fibromyalgia

[LewisLegion]

I have fibro. Took me ten years to get a diagnosis. It's probably worse than it should be because I refuse to take narcotic or opiods. Even though I take nothing worse than muscle relaxers on rare occassions, I still get accused of drug seeking sometimes. Some doctors just don't listen.

[Shangri-laschild]

Definitely have to reiterate the go see a doctor thing. One who will really listen. I had thought my doctor was awesome for finally listening to all my symptom issues. I forgot about my previous struggle getting him to believe me about the ADD (that I had been medicated for all through school and only lapsed on because of insurance). I should have remembered he tends to make snap decisions. Now I'm beginning to think (with the help of my therapist) that maybe it's not Fibro that I have but Generalized Anxiety Disorder. The symptoms are very similar. I don't know yet but the point is that with Fibro, there are a crap ton of overlapping things that all have very similar symptoms. You won't know till you go see a doctor and get them to really look into your problems.

[Difdi]

I've always been interested in medicinal effects of herbs, and I actually have a fair number of over the counter medications replaced with herbal extracts, capsules and tinctures in my medicine cabinet at home.

My mother has fibromyalgia, which led me to look up the symptoms, and something leapt out at me about them. The full list of fibromyalgia symptoms matches, almost perfectly, the medicinal effects of the kava-kava (piper methysticum) root, like a hand matches a glove. My mother is highly skeptical of herbal remedies, so I've never gotten her to try it, but I've often wondered if anyone else knows anything about whether it helps with fibromyalgia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kava

[Seshat]

I've not tried kava root, but the wikipedia page doesn't make it sound like a good match for my symptom set: may I ask what makes you think it matches well?