Winning at Fibromyalgia

WAF Episode 44: The first of its kind, Winning at Fibromyalgia online course is born! https://www.martinaziegenbeinmdcoaching.com/course-pre-sale-landing-page https://www.martinaziegenbeinmdcoaching.com/offers/mgeMgobJ/checkout Hello friends!   Today is a special day. First of all, I am recording this from my “studio” in England and when it airs, I will still be in England!  Of course, I don’t have a studio in England, I am visiting my sister and she lives in England, about 30 minutes southwest from London and so temporarily my recording studio is here   Second, today is day 3 of my new Winning at Fibromyalgia online course going live, meaning being available for purchase. This course is basically the labor of my study and research and seeing patients over the past 12 months and my desire to let the knowledge know the large swaths of people with fibromyalgia and other forms of similar chronic pains.  What triggered me to get myself into high gear action was the culmination of events. I mentioned to you in one of the prior episodes I am working on a tedx talk about this new way of handling and reducing pain in fibromyalgia. I have continued seeing many women in my office with fibromyalgia and one of them literally told me she has felt crazy in medical offices when she would talk to physicians and other health care providers about her pain. Because she looks well, she did not feel believed, even dismissed. She felt she was viewed as a drug seeker when all she wanted was feeling better, feeling NORMAL.   If health care makes people feel crazy, something is very wrong. We can do better. I can do better.  So I have put together an online format of material that I normally teach my patients in person, over the course of several sessions. It is an online program that teaches you everything about fibromyalgia and how to help yourself. It includes scientific information that I dissect into small digestible pieces. You learn at your own pace. From the comfort of your home.  I am offering it for a super discounted price of 249 USD to a small number of participants who are eager to take advantage of this opportunity and realize this is a rare opportunity. This small group of learners we ask for your feedback on the course.  t will only be available for purchase at this price tag until this coming Thursday. We will then close the cart and reopen in December at probably doubled price.8  So why is it such a big deal? It is first and only course of its kind at the moment in this space. You will not find another course geared toward humans suffering from fibromyalgia, not of this quality and not at this price. When you purchase my course, you will have the advantage of learning from the Comfort of your home, even your PJs! Price tag of 249 USD – I do not exaggerate when I say the courses of this kind, containing the type of information I cover are worth THOUSANDs of dollars. Thousands. I am making it available at this price so that it can become available to as many people with fibromyalgia of you as many are willing to learn and find out. I have a unique combination of skills that were crucial for putting this course together – I am a rheumatologist so I have been seeing patients with fibromyalgia for over 15 years, I have the condition myself, and last but not the least I took special interest in understanding and trialing the tools to help – and proofed them on myself. The information included in the course is the magic sauce: Scientific information I gathered over the course of many years as a rheumatologist and put it in small easy to digest bites. Examples of such information is how we know the pain in real in Fibromyalgia and what kind of factors affect it. I also summarize prior research done in the area of how our thoughts and beliefs affect our experiences of pain. I review, step by step, the WAF method to reduce the pain. It includes somatic experiencing of the pain, being able to be present in the moment and being able to be compassionate with and loving to ourselves.   I am obviously biased and I believe this is a great deal.   I say you jump in and see for yourself.   And until next time       

