Fibromyalgia Is NOT All in Your Head: Tami Stackelhouse on Symptoms, Remission, and Hope

00:00 — Fibromyalgia Is Real

fibromyalgia is a real condition, like it’s a real thing where things are actually going wrong in your body.

It’s not something that you just created yourself in your mind,

You are listening to the Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life.

Your host is no other than the founder of Haley Nutrition Dr. Michael Haley.

This is the Dr Haley Show podcast. I’m Dr Michael Haley, your show host. Do you live with unexplained pain or persistent fatigue or poor sleep or brain fog, even though your medical tests keep coming back normal? Or perhaps someone you love is struggling with symptoms that other people simply cannot see or understand? Today’s conversation can help you recognize the patterns of fibromyalgia, understand how it overlaps with conditions such as chronic fatigue, and learn practical first steps that could help you regain some control over your health and daily life.

My guest is Tami Stackelhouse, an award winning author, fibromyalgia wellness expert, and founder of the International Fibromyalgia Coaching Institute. Tami was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 2007 and eventually became disabled by her symptoms. After working with a health coach and developing a more individualized approach to manage her health, she says her fibromyalgia went into remission. Today, Tami trains fibromyalgia coaches, hosts the

Fibromyalgia podcast and helps people better understand and manage this complex and often invisible condition.

She’s also the executive producer of the fibromyalgia documentary Invisible Tami Welcome to the Dr Haley show. You know, I usually really, truly vet my guests. And this is true. I popped up a video to find out more about you. Instantly fell in love with you. I love your energy and I think I know where it comes from. I think I know where you get your your your secret sauce behind the energy and happiness you have in your life.

I perceive there’s something special in there that gives that to you. But welcome to the show. We are going to be talking about fibromyalgia. And yes, you know, I would love to start with probably something that might be the most offensive thing someone can say to someone

that has fibromyalgia. Just just deal with it. Get over with it.

Suck it up. Come on. It’s in your head. Oh, God.

You’ve probably heard that before. Yes, very much so. In fact, it’s so funny. We’re talking about this. I actually got an email from actually a teenager yesterday who was fighting that exact problem from her mom and from her doctors. And, you know, that is the thing that will set me off. Okay. Like, you want to make me mad.

Let’s get this show started with a bang.

03:56 — Tami’s Fibromyalgia Story

Well, it’s just it’s just so hard. Yeah. Tell us your story. When did you find out you had fibromyalgia? When did you notice symptoms? And how did you figure out exactly what it was? And what’s your background? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So if we go all the way back to the very beginning,

I was that little kid that had issues all the time.

And, I mean, my parents used to joke that they would take me to the doctor for maintenance. Right. Not so much that something happened. And now she, you know, needs to go to the doctor. But like, I was at the doctor all the time, there were always things

going on. And I don’t know, like looking back, how much of that would be fibromyalgia?

But it’s also not surprising that I, you know, ended up with fibromyalgia later in life. I would say I really started noticing symptoms and really started thinking myself that this might be what I was dealing with. I was in my late 20s and I was, you know, reading all the books, doing all the research, not getting answers at my doctor.

And then after I got married in 2006, my husband’s insurance got to switch, you know, doctors out of an HMO. I will just say that. And that’s when I finally started getting answers and was finally diagnosed in 2007. But I personally had thought that that was what I was dealing with for, I don’t know, five years maybe before I finally got a diagnosis, you know, let me drift outside of the fibromyalgia discussion for just a second because you mentioned HMO.

So I’m going to help people understand what that really is and why things may have changed. Because I am a physician. And in well, it was around 1995, I was actually working in another doctor’s office at the time, because we have to do so many hours, like an internship type setting, and this won’t reveal which one it was, because I actually split up among a couple of different doctors, but I was seeing his patients, and this one guy took more time than, you know, he was acceptable in the office.

And when I came out, he said, what are you doing? You were in with that patient for 15 minutes. He said, get them in, get them out. They have this HMO and we only get $6 for that visit. Get them in, get them out. That was yes So how can we possibly if I’m going to get you in and get you out?

How can I possibly do anything beyond maybe write a prescription? Okay. You got pain. Okay, here it is. Gotta go. And then you got real insurance where doctors could actually maybe dig a little deeper. And how important was that? Oh my goodness. So important. I mean, the HMO that I was part of and I’m not naming names here, but they were really, really fantastic.

If you had a problem that fit inside their box. So I had been diagnosed with TMJ issues and they had a whole program they put me through for that and it was fantastic. But then getting a diagnosis of fibromyalgia or even suspecting I had fibromyalgia, like I had actually messaged my doctor and said, hey, I think I might be dealing with this.

