If you ask most physicians – family docs, internists, rheumatologist they’ll probable say either that we don’t yet know the cause of fibromyalgia or they may say that it’s a type of over activity of the nervous system but that we don’t know why it happens. I disagree with the first answer & partially agree with the second answer.

I believe that fibromyalgia (and many other forms of chronic musculoskeletal pain) is indeed caused by an overactive nervous system… specifically a ramped up sympathetic autonomic nervous system. This leads to vasoconstriction (narrowing) of small arteries going to body tissues like muscles and nerves. Since blood carries oxygen, arterial narrowing leads to mildly decreased oxygen getting to the tissues leading to pain, muscle spasm and other symptoms.

Where I disagree with many other physicians is the part that says “but we don’t yet know why this happens”. I believe we do. The root cause of the overactive nervous system in fibromyalgia and other forms of chronic pain like back or neck pain is stress, tension and especially un-processed negative emotions like anger, rage, fear or sadness. It’s very common in our civilized society to bottle up or bury uncomfortable emotions – many, many people do it. And when emotions are not processed properly they change the way that the brain functions and this is what leads to the overactive autonomic nervous system which leads to the pain.

And I’m not saying that it’s “all in your head”. Not at all! The pain is very real and very physical and the trigger points/muscle knots are real. And the fatigue and fibrofog are real. But these real physical symptoms just aren’t the root cause of the syndrome. The root cause is the stress, tension and unprocessed buried uncomfortable emotions.

Now, I will admit that this is not something that is easy to prove in randomized double blind placebo controlled studies. But there have been quite a few physicians, psychologists and other health care providers who, over the past 30 years or so, have worked with thousands of chronic pain patients who were able to eliminate months, years and even decades of chronic pain completely by understanding this mind body connection and by learning mental and emotional techniques to easily reverse this process. Thousands of chronic pain patients have eliminated their pain once and for all using this approach and I know that at least a few hundred fibromyalgia patients have eliminated their fibromyalgia pain and other symptoms this way. I suspect it’s more than a thousand so far but I know with certainty that’s it’s at least several hundred. In fact, with the leading mind-body program for eliminating pain every single fibromyalgia patient who went through the program is now pain-free. That’s 100% success.

This is so important because it tells me that fibromyalgia does not have to be a life-sentence. It IS possible to recover from it. It’s possible to break the cycle of suffering. I know of at least hundreds of people who’ve done this already.

I hate to see people suffer… especially if I really believe that there is a reliable we to eliminate the pain. I suffered from chronic pain myself for 35 years and I used a mind-body treatment approach to eliminate my pain. I never quite fit the diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia but I had pain in my knees, thighs, neck, low back, feet & TMJ’s and shoulders. I had to take OxyContin and Percocet around the clock for 5 years just to be able function.

Then I learned about the mind-body approach to getting free from many types of chronic pain and started a program. In 2 days I had some improvement. In 3 weeks my pain was 90% gone. In 6 weeks my pain was 98% gone and it just kept getting better and better. I was able to quickly taper off the narcotics and I haven’t taken a narcotic pain med in 2 years now.

I just want to see people recover from chronic pain like I did and like so many other patients have. Most doctors don’t understand these techniques yet because they haven’t been taught in medical school but more and more doctors, chiropractors, therapists and other clinicians are learning these techniques every day.

Ask me any questions you want. I want to help.

Dr. Michael Amendolara has been a licensed Medical Doctor since 1989 and has been a Board Certified Family Physician for more than 20 years. During his career as a medical doctor so far, he has spent many years practicing as an Urgent Care Physician and a General Primary Care Physician. Most recently, for the past 4 years, he specialized in Therapeutic Injections treating arthritis, tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome and many other musculoskeletal problems. He has done more than 40,000 joint injections for osteoarthritis of the knees with amazing success.

He received a Bachelor of Science degree in BioMechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering, graduating Summa Cum Laude with a Grade Point Average of 3.97. He was admitted to membership to the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society and the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. He then attended UMDNJ: Robert Wood Johnson Medical School with a Full Tuition Scholarship. After medical school, he completed his medical internship and Family Medicine Residency at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, NJ.