by Kelle Deluca

Created on: June 04, 2009

For years the medical industry has been in disagreement on how best to treat illnesses such as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. One side of the debate says that these illnesses are incurable and so treating the patient is giving them false hope, just give them antidepressants and send them home. For years it was difficult to even get an acknowledgement of these illnesses as a real physical manifestation and not just something "all in your head." The other side of the argument also agrees that these illnesses are incurable and so they treat the symptoms with pain medications, injections and harsh physical therapies that can often exacerbate the issue over time rather than help.

With all this negative information coming from the medical community, we can turn to alternative medicine for treatments. In order to understand how to treat fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, first we must understand the causes. You can have a genetic tendency toward these illnesses, but that does not mean you will get them. Both of these diseases are autoimmune disorders, meaning that the body is attacking itself. This can be caused by a variety of external and internal factors such as long-term stress and anxiety, overwork, exhaustion, adrenal burnout from lack of sleep and/or overconsumption of caffeine and other stimulants, or overgrowths of yeast. The body begins to weaken as it goes into overdrive trying to compensate by overproducing needed chemicals, hormones, and enzymes, exhausting these internal systems and supplies.

Now it is important to note that a large part of our immune system resides in our digestive tract. This is where foods are broken down in the constituent parts, such as the essential nutrients and amino acids we need to supply every cell in our bodies the energy and nutrition they need for healthy function and proper growth. Some of the symptoms that people who suffer from Fibromyalgia or CFS will notice can be irritable bowel syndrome and the development of multiple food and environmental allergies. This is caused by a weakening in the walls of the digestive tract, sometimes referred to as "Leaky Gut Syndrome."

What happens is that food particles that have not been completely broken down into their base sugars move through the intestinal wall and into the blood stream. These particles are not recognized as food by the immune system, so antibodies are created to protect the body. Now when these foods are consumed, or bits of environmental allergens

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