Today's guest: Dr. Robyn Tiger Physician | Trauma-Informed Self-Care Coach | Podcaster Dr. Tiger shares so much good stuff it is hard to know where to start. Robyn Tiger, MD is on a mission to empower busy humans with self-care tools backed by science and research. She does a lot of work with physicians on the verge of burnout or coming out of burnout but the tools she discusses in this episode are literally for EVERYONE. At the beginning of the episode i asked her how she got to do the work she does - and she shares her OWN journey, how terrible her body felt while she was still working as a breast imaging radiologist. Her symptoms included body pain reminiscent of fibromyalgia and HOST of other symptoms that were ALL related to stress but nobody could diagnose it for her! The signifcance of this episode that MOST of our chronic stress symptoms are completely reversible! IF and WHEN we are ready to start implementing simple, effective and ancient tools that old cultures thousands of years ago before us knew. Dr. Tiger is certified in yoga therapy, meditation and life coaching. She offers innovative CME accredited courses, private coaching, and podcast that focus on complete physical, mental, and emotional well-being and resilience When she’s not busy supporting her colleagues, Robyn can be found enjoying her own self-care through hiking, paddle boarding, meditating, yoga, playing with her dog, husband and kids in the mountains of Asheville, NC. SHe is a host of Stress Free MD and her website is: https://www.stressfreemd.net/  

Episode 40: You experience an acute jolt of pain – now what? Welcome to episode 40 of WAF Podcast! I am recording this episode exactly on my podcast first anniversary! I launched The Winning at Fibromyalgia podcast exactly a year ago, October 15th 2021. It is now October 15th 2022. This is the 40th episode. I could choose to be upset over not giving you 52 episodes – one per week. But instead I am choosing to be grateful and excited. Grateful for all of you who listen and have found some form of helpful information, in one shape or another. I get excited when I get feedback that something I talked about or mention was helpful. I am also excited because a year ago I did not think I would do this, that I would be able to produce 40 episodes. It means putting my thoughts into words, on paper/computer screen, then recording it. It means picking and inviting guests on my podcast, recording the interview. Then listening to it and helping to edit. Hours and hours of work. So, I am celebrating. This entire weekend. One of the questions I have for you – what are you celebrating when you look at the past year? I don’t think we should only reflect on the past year at the end of the year. I feel we can reflect any time of the year, especially if there is an anniversary. It was also recently an anniversary of 8th year of my Mom passing. And I am not quite ready to talk about that on my podcast.  I am so excited to be back. I have shared with you I have been going through a rather difficult time of accepting a dissolution of a romantic relationship. I am doing better and deeply appreciate all the messages of support and encouragement and love from you. It feels like I am almost over the hump  Today, in addition to this being a celebratory podcast of one year anniversary  I am choosing to share another personal experience, intimately related to my story of fibromyalgia. Before I get to it, I do want to say one thing – aimed at all of you, my lovely women who suffer with pain every day, who wonder whether it can ever change, whether YOU can ever change it. I am here to tell you – YES YOU ABSOLUTELY CAN! It is within your power to reduce your pain and turn the entire course of your fibromyalgia story around! I see it on myself, I see it in my patients, rewiring of the pain pathways, the pain neural circuits CAN be rewired, NEW neural connections can be created! Every minute. Every hour of every day, we have an opportunity create these new neuronal connections! That will translate in less pain and more enjoyment, and you doing things that you cannot imagine right now because you cannot see beyond the current moment  My fibromyalgia back pain has been flaring through this break up time (and coming and going anniversary of my Mom’s passing). I have been doing somatic tracking every day and it is really good in the evening when I am relaxing and definitely flares up during the day when I am at work. But it has been tolerable. Now I decided a break up would be a good time to go to my old crossfit gym here on the cape. I was a member for several months last year but quit last September and joined more of a regular globo gym. I felt I was too destroyed after each workout back then, and my joints were sore after – I do have rheumatoid arthritis and I just did not feel it was right.  