And her assistant that wrote back said, I’m not sure what that is, but why don’t you come in and we’ll help you? I did not make that appointment. I’m like, if you don’t even know what I’m talking about, how are you going to help me? You know?

but you’re so right.

I think there was a study done that showed Kaiser had an average of, like, six minute doctor visits.

Right? And I mean, fibromyalgia is so complicated. People will notice just our conversation today, right, is going to be more than six minutes. And so sharing

your history, telling your doctor like what is going on, especially when you have something that is invisible, it doesn’t show up on blood tests. It’s not going to show up on an x ray that conversation.

08:19 — Diagnosis, Causes, and Remission

Let’s explore that a little deeper here. So in other words, there’s not a test for it. No there isn’t. I mean

there is one out there, but it has issues. So does that mean we’re looking at markers more like, you know, you’re likely to have higher this or higher that or something like that. Yes. But also looking at the actual symptoms themselves.

So how long have you felt this way. What’s your pain like? Do you have the brain fog? Do you have the poor sleep? Do you have the fatigue? Is there something else that can explain this? And fibromyalgia is not a diagnosis

of exclusion. Meaning you can’t have anything else to be diagnosed with fibromyalgia. It can be a both and.

But we also don’t want to just stamp a label fibromyalgia on there when maybe you’re just hypothyroid Right What causes it? Good question that we actually don’t know the answer to, which isn’t such a bad thing for someone hearing this, you know, and saying, you know, this sounds like me. I have, you know, fatigue and pain and stuff.

Not knowing what causes it does not mean there’s no help for it. a hundred percent. I like to use the parable of the blind men and the elephants. Right. The blind men come across an elephant and each one is touching different parts of the elephant, and one says, elephant is like a wall, and another one gets the tail and says, no, no, no, no.

It’s like a snake. And that’s kind of where we’re at with fibromyalgia. There are a lot of people out there who are saying, oh, this is what fibromyalgia is. But the reality is

we actually don’t know and we don’t totally know what the disease process is. Right? So exactly what is causing the pain, exactly what is, you know, is are these symptoms all cause from the same thing or as one causing the other?

Like, there’s just so many things we don’t know. But to your point, just because we

don’t know doesn’t mean you can’t feel better. Yeah. Like, well. So if we don’t know what causes

What is remission? Good question. I want to be super clear up front here that I did not choose that word. That was actually something my doctor told me, that she considered me to be in remission. It’s a medical diagnosis. So it’s not just, you know, Oh, I’m healed. I don’t like that word either. It’s not that. No, I don’t like that weren’t either because it kind of sounds like, oh, it just it disappeared.

But it’ll probably come back and get me later. And it takes away your power. It’s almost like saying you have no choice in this. You have no say in it. Yep. And so I don’t like that word. Exactly. No, no. Me neither. So remission is really. I mean, you could think of it like we use the word with cancer, right?

Like, it’s a

ending of the symptoms. It’s, you know, you’re not finding

any issues. Right. So I haven’t had any fibro pain since 2018.

It’s been almost ten years now. I have the energy to do the things I want to do. My brain works. I’ve written a couple of books. Right? Like

that’s what remission means with fibromyalgia.

And I think it’s also important to I have to stop you. I gotta because I love the title of your book, Take Back Your Life. Yeah, that’s what it’s all about, right? That is totally what it’s all about. And

remission can happen even on medications. So I think sometimes we look at all the options and we feel like it only counts if we don’t use any tools.

And some of those tools might be medications. Some of those tools might be certain therapies. Epsom salt baths, like there’s lots of tools,

but it’s really all about the symptoms. But you’re right,

it’s also all about taking back your life.

this is one of the problems I see in the fibromyalgia world is that we get so caught up in how do I manage my symptoms that we forget that managing symptoms is not the same thing as being able to live your life.

And I am all about the second, right? I mean, yes, learning how to manage your symptoms and learning how to listen to your body and all those things are important

but we do that so that we can go live our lives. And if we forget that second piece, then, you know, I’m just going to bed on time to go to bed on time.

That ain’t happened. You know, it’s we have to connect that to why am I even doing this in the first place? And we’ve got to have those lives that are actually worth living. Yeah. Tell me about some other diagnoses that might be around or might mimic fibromyalgia

13:00 — Overlapping Conditions and Possible Triggers

or that kind of go hand in hand or are confused with.

