Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, is a board certified internist and Medical Director of the national Fibromyalgia and Fatigue Centers and Chronicity. He is author of the popular free iPhone application "Cures A-Z," and author of the best-selling books
Dr. Teitelbaum knows CFS/fibromyalgia as an insider — he contracted CFS when he was in medical school and had to drop out for a year to recover. In the ensuing 25 years, he has dedicated his career to finding effective treatments.
Website: www.EndFatigue.com
In previous articles, we have discussed the basics of using the SHINE Protocol:
Sleep
Hormones
Infections
Nutrition and
Exercise as able
To recover from CFS and fibromyalgia, double-blind placebo-controlled research has shown that 91 percent of people improve with an average 90 percent increase in quality of life using this approach. Today, let’s discuss the E...
People often ask “Which vitamin or mineral do I need?” the answer, simply put, is “All of them!”
Fortunately, we do not have to become part of the “handful club”, where you are taking handfuls of pills each day, to get what you need. It can be done very easily with one drink and 2 to 5 pills daily.
Let’s begin with an exploration of why high potency nutritional support is so important to optimize health in those with CFS/fibromyalgia:
After dealing with an insane medical system, people with CFS/FMS, and even those with simple day-to-day fatigue, often come away wondering if they are crazy.
The simple answer?
NO!At least not any more than anybody else!
Nonetheless, with all that you have been through, let’s take a look at this issue in a little more depth. We have a bad habit in medicine. If a doctor cannot figure out what is wrong with the patient, the doctor brands...
People often ask , “Which vitamin or mineral do I need?” The answer, simply put, is all of them!
Fortunately, we do not have to become part of the “handful club,” where you are taking handfuls of pills each day, to get what you need. It can be done very easily with one drink and 2–5 pills daily.
Let’s begin with an exploration of why high potency nutritional support is so important to optimize health in those with CFS/fibromyalgia:
1. With half...
The question of which infection, if any, is the cause of CFS and fibromyalgia has been both the Holy Grail and bane of CFS/Fibromyalgia researchers. Literally dozens of infections have been implicated, with virtually all of them failing to have reliable testing available to confirm the infection. Because of this, taking a good clinical history, and looking for the response to treatment, continues to be the best approach.
So which infection is the cause of CFS and...
As we continue to lay the foundation for recovering from CFS and fibromyalgia, it is time to discuss the “H” in the SHINE protocol — Hormonal function.
In CFS and fibromyalgia, people are experiencing an energy crisis, which results in them essentially “blowing a fuse.” This manifests as suppression of the key control center in the brain called the hypothalamic pituitary axis, which controls virtually our entire hormonal system. Instead of causing failure of...
As those of you with CFS and fibromyalgia know, getting a decent sleep seems near impossible. Yet, those few rare nights that you do, you feel Sooo much better the next day. Some of you have found a mix of treatments that are giving you your solid eight hours of restful sleep. Others feel like they’ve tried everything and nothing works without leaving them hung over.
In this article, I will give you an overview on how to get eight hours of solid sleep a night—without a...
IN 1975 I was in my third year of medical school, supporting myself working as a neonatal intensive care unit nurse in the Children’s Hospital. And this was the easy part of my life. My family, made up largely of concentration camp survivors from Auschwitz was going through an emotional meltdown. As is often the case with people with CFS/FMS, I was and am pretty empathic, making me the “family problem solver.” Putting myself in the middle of this battle was like getting...
The "perfect storm" for American health is preparing to hit. A combination of poor nutrition, decreasing sleep, increasing stress and environmental toxins has created a human energy crisis of unprecedented proportions.
Over the past 10 years, the incidence of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and fibromyalgia (FMS) has exploded by 400 to 1000 percent, as documented in five separate studies. The numbers for those with CFS in the U.S., previously estimated at 500,000, are now being...
Happiness is next to healthiness. Studies show that folks who are consistently joyous, enthusiastic, calm and content are healthier, with fewer colds, less pain, fewer symptoms of disease, fewer hospitalizations and fewer injuries. They even live 10 –40 percent longer. What's going on? Your mind, nervous system and immune system are all linked together in a very complex way. It turns out that being happy energizes your immune system, prevents overproduction of...
