FIBROMYALGIA (part1) from My Personal Experience and Intuition to Molecular Documentation
Personally suffering with this enigmatic condition gave me an advantage over other researchers: I knew it was real, how and why it fluctuated, and I did not need to be convinced of its objectivity
In the upcoming FIBROMYALGIA (part2), I will provide more videos and reprints of my articles documenting the cause-and-effect relationship between gut dysbiosis and fibromyalgia. Be sure to share this information with any doctors or patients who might be interested!
My experience of dysbiosis-IBS-fibromyalgia-misery started in 1995
My personal experience with the spectrum of dysbiosis-IBS-fibromyalgia started in summer of 1995, when I was literally struck on a specific day (it was a Wednesday in June as I recall) with uncharacteristic fatigue and difficulty thinking. Later, other manifestations such as new food allergies and multiple chemical sensitivities would become part of the clinical picture, as would adrenal failure, medically documented by a flat-lined ACTH challenge test. I’d struggle valiantly over the next 6 years, paying for sequential visits to 17 different doctors in 3 different American states (Washington, Oregon, Texas) while also attending naturopathic school and all of the weekend seminars in functional medicine that I could find in order to learn more about this thing called “dysbiosis” that was wrecking me. I saw the experts in medicine and functional medicine for a personalized approach, and I went to some of the leading clinics in the country for a team effort—none of them did much to help me get better, with the unique exception of a naturopathic clinic that gave me an injection of vitamin B12 that gave me a world-changing experience, even if short-lived. By 1996, I was increasingly convinced that the problem was in my gut, but neither I nor anyone else seemed to know how to assess or fix the problem. Functional medicine was still very new at that time, having been founded a mere two years previously in 1994.
By 2001, I was starting to understand and manage the condition
With the use of some classic naturopathic interventions, I was able to at least partly manage my condition starting in the latter part of 1996; but mostly I was just limping along as one of the “walking wounded.” In 2001, I started using another gut-specific intervention, namely my famous vitamin C and coffee purge that I have detailed in my books such as Inflammation Mastery, 4th Edition / Textbook of Clinical Nutrition and Functional Medicine. That treatment resulted in immediate and durable improvement, as long as I repeated it daily at first and then eventually at least weekly or twice-per-week.
Personal experience, insight + aggressive research at biomedical libraries
All of these personal experiences and the trials of treatments gave me much insight into these conditions, which of course I vigorously supplemented with aggressive research at the local medical/chiropractic/naturopathic libraries.
In 2006, I published an important review on gastrointestinal dysbiosis and my second textbook Integrative Rheumatology
Personally suffering with this enigmatic condition gave me an advantage over other researchers on this topic: I knew it was real, I knew how and why it fluctuated, and I did not need to be convinced of its objectivity. I was also working with patients who had the condition, generally and paradoxically getting better results for them than for myself!
In 2008, I was invited by the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) to write their clinical monograph on Musculoskeletal Pain
The book was published as Musculoskeletal Pain Expanded Clinical Strategies and included a detailed molecular and physiologic explanation of how gastrointestinal dysbiosis accounted for each and every manifestation of fibromyalgia.
In 2012, I published Fibromyalgia in a Nutshell
This small book was largely based on the 2008 monograph that I had written for IFM. I also made several small videos at that time related to fibromyalgia; of course those videos look a bit primitive to me now after an additional 9 years of research and video editing.
In 2016, I excerpted Brain Inflammation from Chapter 5 of Inflammation Mastery, 4th Edition / Textbook of Clinical Nutrition and Functional Medicine.
From 2015-2017, I worked on various videos, books, and articles that largely focused on dysbiosis in various locations
In 2015, I started the massive continuing medical education (CME) course Human Microbiome and Dysbiosis in Clinical Disease, which would take me 2 painstaking years to complete. I committed to the project thinking it would be 6 hours of video plus the written monograph, but it continued to grow into a hyperdetailed 24 hours of video that just about exhausted me.
As a direct result of developing this course, the information I learned also translated into additional professional publications including a small book on autism as well as at least three peer-reviewed publications:
Neuroinflammation in fibromyalgia and CRPS is multifactorial. Nat Rev Rheumatol 2016 Apr;12(4):242. doi: 10.1038/nrrheum.2016.25 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26935282
Biological plausibility of the gut-brain axis in autism. Ann N Y Acad Sci 2017 Nov;1408(1):5-6. doi: 10.1111/nyas.13516 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29090837
Correspondence regarding Cutshall, Bergstrom, Kalish's "Evaluation of a functional medicine approach to treating fatigue, stress, and digestive issues in women" in Complement Ther Clin Pract 2016 May. Complement Ther Clin Pract 2018 May;31:332-333. doi: 10.1016/j.ctcp.2016.10.001 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27814977
Translating Microbiome (Microbiota) and Dysbiosis Research into Clinical Practice: The 20-Year Development of a Structured Approach that Gives Actionable Form to Intellectual Concepts. IJHNFM 2015—PDF included below
In the upcoming FIBROMYALGIA (part2), I will provide more videos and reprints of my articles documenting the cause-and-effect relationship between gut dysbiosis and fibromyalgia.
Be sure to share this information with any doctors or patients who might be interested!
See also my Facebook page specific to Migraine, Hypothyroidism, and Fibromyalgia
Dr Alex Kennerly Vasquez (introduction; brief Bio-CV) writes and teaches for an international audience on various topics ranging from leadership to nutrition to functional inflammology. Major books include Inflammation Mastery, 4th Edition (full-color printing, 1182 pages, equivalent to 25 typical books [averaging 60,000 words each]), which was also published in two separate volumes as Textbook of Clinical Nutrition and Functional Medicine (Volume 1: Chapters 1-4; Volume 2: Chapter 5—Clinical Protocols for Diabetes, Hypertension, Migraine, Fibromyalgia, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Psoriasis, Vasculitis, Dermatomyositis and most other major inflammatory/autoimmune disorders); several sections have been excerpted including Antiviral Strategies and Immune Nutrition (ISBN 1502894890) (aka, Antiviral Nutrition [available as PDF download] and Brain Inflammation in Chronic Pain, Migraine, and Fibromyalgia. Dr Vasquez’s books are available internationally via bookstores such as BookDepository, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, ThriftBooks, AbeBooks, BetterWorldBooks, WaterStonesBooks and his new Telegram channel is https://t.me/DrAlexVasquez.