So with this break up I decided to return to the crossfit. And there the second day I went, we were doing push press and split jerks. That’s a movement when you push the bar above your head while you catch it below – with your legs slightly apart, as if in a lounging position. And I overdid it, too enthusiastic, I put on too much weight. ON the way down, as I was receiving the bar with weights, I felt a pop/sharp pain in my R shoulder, followed by a temporary weakness, to the point of not being able to lift the arm for a few moments. My first though was “no! I hurt my shoulder again!”, I do have a history of R shoulder injury/partial rotator cuff tear, from 10 years ago, that responded to PT but would flare every time I overdid things in Crossfit – lifting things above my head. And my first thought went to – OMG, I MUST HAVE NOW COMPLETELY TORN it, that’s why I have weakness and sharp pain, why else would the pain be there so sharp??? I was in a pure panic mode. And this is where something magic happened and the reason I am sharing this episode with you. I WAS ABLE TO PAUSE. I was able to put a pause, a break between the trigger (the movement that I believed re-injured my shoulder) and my spiraling out of control, the dooms spiral. I already put the bar back on the rack.  I went to the coach. I told her what happened/that I was worried about re-injury. Then I tried and succeeded in calming myself down. Two main things happened: I focused on the pain and realized two areas were involved – my right mid back by the R shouldblade, that has had chronic flare over the last few weeks. It was on fire and super sore and the R shoulder – top/posterior, searing pain. Almost like somatic tracking but I don’t recommend somatic tracking in acute severe pain. Second thing I did was that I told myself messages of reassurance – in my case it went like this: Martina, ok, so you MAY have torn the shoulder cuff, you MAY have. If you did, you know where to go – you will solicit help of one of the surgeons you are familiar with at your work place. You will be taken care of.   But right now you DON”T KNOW FOR SURE that you torn it. You just know that it is hurting. Can you TRY to calm your breathing and mind down, and see whether it helps? The coach came by in the meantime seeing I am trying to stretch and gave me a ball that they refer to as “Chinese torture” in my gym  She said I could try to use that to loosen up my muslces.  Guys That’s what did the trick – I was leaning against the ball against the wall on the SOREST spot on my R shoulderblade, to the point it was taking my breath away, that’s how sharp the pain was. YET I was successfully releasing the tension in my shoulders, I let the shoulders drop down, while staying calm and telling myself to stay calm, with my breath, with the pain, and applying the pressure. I did NOT go to push press that gym session. Over the next 48 hours, my pain went down from 9/10 down to 2-3/10. The pain was really severe that evening and I had trouble even just doing dishes – any motion with my right hand INCLUDING brushing teeth was flaring the pain. But I continued to breathe through all of it, and did not lose the sight of the fact that I would know what to do if the pain was not getting better. The pain was better the next morning. I went back to the gym the next day but did NOT do any overhead activity. I did stretching at home and in the gym for the next few days. Then over the next several days the pain went almost back to baseline. SO why am I talking about it? For the following 3 reasons: Tense muscles can totally lead to acute muscle strains and acute pain. I clearly have myofascial pain and that underlying kind of baseline pain was there when the acute pain happened – and you need to know that this can happen. Acute pain does NOT mean automatically acute trauma or tear. It DOES or MAY mean injury, but there is a scale and degree to injuries. What I experienced was most likely minor muscle/tendon strain from overloading and not stretching enough or not having my shoulder muscles ready for the load I put on that bar. You can improve your pain experience by staying calm and knowing you have control over the physical experience of the pain. The main thing I did was to halt my anxiety or panic that I started feeling at the moment of the acute pain. I literally did not allow myself to go there. You can do it too and in fact you need to, in order to stay in control. The second thing I did was I BELIEVED I COULD HANDLE things EVEN IF I HAD TRAUMA IN FORM OF TEAR> I never for a moment steered away from that though. And you can too – even if you are not a physician, you can have faith that you are able to seek help if the pain does not get better after the initial steps outlined above, or if it is getting worse in the first 48 hrs after injury.

