, she was also a nurse, medical sociologist, and researcher. Dr. Keddy, using her own experience with Fibromyalgia and that of 19 other women, wrote a book that discusses current theories of causes and treatments – Women and Fibromyalgia: Living with an Invisible Dis-ease .
Dr. Keddy believes the condition is a neurological hypersensitivity, caused by an over-stimulated nervous system. She says:
Fibromyalgia involves pain in the muscles, whereas arthritis is in the jointsbut somehow fibromyalgia has landed there (with arthritis) as a home base, she says. My thinking, and Ive interviewed hundreds of women not just the 20 who are profiled in the book, is that its due to a hyper-aroused nervous system.
Dr. Keddy believes more women are susceptible to getting Fibromyalgia than men because we are the caregivers and always put other peoples’ needs above our own.
Some women have highly developed intuitive skills honed to such an intense stage that the nervous system becomes highly sensitive and hyper aroused. Then, theres a trigger, a dramatic eventperhaps the death of a loved one or an operation such as a hysterectomyand the nervous system is pushed to the extreme.
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