Christine Craggs-Hinton - Fibromyalgia--Your Treatment Guide

Christine Craggs-Hinton, mother of three, followed a career in the Civil Service until, in 1991, she developed fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition. Christine took up writing for therapeutic reasons and has, in the past few years, produced more than a dozen health-related self-help books for Sheldon Press. She also writes for the Fibromyalgia Association UK and the UK Fibromyalgia magazine called FaMily . A few years ago, Christine and her husband moved to the Canary Islands where she works as the agony aunt and health writer for a local newspaper.

Overcoming Common Problems Series

Selected titles

101 Questions to Ask Your Doctor

Dr Tom Smith

Birth Over 35

Sheila Kitzinger

Coeliac Disease: What you need to know

Alex Gazzola

Coping Successfully with Chronic Illness: Your healing pain

Neville Shone

Coping Successfully with Shyness

Margaret Oakes, Professor Robert Bor and Dr Carina Eriksen

Coping with Anaemia

Dr Tom Smith

Coping with Asthma in Adults

Mark Greener

Coping wth Bronchitis and Emphysema

Dr Tom Smith

Coping with Drug Problems in the Family

Lucy Jolin

Coping with Early-onset Dementia

Jill Eckersley

Coping with Eating Disorders and Body Image

Christine Craggs-Hinton

Coping with Gout

Christine Craggs-Hinton

Coping with Manipulation: When others blame you for their feelings

Dr Windy Dryden

Coping with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Professor Kevin Gournay, Rachel Piper and Professor Paul Rogers

Coping with Stomach Ulcers

Dr Tom Smith

Depressive Illness: The curse of the strong

Dr Tim Cantopher

The Diabetes Healing Diet

Mark Greener and Christine Craggs-Hinton

Dying for a Drink

Dr Tim Cantopher

Epilepsy: Complementary and alternative treatments

Dr Sallie Baxendale

Fibromyalgia: Your Treatment Guide

Christine Craggs-Hinton

The Heart Attack Survival Guide

Mark Greener

How to Beat Worry and Stress

Dr David Devlin

How to Come Out of Your Comfort Zone

Dr Windy Dryden

How to Develop Inner Strength

Dr Windy Dryden

How to Eat Well When You Have Cancer

Jane Freeman

Lets Stay Together: A guide to lasting relationships

Jane Butterworth

Living with IBS

Nuno Ferreira and David T. Gillanders

Losing a Parent

Fiona Marshall

Making Sense of Trauma: How to tell your story

Dr Nigel C. Hunt and Dr Sue McHale

Motor Neurone Disease: A family affair

Dr David Oliver

Natural Treatment for Arthritis

Christine Craggs-Hinton

Overcoming Loneliness

Alice Muir

The Pain Management Handbook: Your personal guide

Neville Shone

The Panic Workbook

Dr Carina Eriksen, Professor Robert Borand Margaret Oakes

Reducing Your Risk of Dementia

Dr Tom Smith

Therapy for Beginners: How to get the best out of counselling

Professor Robert Bor, Sheila Gill and Anne Stokes

Transforming Eight Deadly Emotions into Healthy Ones

Dr Windy Dryden

Treating Arthritis: The drug-free way

Margaret Hills and Christine Horner

Treating Arthritis: The supplements guide

Julia Davies

When Someone You Love Has Depression: A handbook for family and friends

Barbara Baker

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Sheldon Press
An Hachette UK Company

Sheldon Press

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ

www.sheldonpress.co.uk

Copyright Christine Craggs-Hinton 2013

Christine Craggs-Hinton has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The Scripture quotation is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version (Anglicized edition). Copyright 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica (formerly International Bible Society). Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved. NIV is a registered trademark of Biblica (formerly International Bible Society). UK trademark number 1448790.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781847092441

eBook ISBN 9781847092458

Typeset by Caroline Waldron, Wirral, Cheshire

eBook by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong

Contents

I thank you all for the wonderful feedback I received from my previous fibromyalgia books it has inspired me to write this one. I know from personal experience how challenging life is when you have fibromyalgia, and I have worked hard to give my very best help and advice. Dont ever think you have tried every option. There is always another door to open, somewhere along the way.

Every effort has been made to ensure that the information in this book is accurate and current at the time of publication. The author and the publisher cannot accept responsibility for any misuse or misunderstanding of any information contained herein. The opinions and suggestions in this book are not intended to replace medical opinion. Indeed, the overview of prescription drugs is intended only to familiarize you with the medications most commonly prescribed for fibromyalgia and with those that are newly developed. This information is certainly not meant to replace medical advice and treatment. If you have concerns about your health, please seek a professional opinion.

We now suspect that the biblical Job had fibromyalgia. He wrote:

I have been allotted months of futility, and nights of misery have been assigned to me. When I lie down I think, How long before I get up? The night drags on, and I toss and turn until dawn And now my life ebbs away; days of suffering grip me. Night pierces my bones; my gnawing pains never rest.

(Job 7.34; 30.1617)

Good health is something we take for granted, until we no longer have it. A small percentage of us develop long-term conditions such as fibromyalgia in which we hurt all over, feel lacklustre and tired, find it difficult to achieve anything and can feel out of control. The best treatment strategy is not to fight the illness, but to go along with its demands until you have armed yourself with the tools with which to make positive changes. The best tool you can have available is self-education, where you learn for yourself as much as possible about whats wrong and find out what can be done for the very best outcome. Then inch by inch, step by step, you can move towards taking control once more.

Taking control involves learning how to use pacing so you dont overtax yourself, thinking twice before committing yourself, and turning should do, ought to do and must do into will maybe do or, better still, Ill see how things go before I make a decision. For the people who ignore the challenge of making positive changes to their lives lives that must, for now, incorporate a certain amount of pain every action is a chore, every thought may be dark. Those people are also liable to move further away from getting back their lives.

Living with fibromyalgia isnt easy, as I myself know. Its a trial to change patterns of thinking and behaving, its a trial to motivate ourselves to eat more healthily and start a gentle exercise routine. It doesnt help that when we make the effort to exercise we are rewarded by increased pain the next day and have no choice but to stay in bed, perhaps for weeks. Neither does it help that when we take the recommended medications and herbal remedies, we react badly and have to give them up. Is it worth all the effort, we might ask ourselves. We know deep down, though, that it is, for we are more than a bunch of symptoms, more than the faade we present to the world. We should therefore not only acknowledge the things that are important to us, but also think of things we can do, that are within our scope, that help us feel good about ourselves. Achievements, whether they are large or tiny, add positivity to life, raise our self-esteem and make us feel less of a drain on others.