Episode 39: The pain of a break up is both emotional and physical   Hi! Welcome to episode #39!   Today I am going to talk about the pain of a break up! It is something I first heard about a year ago when I was taking pain reprocessing courses and at that time I found it fascinating. I was recently dating and it did not occur to me I would be “testing” on myself    Break ups hurt. NO matter how many times you have thought about breaking up with the person or questioned whether your relationship was going to last – when it actually happens, and you like, loved them, it hurts.   So first, I met a great man, after not dating for almost 6 years, and he swept me off my feet and now we are broken up.  That’s the short story.   There is a study, believe it or not, that explored what happens when people are shown pictures of someone they loved/someone who broke up with them. Brain MRIs were done at the same time. They recruited 40 people for this, all of them had experienced a recent unwanted break up. The other part of the experiment was stimulation of the left forearm with a hot probe. Auch. And what they found is that the signal that is picked up at the time of looking at a picture of your ex overlaps significantly/almost identically with area in the brain that processes physical pain! Isnt’ this fascinating?   These findings give a new meaning to the sentence “break up hurts”. Because it does. And you can even prove it on the functional brain MRI!   But joking aside, these findings basically shed new insight into how emotional experiences lead to development of physical pain. They are consistent with the research on “embodiment” which means that emotional experiences are closely intricately and intimately connected to the physical sensation and processing of pain.   This explains why people may experience an uptick in pain after a breakup or whenever they are going through a difficult time that is accompanied by some kind of social rejection.   So the next question is what to do, can you make it better?First of all, heart break is always hard and I am not here to tell you will make the pain go away. Break up means a loss of a relationship and no matter how bad it was, you still have to mourn the good and beautiful and wonderful things that you had experienced together. However, I do claim that what I am about to say will make YOU feel better about the whole situation and in turn, may improve the pain.   First, acknowledge the pain you are feeling, the heart ache. The pain can be all consuming and excruciating. If you are anyone like me, who falls hard and experiences everything intensely, you will feel the pain intensely. trying to run away from it does not help. Acknowledge It is there and that it is ok.   Allow yourself a lot of grace and love.   You may cry, and feel intense sorrow, that may make it hard to function – let yourself feel it is ok. Love on yourself. Try to think of what gives you sense of love and reassurance. Then feel it, imagine it. I have been imagining a picture of me being a small girl, feeling sad and lost, and giving that little girl a huge loving warm and reassuring hug. Telling her it is going to be ok.   Know you are NOT alone. Remember many other people have gone through this and you will get through this too. Almost anything we experience in life, and especially a break up, other humans have overcome. So can you. So can I.   Accept the decision. If you are the one who was the recipient of the break up news, like me in this particular situation, accepting the decision is extremely important. For whatever reason the other person decided it was best for them to break up – that means it is best for you too. Because why would you want to be with someone who cannot see the same about you?   Try to learn from this experience – are there any ways you were not true to yourself in the process? If so, why not?   Know that you are going to be ok.

Episode 37: Weaving the threads (of Winning at fibromyalgia philosophy) together   Hello friends.   In the past few episodes I discussed individual pieces of the Core Winning at Fibromyalgia program. Today I am coming on here for a sweet short episode to recap, and emphasize the most important pieces and what I am doing about it.   I do strongly recommend listening to prior episodes to learn more about the individual steps. In summary, they include: The Neuroplasticity concept – the principle of this is that our central nervous sytem/brain can produce pain that is felt in the body, and more importantly, that it does not have to stay that way. Our brain has an amazing, incredible capacity to rewire itself, with a little bit of help.   The concept of Belief - in own’s body ability to heal, in our brain capacity to rewire, in ourselves, and our ability to get better.   Letting go of the attachment to the outcome. In short it means we can want something very much (to reduce our pain and improve our lives) but it can create a lot of pressure on our brain so it helps to feel certain lightness about our desire and journey to pain reduction. More curiousity and self compassion.   The work – mindfulness based techniques that incoude somatic tracking, self compassion, healing emotional wounds from the past.   The most important pieces, in my opinion and the common denominator in all success stories are the belief in one’s ability to get better, to heal, to be pain free or with significantly less pain AND fierce self -love.   