R. Paul St. Amand - What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Fibromyalgia Fatigue: The Powerful Program That Helps You Boost Your Energy and Reclaim Your Life

The first edition of this book was written with some hesitation. The focus of my practice had always been on helping the patients who came to me directly. In the past, I avoided publicity for my work because of the controversy I knew would arise from treating a no-name illness that other doctors didnt believe existed. Because of this, I even hesitated to discuss this strange illness with my colleagues and the large medical group I headed. But I soon realized that I had no choice but to ignore their skepticism, because results are what really count in medicineand I was getting them.

In those early days, however, I was on my own. I drew sketches to help my patients better understand their disease and the course of treatment I recommended. The fibrofogged needed something written to facilitate understanding and to placate long-suffering families. So I wrote a few descriptive papers that got copied and circulated again and again. I didnt anticipate how many people they would reach. Patients began coming from different parts of the United States, even from around the world.

When the name fibromyalgia was coined about twenty-seven years ago, I gratefully adopted this classificationmisnomer though it was! A terribly common illness that had previously existed only in obscurity suddenly had a name. The term was not immediately embraced, but it gained acceptance from rheumatologists and open-minded members of the medical community. This emboldened me to more militantly champion the illness. Although my approach might have seemed unconventional, I had already been using it for more than twenty-three years.

Slowly, a consensus party line of preferred treatment emerged, but it has always ignored our successful protocol. A few physicians tried to follow our program, but mostly got lost trying to teach patients how to avoid myriad sources of salicylate. (Youll learn about this hideous, ongoing problem soon enough!) I was increasingly asked to speak and write about fibromyalgia. Patients told us about their experiences and we listened. We learned about associated conditions, most prevalent being hypoglycemia (or low blood sugar). The sickest ones certainly had a depth of knowledge about their disease spectrum.

As I studied and learned more about this newly named fibromyalgia, I realized that I also had it. Later, I was able to identify the condition as one of my fathers legacies. It was he who wielded the gene(s) passed on to my two sisters and me. I, in turn, passed it on, and each of my three daughters developed serial symptoms. Illnesses take on special significance when they strike near to home. Probably my familys health concerns sharpened my skills; fine honing became mandatory.

Over the ensuing years, Id found four effective medications. Their side effects kept me looking for something safer, which is what we now have in the compound guaifenesin. Imagine how success with the very first medication would stir me to ask why it worked. This why? led to possibilities and then to theories, which I occasionally modified, and will continue to do. Of course, a theory is merely a supposition based on as much fact as can be garnered. This search keeps me poring over esoteric papersfinally some of our ownlooking for insights into cellular physiology to test and embellish our hypotheses. Please appreciate the fact that whatever errors might exist in my theories dont diminish the efficacy of the treatment. Perhaps a simpler statement is: What works, works. In fact, the heart of my approach is so basic that it can be stated in a simple quartet of phrases: