Managing Fibromyalgia (FM) flareups feels like stepping back into the sunshine again! When the pain becomes unbearable, we need tools to bring the pain under control again. It never ceases to amaze me how much pain I’m willing to live with if it makes life easier! Mercifully, none of my family members have chronic illness or the food sensitivities that I do. It’s challenging to make separate meals for myself and for my family. I have realized though, that this is now essential to my health and productivity. Here are my 5 tips for getting my FM under control, and I know they will help you too.
Managing Fibromyalgia flareups tips
- Controlling your dietary inflammatory triggers.
- Check your water levels.
- Return to your exercise regime.
- Check your sleep patterns.
- Re-evaluate your schedule.
Controlling your dietary inflammatory triggers.
The number one thing to do for managing Fibromyalgia flareups is controlling the inflammatory triggers that set us off. This means of course, our diet. Whether we like it or not, the most common inflammatory trigger for FM and chronic illness is food. You don’t have to be allergic to a food for it to set you off. This is why the food sensitivity category was created. You just need to sensitive to the food for it to cause a flareup. This makes sense right? If you were allergic, you wouldn’t eat it because the result can be deadly for you. Whereas food sensitivities don’t kill you, they just make you uncomfortable. Depending on how addicted you are to the food, (can we say chocolate…) you may be willing to put up with that discomfort.
The problem with FM and chronic illness is that your body will hit a tipping point where your consumption of those foods cannot be tolerated anymore. That’s when the flareups happen. This is your body’s response to you ignoring all it’s previous warnings. It makes the pain so unbearable that you know you have to do something. That is where I am now. I have an anti-inflammatory diet that brings me zero pain when I’m following it to the letter. The problem is, I’ve gotten laxer and laxer on it over the last couple of years, and now I’m paying the price.
I am now on day three of returning to my anti-inflammatory diet, and I’m already seeing results! The first and second day I snuck in a couple of things that I didn’t think were a problem. Unfortunately they were, and the pain started surfacing again. As I’m writing this, I’ve stuck to the diet and the pain in my right hand is a 1. Within a few days, the pain should be gone completely and other areas should quiet down as well. I can’t wait for it to be gone from my hips, so I can sleep better at night too!
Common food triggers
So what are some common food triggers for FM and chronic illnesses?
- Grains: wheat, corn, rice.
- Cooking oils.
- Meats.
- Fried foods and artificial trans fats.
- Artificial sweeteners.
- Foods high in carbohydrates.
- Glutamate.
- Sugar.
- Preservatives.
- Dairy products.
All of these will set me off. Unfortunately, all these foods are a big part of food production in North America, if not most areas of the world. Looking at that list may lead you to think that you can’t eat anything. That is simply not true. The inflammatory diet that I follow comes from The Autoimmune Plant Based Cookbook: Recipes to Decrease Pain, Optimize Health, and Maximize Your Quality of Life created for the Med Missionary program that I am certified in. This cook book provides comprehensive meal plans, based on very tasty recipes. They are easily adjustable, so if you are sensitive or allergic to any of the ingredients don’t use them.
When you have a flareup, look back at what you have eaten that you know you shouldn’t. If you don’t know what you are sensitive to, you can have testing done to give you a head start. Most naturopathic doctors will be able to get testing arranged for you. Another way is to eliminate the most common triggers for 6 weeks, and then slowly bring them back. Believe me, you will know immediately if you can have that food or not once you reintroduce it! Make sure you bring them back one at a time, so you can be sure which ones you shouldn’t be having.
Once you know what your triggers are, eliminate them from your diet. Your pain levels will recede at a surprising rate. Somehow, I always convince myself that they can’t make that big of a difference. Don’t fool yourself, they do! I know how pain free I was after the first time I started the diet, and the results I’m having after day 3 of returning to it is astounding! That old adage of “you are what you eat,” could not be more true.
Check your water levels.
Our bodies are 80% water, so when we don’t drink enough water to replace what we expel, we become dehydrated. When your body doesn’t have enough water for the vital organs to function, it will pull it from the muscles and joints. The friction of not enough fluid in our muscles and joints is what causes the pain. The common recommendation for water consumption for the average adult is eight, 8 ounce glasses of water per day. If you are super athletic or active you’ll need more. When I say 8 glasses of water a day, I mean water not fluids. Anything else you drink that isn’t clear unadulterated water doesn’t count. Nor does flavoured waters.