I have found on my own journey and from listening to the many women who got better – they believe and they love on themselves. Self-love can be hard to recognize as self love because the societal norms tell us what we “should” and should not do. And we put that pressure on ourselves. Some of the examples of the opposite of self love is: Putting others’ need ahead of your own – repeatedly. Many many moms do that. Every day. I just spoke to a good friend of mine whose husband took their kids to his parents for a weekend. For the first time in a long time she had 3 days to herself. She did not know what to do with herself. It was like a vacation. ALL MOMS need that. IF we don’t get our cups filled first, we cannot be tehre for other people, our subconcious brain detects a threat and boom, low level fight or flight reaction/stress response is on.   Working long hours just to be a good employee or feeling loyal to your employer. I am guilty of this and I am working hard on resolving this issue for myself. Many physicians and non-physicians in health care suffer from this condition – feeling responsible for the patient’s outcome so putting in extra time, extra mile to get things done. And many times that is appropriate and even desirable. But not every day, not all the time. The same applies to other industries.   Staying in a toxic relationship or seemingly happy relatioinship when our intuition is screaming at us that we should get out.   We only have ONE precious life. We have to treat it like gift, we have to treat our health and our bodies as gifts.   What we feel, what we are going through matter. We should not be miserable at work or in life every day.   So here is what my team and I are doing. Starting at the end of September, I will be hosting weekly calls, For women interested in supportive community and more knowledge about fibromyalgia and what to do about it. We meet and talk about a topic each week I share ways to assess your fibromyalgia and then Prompts to do the tools Or simply answer your questions   Being part of the supportive group where everyone knows what the other might have gone through thanks to fibromyalgia is priceless.   Support is the other key factor in becoming successful at winning at fibromyalgia. Support of people who know what you are going through, who hear you, see you AND believe in you. That’s what I will be doing for you guys. There will be a small fee associated with this activity, paid monthly, it will be a close knit and private community to get us started. We will get to know each other story well, to whatever is each of you feeling comfortable, And we share our knowledge and stories and tips every week I will moderate it and it will be a positive, private, and confidential type of setting where everyone participating will feel comfortable and safe.   www.winningatfibromyalgia admin@martinaziegenbeinmdcoaching.com   facebook name: martina lenartova

You might wonder why we need to talk about self-compassion in pain reduction in fibromyalgia. What does it have to do with alleviating physical pain? Well, it turns out, a lot. Self-compassion is a way of soothing the over-agitated nervous system, that is amplifying our pain sensation on constant basis. We may not be directly to the part of our nervous system that amplifies the pain. WHen we practice self-compassion, we are addressing our suffering, whatever is the circumstance, and that soothes the nervous system as a whole - including parts that cause or amplify the pain. enjoy, leave me a review or comment, appreciate hearing from you :-) Martina www.winningatfibromyalgia.com  

Today we talk about somatic tracking as one of the core techniques on pain reduction.

in episode 32: I talk about embracing the concept of neuroplasticity - the fact that the brain can determine what hurts, how much and can also make it better/we can rewire the brain neuro pain pathways. ONe of the hallmarks of neuroplasticity is also the fact that the brain is wired for any sign of threat/danger. When it finds it, it can increase the sensitivity to pain and the pain perception itself. It does not have to stay this way, and it never does. The pain can increase, or decrease, depending on our ability/on our brain's ability to increase or decrease activation of messages that turn off the pain. enjoy :-)

Episode 31: Winning at Fibromyalgia podcast   Well hello my friends! It has been a while! I have been MIA a little bit, for a good reason and I am back  I met someone special, his name is Greg and he has swept me off my feet, that’s all I will say for now.   I am coming on today to introduce you to my new, simplified version 2.0.1 of my Winning at fibromyalgia method. It is very powerful and I am very proud of it.   For those who don’t know me, I am a board-certified rheumatologist and work almost full time at the Rheumatology office in Cape Cod. I am an expert fibromyalgia coach where I teach women with fibromyalgia tools to reduce their pain, and win at fibromyalgia.   The principle 4 steps are: Believe (in the power of your own body to heal, in the power of your mind and nervous system) Embrace (the concept of neuroplasticity) Let go (of the expectations to get results fast) and Do the work – mindfulness based exercises/techniques to bring peace and sense of safety to your nervous system that eventually reduces the pain Rinse and repeat    I want to start with the power of Belief today. I cannot stress how important belief is. I truly cannot.   