To turn off pain you need to give your body what it needs and eliminate what is damaging or toxic to your body. One of the most common types of pain in fibromyalgia is myofascial, or muscle, pain. If your muscles do not have adequate nutrients, optimal hormone levels, or enough sleep for tissue repair, they will get stuck in the shortened position and cause pain.

Underlying infections can also cause muscles to hurt and/or get stuck in the shortened position (consider the achiness accompanying the flu).

Our research team did a study in which we applied these principles to people with fibromyalgia. We found that hypothalamic dysfunction is common in these patients.

The hypothalamus is a small but major control center in the brain that controls sleep and hormonal function. It also contributes to disordered sleep and widespread hormonal deficiencies. Our study showed that after two years of treatment, the average improvement in quality of life was 90 percent, and pain decreased by an average of more than 50 percent.

Most of the benefit was seen within 100 days of treatment and after three months the majority of patients no longer even qualified for the diagnosis of fibromyalgia!

An editorial in the Journal of the American Academy of Pain Management noted that our treatment protocol was an "excellent and highly effective part of the standard of practice for the treatment of fibromyalgia and myofascial pain syndrome

Once you are treating the underlying causes of the pain, it is very reasonable to use natural and prescription therapies to mask the pain until it subsides.