Hello! I'm a total newbie here!

I was "officially" diagnosed with CFS back in the late 80's. I was 29 then and just turned 44 recently.

Back in "those days" it was a miracle to just get a doctor to not laugh at you! Especially in the small town I'm from. When I finally found one who told me I had CFS and was not crazy in the head...that it was real...it was a huge relief. Now I wonder though, if I may have or also have FM and it was just not diagnosed. Many of the symptoms are certainly the same!

I just wondered what the general consensus is...are there some people who just have CFS alone and others who have CFS AND FM, or are they almost always realated?? Just wanted some of your comments on that.

My first 5 years with CFS were pure Hell, but with time, Vit B shots, and a stict diet that I followed (totally on my own and out of desperation) from the book "Yeast Connection", I finally started to bounce back and at least become functional again!

I still have bad flare-ups in the late summer and early fall. Molds and such in the air and lack of sleep both give me the same symptoms...a heaviness in my chest/labored breathing, muscle and joint aches and tightness and feeling of fuzziness in thinking, etc.

My ongoing symptoms yet today are burning in shoulder and knee joints,paliptations and episodes of tachycardia (that I take meds for), insomnia and irratic sleep patterns, stiff joints especially in hips and legs, sore but not swollen lymphs.

I get along fairly well now (although sometimes I wish I could be better), but if I get carried away / forget myself while doing yard work or excercise, I'm sick again and have to take several days/sometimes a week or more, to recoop.

The one symptom I am finally free of are the horrible headaches! In the early years I had the feeling like a tight band was around my head, which also throbed...that was terrible and I'm thankful those are gone!

I used to love the mountains and love travel to places like Colorado. Now high altitudes make me sick/fatigued and irritate my heart. Anyone else have trouble with altitudes???

Just wondered what anyones thoughts were on the link/simularities of CFS and FM.

Thanks!

Hi Athelia!
I'm new to the board, don't even know if i can help you with your question, I can only tell you what I have experianced.
I have both CFIDS/FMS and I have had fm for a year this month, and the other for 7 yrs. I was hard for me to distinguish the 2 at first. with CFIDS my tachycardia starts in and i have awful headaches a sore throat and a low grade fever and I feel as though i have the flu, with the muscle aches also and it's hard for me to function.....no energy at all!

With Fibromyalgia, I have pain in my shoulders, neck, arm, back, hips, legs, elbow. hands....and the list goes on. with fibro, you never know on any given day where it will be when you wake up the next morning, depending on if you got any sleep the night before. I have been in a cfids flare for 2 weeks now andI haven't had a good nights sleep In while, even on all the meds I still have trouble sleeping, or I will sleep and the next morning I feel as though I hadn't slept at all. I also have irritable bowel syndrome, vetigo.....oh annd lets not forget!! fibro fog!.....I hope I was able to help you some...as it's hard to think right about now.

Hope You Get To Feeling Better! http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/biggrin.gif
Hugs Coming Your Way!
Cookie

My Dr. highly suspect that I have CFS. I have an appt. next month with a specialist in N.C. who hopefully will be able to determine if I just have CFS, or if I also have FM too. My symptoms change from month to month, but currently they are:
sore throat, allergy symptoms, nausea, headache, numbness in back of head, tachycardia, TMJ pain, muscle spasms of jaw & neck, and low grade fever.
It's always something new. http://www.healthboards.com/ubb/round.gif

CFS and fibromyalgia are often combined with people suffering from mercury-silver dental amalgam poisoning. This is a topic that is personally important to me, since I have been cured of gum disease, loose teeth and fibromyalgia symptoms after having my eight dental amalgams removed. I can't say if this is what is causing your problems, but I can tell you all what has happened to me.

If you want to know more about this subject, please let me know. It impacted my life so much; that's why I write so much about it and other things on this health board. Before linking my illness with these amalgams, I changed to a healthy diet. I found that herbs greatly helped me also. But, when I got rid of those poisons out of my teeth, I got my life completely back.... I couldn't at times walk with the pain that I had, but now I run almost 20 miles a week.

It's interesting, although, I really didn't have CFS, but other people claim that they do. That's common knowledge. I guess I can say that now I'm a lot more spirited and do so much more, but I didn't have CFS to the point, where I couldn't work, for example.

There was one exception, when I experimented with anti-mercury components, but that is another story....

Hi rhody - what symptoms were associated with your mercury-amalgam fillings, or rather what symptoms were relieved after you had the fillings removed?

I have had chronic daily headaches in the forehead, behind the eyes, temples, jaw and a general "foggy head" type of feeling, ear fullness and pressure. Can't seem to find a cause or cure, and I do have 5 silver fillings.

At this point, I'll give anything a shot to see if ti works. Maybe I'll have the fillings removed. Any advice?

thanks

Since there is so much unknown about the affect of mercury-silver dental amalgams for each person, I wouldn't want to say that everyone get them removed for health reasons without doing research. It was a tough decision for me to make. At first, I didn't know absolutely sure that these amalagams were making me sick, but I had strong indications that they were. I waited about 5 years after they were removed, before saying anything publicly about this.