Believing my women can achieve pain reduction is #1 item I work on with my patients and clients alike. I want to tell you why it is so important.   I want to tell you this because I found out the hard way. I LACKED belief myself – until I took the Whole health medicine institute course led by Dr. Rankin. Going through her program made me realize I lacked belief in my body’s ability to heal. I was able to uncover where it was coming from, and then changed it around. It did not happen overnight. But I did it. And I now am sharing it with you, my listeners and clients.   I want the same for you.   SO first of all – why do I even talk about Believing?   There is an undeniable body of research supporting the notion that our thoughts and perceptions affect our physiology. That our mindsets can MEASURABLY affect physical healing. In research studies it is called placebo effect – meaning, taking a sugar pill has positive, measurable physiologic and physical effects (improvement in depression, mood, or asthma). There is even such thing as placebo surgeries! – when doctors opened up a patient/made an incision but did not do ANY instrumentation on patients knees and people felt better!!!! Can you comprehend this?   Fascinating research from Yale – IDENTICAL milkshake given to TWO groups of people with TWO different labels – one that suggested more “indulgent” or calorific drink triggered REAL body responses suggestive of having consumed more calories!! But they have not! That’s all our brains/minds at work!   Neurobiological research has shown that the placebo effect, which stems in part from individual’s mindset and expectation to heal, triggers DISTINCT BRAIN AREAS associated with ANXIETY and PAIN that activate physiological effects that lead to healing outcomes. The placebo effect is mediated by the release of neurotransmitters, consistently impacts certain areas of brain and even mirrors the action of of pharmaceuticals on human physiology.   In clinical trials it is actually NOT uncommon for the placebo to BEAT the active drug, especially in the studies on anti-depressants! Do you know what this means?? This means that our minds can produce the effects of a medication as powerful as an antidepressant!   This means that the mind is capable of great feats in healing the body. This should not come as surprise given that the body is an infinitely intelligent organism. Humans have been healing themselves long before the invention of modern medicine techniques. Indigenous shamans have been facilitating healing for thousands of years. They gave patients hope, and through expectation, the mind initiated the changes in physiology for the body to heal.   The question is not whether there is placebo effect (power of belief in healing) but WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?? How can we consciously deliberately harness that affect??   We don’t seem to know how to produce it on demand in health and medicine. We spend enormous amount of money developing meds trying to OUTPERFORM the placebo affect. How silly!   Mindset about treatments SHAPE treatment outcomes (antihistamine prick and cream test)   Placebo effect is the power of belief, and is related to multiple psychosocial factors. One factor is expectation, which relates to a reduction in anxiety, or in expectation of reward.   The placebo effect provides insight into the complexity of consciousness and how little we really know about the mind and its ability to heal. The scientific evidence is accumulating and points towards the possibility that the mind has an unlimited healing ability.   You heard me right – UNLIMITED healing ability. ALL WITHOUT OUR, HUMAN precious mind.   This makes a complete sense but skeptics don’t like common sense until the science proves it.   Where do the mindsets come from??   The placebo effect is a mind-body phenomenon that starts in the brain, results in clinical improvement and is intimately related to the ritual of the therapeutic act. This ritual involves things such as people in the room, spoken words, syringes or other devices and even the color of the pill.   One of the most important factors that trigger expectations and believe is a verbal suggestion. Verbal suggestions are frequently given in clinical studies of the placebo effect, and these words as part of the therapeutic ritual have powerful effects on the body. This is an important concept to remember because YOUR OWN WORDS BASED ON YOUR INNATE BELIEFS ARE part of your own therapeutic ritual every single day of your life.   The placebo effect emphasizes the importance of belief in overall health and wellness. BE positive in what you say and be discerning about what you believe. YOUR MIND-BODY IS listening.   More useful questions-  what is the best mindset to have, when diagnosed with fibromyalgia?   Answer” the one that empowers us. The one that enhances our belief in our body’s and mind’s ability to heal, to improve the pain. No matter what caused it.   The opposite is true also – injury to the body and negative thoughts can lead to stress, depression, anxiety and even to fear about getting injured again.   