I track my water everyday by drawing little water droplets in my planner. I average between 6-8 glasses a day. When I have a flareup I go and look at the day before, and routinely I find that I drank less than 6 glasses. What if you don’t like drinking plain water? Learn to; I truly mean it. If you don’t want to be in constant pain, learn to drink water. It will make a huge difference, like it or not. You will be astonished at how quickly your pain will lower once you start drinking water again.
Don’t drink 8 glasses of water at once. Drink two glasses in the morning when you get up. Then drink one glass every hour to two hours throughout the day. You will find that by 8pm, you will have consumed your 8 glasses. If you find the water is going right through you, put a couple of grains of natural unprocessed salt under your tongue first. It will help your body absorb the water better, and it actually sweetens the water too. Once your body gets used to having the water it needs, it will let you know when it doesn’t. At first, I set an alarm on my phone to remind me to drink the water every couple of hours. Now my body craves it before the alarm even goes off! It never ceases to amaze me how incredible our bodies truly are!
Return to your exercise regime.
Having a regular exercise regime is really important with FM and chronic illness. Whether you go for a walk, bike, swim, play team sports, or work out at home or at a gym, having your body moving is essential to keeping flareups at bay. That’s why it’s necessary to recognize if we have been keeping up with our exercising when flareups occur. If you haven’t, just start back up again. Start slow, and build back up to where you were before.
If I haven’t exercised for more than two days, my body will complain. If I ignore the complaints, a flareup is inevitable. Exercising outside is really important as well. The fresh air and sunshine (even through the clouds) are vital for our bodies. The sunshine helps our body manufacture melatonin which helps us sleep at night. The fresh air oxygenates our bodies so our cells can function at their optimal levels. So if you can do your exercise outside, do it. Just going for a walk, or puttering around your garden will provide beneficial effects for reducing your flareups.
Check your sleep patterns.
Lack of sleep will cause flareups. Your body heals itself while you sleep. If you aren’t getting deep REM sleep, your body cannot replace old cells with new ones, and repair the damage your daily routine has done. So if you aren’t getting at least eight hours of sleep at night, you need to get that fixed as soon as possible. Make sure you are going to sleep at a reasonable hour. I would recommend being in bed with lights out by 10pm at night, but definitely no later than 11pm.
The two hours of sleep you get before midnight, is more important that the 7 hours you get after 12am. Try it. You will feel much more rested from 8 hours of sleep starting at 10pm, then you will if you have 8 hours starting at 12am. Having a Night Time Routine will get you the rest you need and is really important for being able to get up when you want to the next day as well. Click here, If you want more information on the importance of Night Time Routines and how to create one.
Re-evaluate your schedule.
One phrase I’ve always hated hearing from my doctor is “just reduce your stress levels.” Yeah right! And how exactly do I do that? Interestingly enough, they never had an answer beyond, “just don’t be stressed.” What I have found is that there are things in life that are inherently stressful. You can’t just stop living in order to be less stressed. What you can do however, is reduce the amount of stressful things you do in a day. You can also decide if you are going to allow yourself to be stressed out by certain things.
The simple decision to NOT allow something to stress you out anymore is possible. When you are feeling stressed, ask yourself, “is this really going to kill me?” Most often the answer to that question is, “no.” If it’s not going to kill you, you don’t really need to be stressed about it. That is when you can reassure yourself with, “I may not like doing this, but I will be ok.” This reassurance will help your stress levels decrease, and you can go on with your day.
So, when a flareup happens, look back at your schedule and see if you’ve been overdoing it a bit. one of the problems I find with FM, is that there are days I feel like I can move mountains! When I take advantage of that feeling, I tend to over do it, and then I crash the next day. So keep your schedule reasonable; that way you will have several productive days in a row, instead of crashing after one.
In conclusion.
Managing Fibromyalgia flareups is very possible when you have the right tools. By controlling your dietary inflammatory triggers, checking your water levels, returning to your exercise regime, checking your sleep patterns, and re-evaluating your schedule, you will be pain free again. I can speak from experience in this, because I know these things work. So when you are ready to be pain free again, contact me at andrea@nopainallgain.ca, and we can make you a master at managing your Fibromyalgia flareups.
As a natural encourager, I live to help others!!! One-on-one coaching is a great way to start building your confidence, and improve your health! I help people with Fibromyalgia and chronic illness manage their symptoms with ease, so they never feel held back again! Click here for an application form and I would be happy to help you in your journey. You can also contact me at andrea@nopainallgain.ca or check out my website: www.nopainallgain.ca
