My favorite natural fibromyalgia treatment started when I was in a fibromyalgia flare. This was a part of my fibromyalgia relief but isn’t a total cure. Over the years I’ve tried to think of accurate ways to describe the pain. It feels like being run over by a truck and then the truck went in reverse. It feels like a flu that multiplied. As always, before implementing any of these suggestions discuss it with a doctor first.
Paying more attention to my body taught me that there are actually layers of pain. I have all over muscle pain. I have joint pain. I also have an all over painful sensation on my skin. This particular type of pain is why there are so many forum posts about being sensitive to touch, clothing, or even being hugged.
On more than one occasion when someone tried to hug me it was so painful that I wondered why they would do that before remembering they didn’t have fibromyalgia. This is the only pain that comes and goes depending on whether I’m in a flare or not while the others are more constant with differing degrees of intensity.
Finding the Proper Balance
On this day maybe it was fate or maybe it was luck but I just blurted out that the burning pain was akin to being constantly soaked in acid. My dad is a scientist; not a doctor, he works with plants. He said “Well maybe you are”. He went to the basement and picked up pH litmus test strips that I could just put in my mouth. It wasn’t a blood test. I wasn’t even on the chart I was so acidic.
I always believe in working with a doctor whenever using natural treatments. This helps to avoid a lot of the scams that are associated with the disease but also ensures proper medical treatment. In the five years it took me to get a proper diagnosis; I never had a pH test. I can understand how some natural treatments don’t add up in the medical world; but this is just basic science that we all learned in middle school. I still don’t have an answer for why doctors don’t test pH levels more. It’s considered more of an alternative test. When asking at the pharmacy for pH test strips my dad was told that they were sold at the health food store.
My body felt acidic because it was. It seemed like a big problem to me at the time. I was used to every problem being expensive to both diagnosis and fix. With my dad’s help I found that my pH level can be balanced in the following ways:
Tums. This was the first thing I tried and it was pretty effective. The downside is that it is full of sugar and has some ingredients that I just didn’t need. I still keep a few in my purse for when I’m on the move.
Dissolving a small amount of baking soda in water. I laughed because both of these solutions were so cheap and I already had them in my house. Of course being high in sodium and not very tasty it was just something I did once a week.
A combination of these solutions worked quite well for about six months. Whenever I felt my skin burning I would test my pH level; and it was always very acidic. Then when this particular pain disappeared I would test it again and it was balanced.
Finally a Natural Pain Relief that Worked for Me
In recent years I’ve given up on a lot of natural treatments. I get discouraged about all of the inspiring stories that never seem to pan out for me. I also don’t like the idea that with a lot of things you’re told that it takes several weeks or months to make a change. This is common in many of the scams out there although it does make sense that your body takes longer to adjust to a milder natural remedy. With balancing my pH level though I noticed an almost instant reduction in pain. Also, it was so affordable that for me it was worth a try.
At about the six month mark I noticed that it would only stay balanced for a short period of time. Both the baking soda and the tums just weren’t holding anymore. After talking to my dad again it was decided that I needed to balance it through my diet. I learned that a lot of the foods that are considered healthy for fibromyalgia such as spinach and unsalted almonds are also foods that balance these levels.
I haven’t tracked down the fibro and pH connection anywhere else in research though. It has helped me with one specific type of pain. It still comes back especially if I eat a lot of refined sugar. I am still sick. It isn’t a cure or even a treatment. It’s more of an explanation or at least a partial one for why there is a connection to eating healthy with fibromyalgia.