Standford University researchers found that what patients think and expect about treatments can influence health outcomes.   YOUR MINDSET CAN AFFECT YOUR RECOVERY.   Researcher Alia Crum, a psychologist at Standford describes her experience when she was 10 and broke her ankle while doing gymnastics but did not know it was broken first. She iced and taped it and competed the next day and qualified for nationals. Then she found out her ankle was broken. She basically MENTALLy overcame her injury.   Fibromyalgia CAUSES REAL pain but there is no injury. What a gift.   It is an invitation to us to utilize our brain, nervous system and mind healing potential to sway the course of the pain.   My entire coaching program is based on the premise that our brain has the power to alter the pain we feel in the body.   Once you start believing it can. And embrace the neuroplasticity as a real cause of pain, you have won.   Our brains usually need love or encouragement, sometimes both.   Our primitive brains are also wired to look for danger. Maybe in some of us the wiring is stronger than others.   What if our job was to provide reassurance to our primitive brains that we are safe, that we are strong, taking care of ourselves, attending to our needs and that things will be ok? And I am not talking about gaslighting and claiming everything will be fine if we are in real physical danger. I am talking providing our minds and nervous system reassurance and reassuring messages of safety when we are, in fact, physically ok, nobody is shooting at us or attacking us physically. Because short of physical danger, most of the time, we are ok.   The first step is to BELIEVE that we can get there – to the part where our nervous system is at peace, and we truly really believe we are ok. And that we can feel better. Things start changing then.   You can change your mindset.   The brain is NEUROPLASTIC – meaning neural networks can continue to grow, change and reorganize throughout the lifespan. By challenging yourself with new experiences and perspectives, you can FORM NEW NEURAL CONNECTIONS – OR MINDSETS – at ANY POINT in life.   I invite you to do the following exercise:   I am powerful.   I have the power (to change my neural connections).   I have the power to change my perception of pain.   I am strong, I am healthy, I am resilient.   I am learning to harness the power of my brain and nervous system   I believe in my body’s ability to heal and in my own ability to choose my own thoughts.        

Episode 30: With Dr. Saloni Sharma on Solutions for back pain   I was so excited to talk to Dr. Sharma about back pain. Back pain is one of the most common problems of humans in general, and it does frequently bother patients with fibromyalgia. Dr. Sharma is a dual certified in Physical Medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) and Pain management. She is medical director of the Orthopedic Integrative Health Center at Rohmans Orthopedics and specializes in the NON-operative care of musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction. She recently wrote and published a BOOK on back pain called THE PAIN SOLUTION and she CAME TO MY PODCAST TO TALK ABOUT IT! You are in for a treat.   In addition to the above qualifications, she studied Lifestyle medicine, Functional medicine and Integrative medicine through the Andrew Weill program at the Univ of Az. She had studied yoga and meditation, mindfulness and acupuncture!   We talked about: How she went from being traditionally trained pain medicine and Physical medicine and rehab specialist focused on physical causes and meds/interventions to Integrative realm where ALL modalities coexist in harmony AND WHOLE person is treated WHOLE person integrative approach is what allows for more effective approach to pain The exposure to yoga and meditation is part of her Indian culture and heritage A lot of patients ASK about non-traditional things BEYOND the injections and meds! She formed the integrative health center where she spends more time with patients and addresses all aspects of their life and health The book PAIN SOLUTION came out of desire and necessity to help our patients with chronic pain more The Relief 5R pillar plan: Refuel (nutrition) – microbiome, fermented foods, sugar drama (answer – moderation) Recharge (sleep/rest) – “build a sleep cave” (cool, dark and comfortable)!; “bedtime revenge procrastination” – avoid if you can (no screen time for 90 minutes before bedtime) BECAUSE I DESERVE IT (screen free time, mindfulness) Re-vitalize (exercise): start small, literally even 5 minutes is better than 0! Refresh (stress reduction) : “adult time out” – whatever gives us joy Relate (relationship)   What is microboost Microbiome: PAIN GUT connection, PAIN J   OINT connection   Few words of advice: Take small steps, don’t beat yourself about setbacks. There is no one single cure rather pieces of puzzle that just need to fit right, you have to figure which out works for you. Set a goal, Write it down, commit to it. Your goal, you own it. Track your progress and pat yourself on the back, give yourself praise.   IN a way ALL OF THE THINGS THAT MAKE US BETTER ARE ALL COMMON SENSE. https://www.amazon.com/Pain-Solution-Relieve-Prevent-Medication/dp/1608687937 https://www.salonisharmamd.com/ https://www.instagram.com/salonisharmamd/ https://rothmanortho.com/oihc