Five Tips To Support Your Loved Ones With Fibromyalgia

Living with Fibromyalgia can be debilitating both physically and emotionally. Most of us are living in pain without a real clear solution to pain relief. Fibromyalgia is an overactive nervous system. The pain is often described as achy or flu-like. Imagine that achy feeling you experience when you hit your funny bone, except it is throughout the entire body. On top of that your muscles are tight and pulling. Your muscle fibers are throbbing. You experience headaches, low back pain, sciatica, repetitive motion type pain, IBS, fatigue, insomnia and fogginess.

And on top of it our loved ones either watch on helplessly or do not believe the pain is real.

Believe they are in pain. People with Fibromyalgia feel unsupported, misunderstood, lost and frustrated.

Develop an action plan of how you can support them day-to-day to help avoid flare-ups and another action plan of how to support them during a flare-up.

When they are in a flare-up immediately implement the action plan or ask what you can do to help them be more comfortable and do it. This is not the time to problem solve why they are in a flare-up. Asking them if they didn't exercise or if they were stressed is not supportive at this time and it is blaming. It is not their fault. They are in pain and want to be in less pain as soon as possible. If you had slammed your hand in a car door, most of us would want bandages and ice, not an assessment as to what we did to slam our hand in the car door.

Learn as much as possible on Fibromyalgia - read information on the internet, attend support groups, participate in online forums and Facebook groups on Fibromyalgia.

Make the lifestyle habits to decrease Fibromyalgia pain a lifestyle for the entire family. Fibromyalgia is managed through exercise, nutrition, stress management, massage, good sleeping habits and some medications.

Lisa Meloche is president of Bodywork Alternatives Massage Therapy and Founder of the FibroMasters program which includes coaching programs and self-help DVD's and books such as the Fibromyalgia Self-Massage and Stretch DVD.

Fibromyalgia Pain Relief - Self-Massage and Stretch DVD

In this video, a massage therapist with Fibromyalgia shares her self-massage and stretching techniques she uses to reduce her Fibromyalgia pain and flare-ups.

This video contains gentle self-massage and stretching techniques that can be used by anyone. Follow the entire video on a daily basis or incorporate the techniques you find most helpful into your normal Fibromyalgia pain reduction routines.

This video is great for anyone with Fibromyalgia who does not receive massage on a regular basis or can be used for those who use massage therapy and need in between sessions pain reduction.

Approximately ten million people suffer from tight muscles and tissue triggered by Fibromyalgia. Massage therapy is found to be helpful and now there is a video to help guide a self-massage routine for those with Fibromyalgia.

The video incorporates self-massage techniques and stretching to help reduce pain. The video can be followed in its entirety or the tips can be incorporated into daily life to help reduce pain. Developed by Lisa Meloche, massage therapist, President of Bodywork Alternatives Massage Therapy (www.bodyworkalternatives.com) and diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in 1999. “I found massage therapy to be one of the most critical components to manage my Fibromyalgia pain and also for my clients. Many clients will see me once a week to once a month for relief, but needed techniques that they could use at home in between sessions. I developed this video to help many people with Fibromyalgia reduce their pain.” www.bodyworkalternatives.com