Your body is about 60 percent water. There’s water inside your cells and out. There’s water in your bloodstream and in your organs. There’s even water inside your bones (synovial fluid) and your spinal cord (spinal fluid).
Like any healthy body of water — a swimming pool, a lake, an ocean — the water in your body needs to stay CLEAN. And to stay clean, it needs a FILTER.
Fortunately, your body has one. In fact, it has two — your kidneys. They filter out...
Arthritis is a real pain in the joints — and nearly 30 million Americans have to deal with it.
Twenty-seven million of us deal with pain and stiffness from the wear-and-tear of osteoarthritis, where the cartilage that covers and cushions the ends of your bones becomes thin or disappears, and your bones rub together and hurt.
Another 2.5 million endure the red, hot, swollen and painful joints of rheumatoid arthritis, which is an autoimmune disease that causes your...
Your lungs flank your heart like two guardians, delivering life-giving oxygen to your cells and expelling carbon dioxide, the waste product of energy production.
The journey of inhaled air starts in the nose or mouth. From there, it flows into the windpipe and then enters the tubes of the bronchi — the muscular, branching structures in the lungs. Those branches narrow into hollow twigs called bronchioles.
Each bronchiole ends in an alveoli, a two-way,...
The media puts a lot of attention on the treatment of illnesses, but very little on those who do a lot of the treating—the healthy spouses (and other family members, like adult children and siblings) who take care of their sick loved ones. In my practice, it’s not uncommon for me to see caregiver-spouses who literally had to become sick themselves to avoid burning out.
Well, you don’t have to get to the point where your body takes over to protect you from yourself. By...
The prostate is a walnut-sized gland that produces semen, the fluid that transports sperm. After a man turns 50, or in those with urinary symptoms, the prostate may begin to need support. And men who have CFS/FMS can be particularly vulnerable to a form of prostate irritation called prostadynia.
The prostate rings the urethra, the tube that transports ejaculate and drains urine from the bladder. As the prostate expands in size, the urethra may be squeezed and narrowed,...
Toxins are stuff that your body can't use and that can cause health problems if they hang around and gunk up cells. They include formerly good stuff (such as hormones) that have done their job and been broken down for disposal. They also include bad stuff (such as pollutants and pesticides) that in an ideal world wouldn't have ended up in your body in the first place.
Normally, your body knows how to avoid excess toxins—you take in what you need, and you get rid of...
Blood sugar (glucose) is the body's main fuel, with the brain claiming a hefty 20 percent for itself. That's why low blood sugar can leave you feeling exhausted, anxious, irritable, and brain fogged.
High blood sugar doesn't do you any favors, either. It punishes the blood vessels in your body—from wide arteries to the tiny, cell-wide capillaries. The result is increased risk of heart attack, stroke, kidney disease, nerve pain, blindness, foot ulcers that won't heal, and...
Imagine for a moment the water pressure in a garden hose. If the pressure is too low, the hose is limp and won’t spray. If the pressure is too high, the hose can burst. Your arteries and veins — the vessels that carry blood throughout your body — work pretty much like that garden hose.
If your blood pressure is too low, your organs don’t get the blood they need to function properly (particularly your brain). This can make you feel dizzy and light-headed when you...
The U.S. government spends about one fifth of its budget on defense. In the same way, your body “spends” a lot of its resources to protect you from outside invaders—using your military-like immune system.
Yes, you can think of your immune system as a kind of military organization. And its mission is to protect you from outside invaders called antigens. Antigens include not only infections, but can include any protein that looks foreign to your immune system, including...
I remember when I was a kid and used to see shows and medical exhibits on how awful primitive medicine was and how wonderful our new “scientific” medicine is. The exhibits would include Aztec skull cutters to make holes to let out evil spirits, leeches, snake oil salesman, and such.
We may have moved past some of these (well, instead of leeches we have lab blood-drawing stations), but as we see, historically, the wheel continues to turn. I suspect in our children’s...