The reason, is that it can be quite complicated. For a lot of people, just removing the source of the toxins from your mouth is not enough. You must then proceed to remove the toxins from the rest of your body where these things have been accumulating over the years. I couldn't find any medical professional to help me, other than my naturopath. So, what I did, was have the mercury-silver dental amalgams removed for cosmetic purposes. Regardless of whether I got well or not, I didn't want those ugly gray-black things in my mouth. As an added benefit, if I got well, then that was so much the better. So with that attitude, I got white fillings based on recommendations from my naturopath. He tested me to make sure that the substitute materials and cementing agents weren't bad for me too. At the time, my insurance company paid for part of this; that is the difference in cost between white fillings and dental amalgams. My fillings were so old, that they were due for replacement anyway.

I hope that helps. So in summary, do lots of research and consider removing them for cosmetic purposes only and because you don't want mercury in your body and teeth. You can find a lot of information about this on the web.

rhody - After filling removal, did you then take chelation supplements or somehting to detox your body of potential mercury build-up?

thanks

I'll also review the symptoms for you. This affected me for over 20 years. My symptoms were muscle/joint pain, gum disease, loose teeth, urinary problems, lower back pain, chest pain, skin rashes, and headaches. These pains and troubles got worse over the years, to the point where at times walking could be difficult (when my lower back pain was severe).

When my tooth broke and exposed one mercury-silver dental amalgam about 8-1/2 years ago, I had also tingling at the end of my hands. Also at this time, my headaches were severe. I had horrible back and neck pains. No longer would Dristan take away the pain. I was very scared. I asked the dentist to take care of that exposed amalgam first. After that tooth was taken care of, and replaced with a crown, my pain and discomfort returned to "normal" levels of just my ordinary troubles. For some reason, after the last of eight amalgams were removed, a small section of my lower right knee cap felt like a severe bruise. You couldn't see anything unusual with the knee cap; it just hurt and fortunately didn't affect my walking or running. It took years, before this sensation went away.

Right after these amalgams were gone, I felt like a burden had been lifted off of me, so I began to run faster. But, I found that I still had some problems. So out of frustruation, I experimented with anti-mercury agents, and got horribly sick. I missed about a week of work; I thought I was going to die. I had a low grade fever, and was extremely sleepy most of the time. At one point in the very beginning, I felt like I wanted to vomit and eat at the same time. Other times, I felt like I wanted to get up and run and sleep at the same time. It was like my nervous system went completely crazy.

After that, I never experimented with these anti-mercury agents again. I just stuck to my common-sense healthy diet and exercise program. Recently, I have been eating raw cilantro (a plant used as a spice) which reportedly helps remove aluminum, lead, and mercury from the body.

In the Spring of 1978, a doctor told me that I was too fat, too old, for me to take 10 aspirins a day, and that I shouldn't run more than a hundred yards. Today, I run nearly 20 miles a week. Yesterday, I ran my 6.5 mile run so fast; within 4 minutes of my personal best. I've also started increasing my weight lifting. I push myself to do better all the time, as I continually feel better. It has been a slow process, but very rewarding.

I hope that I have helped by describing my symptoms.

Mainly to detoxify my body of poisons, I consumed herbs and changed to a healthy diet. Before my tooth broke and gave me a clear indication that this was the source of my problems, I did wholesome natural things to make my life tolerable.

The herbs saved me from being miserable; they gave me enough life, until the time of my discovery - that these mercury-silver dental amalgams were poison. One of my first early experiments with herbs was ginseng tea. I just got some from a supermarket. It was marvelous.

For some reason, calcium supplements helped too. I also took magnesium. But, I must caution anyone about taking too much of these supplements. I also had one large calcium stone removed after I fell last year. The doctor thinks that the hard fall, knocked the stone loose. It was so large that it most likely had been growing for a long time in my kidney. Since my diet is so healthy now and I drink lots of water, we can only suggest that maybe all those calcium supplements that I took about 10 years ago or so were the source of this problem. But that is only a guess.

When I was extremely sick with my urinary problems, I made large batches of herbal teas from bulk herbs. Some of these herbs were marshmallow root, queen of the meadow, licorice, damiana, and ginger. I was so sick that I didn't care if I lived or died. I was at the end of my rope, when doctors could not help me. So, I turned to anything that remotely might help. To my surprise, the herbs helped immensly. But the healing with these herbs were slow too. Changing my diet to natural foods at the same time, was also important.

I hope that helps. I did not take any other chelating agents, as my experiments with anti-mercury components scared me too much. I think the reason that I may have healed so much with this dental amalgam problem is because of these herbs and healthy diet. That's why I write about my experiences. I hope that by sharing our stories that we can help others. In general, this is all so new to the medical community. But they are learning all the time.

Also, I feel that before anyone take herbs that they do research on this. It took me a long time to understand herbal therapy. It was a road that I took towards recovery, which was basically outside of mainstream medicine. Within mainstream medicine there was no cure, so I was forced outside to find this cure.

If you or anyone would like more information about herbs, I'd be glad to help.

We have both CFS and FMS, I also have chemical sencitivities. I also can't spell. The whole lot is hard to seperate now. We haven't been having a great time with it at all and my husband is now on disability. Between the pain and falling asleep many times a day and not being able to get the strength up to even eat some days; it is a real bear. We had our old silver fillings removed years ago. Wish we could say that it helped us. But, we have to try anything that could possibly be contributing to this horrid mess we are in.
It is so hard because what may help one may not help another. We take different meds and go to the same Board certified FMS, CFS Infectious disease specialist. It is hard for me to seperate the two. I have some good days but, most now are not great. We just keep on researching the net and hope. A good sence of humor is a nessesity. We post mainly on the FMS section.

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Take care ~Kim & Gary~