So I already mentioned one. Hypothyroidism. Thyroid disease is something that I go over in all my classes and talk to all my clients about, because if you look at a list of symptoms from having a low functioning thyroid, they look an awful lot like fibromyalgia, right? Joint pain,

brain fog, you know, all those things, right? Low energy.

So that is for sure. One, Things like chronic fatigue

syndrome, ME/CFS, that can have an overlap, though there are differences. Things like EDS, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, I see a lot of overlap with that

there’s really just a lot of things. And I think something that happens in the body, especially when we have something with chronic pain, is there’s a certain point where there’s like this switch that gets flipped and we sort of like flip over into fibromyalgia.

Like,

I personally believe

that there’s a pretty big genetic component, right? Because you can have two people, one person ends up, you know, same car accident, one ends up with fibromyalgia, one doesn’t. Right. So I think there’s a genetic component, but then there’s a trigger. And that trigger is usually some kind of physical trauma mental emotional trauma, chronic stress like

there is a thing that sets it off, right?

Like maybe the car accident. And so

there can be a lot of overlap with other things because those other things come first and then that switch gets flipped. So the way that I like to explain sort of the difference, like let’s say you have rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia, the fibromyalgia part is the amplification of everything. Fibromyalgia is an amplifier.

So if you go to the doctor and the doctor says you shouldn’t hurt that much, that is a fibro thing, right? Or if you maybe you have arthritis in your knee from an old injury, but now you’re hurting everywhere else too right that that expansion of the pain to other places. That’s a fibro thing. So fibromyalgia will take whatever you’ve got going on and amplify it.

So I think anybody who’s dealing with chronic pain sort of has this I don’t want to say risk exactly. Potential, let’s say potential

of developing fibromyalgia if we don’t learn how to manage that pain.

Yeah, so the ACEs score is something that has been used a lot in adverse childhood experiences, and they have associated a higher ACEs score with chronic illnesses like fibromyalgia. And what’s interesting about your question is that my ACEs score is zero. However, however, however, one of the things that’s not measured on the little ACEs quiz is medical trauma

And I had. So I mean, I mentioned at the beginning, right,

I was seeing the doctor all the time, but I had a surgery to open my tear ducts when I was not even a year old. And back in the early 70s, we thought, you know, babies don’t really. They’re not going to remember. So we don’t have to give any pain management.

My mom has always said that watching that happen was the hardest thing she ever did, right? So, I mean, I don’t remember it, but I think the cells in our bodies do. So I do think there is some trauma, but it was trauma done in the name of help, right? Like good medicine. Like I don’t think I was abused medically or anything like that.

They were just hard things. Right? Right. And so yes, I would say there are some of those kinds of things,

but like traditional trauma. No, I never

associated myself with that at all until I started thinking about the medical side of things and all the things I went through as a kid there. Yeah. The reason I think it’s important, though, as a chiropractor, I noticed that there are triggers for people’s pain.

Certain emotional triggers will cause people to have sciatic pains as an example. They’re often related. It’s not necessarily just physical. And, you know, you might sit with your feet up while watching TV, putting stress on the ligaments in the back of your knee. And now you have knee pain. So you know, it’s a trigger or standing wrong could cause back pain.

Or sleeping on the couch sideways watching TV could cause a neck pain. There are things we do that cause our pain and problems, and if we don’t identify them and stop doing them, it keeps on coming back because we’re, you know, pulling the trigger. Yes, yes. And it’s such a hard thing to like, explain that to people without also crossing the line into blaming the patient for their illness.

Right. Like there is our own agency, right? Like there are absolutely things that I can do that will help me, you know, get better. And things that I will do that will help me get worse. But most people are walking around out there and they have no idea. Right. And so can we totally blame someone for the things that they just don’t know any better?

And also like, some bodies just are wired a certain way and have issues and are more sensitive and you know, all of those things. So it’s like it’s a complicated conversation. Yeah. For the people listening. And we’re going to get to some of the things you can do to help yourself. But I got some other things I got to get out of the way here.

20:51 — Becoming an Expert on Your Own Body

I need an explanation here. And I think we’re going to find that we think very differently. This is a Tami Stackelhouse quote. There is no one that is more of an expert in your body than you. What did you mean by that? I mean that there is nobody else that lives in your body that knows what things feel like, that knows how you are experiencing life.

So specifically, since we’re talking about fibromyalgia and talking about things like chronic pain and fatigue, nobody else knows how that feels, right? Like, not for real. Like you. Maybe you’ll talk to me. And I’ve had fibromyalgia too, and I know what fibromyalgia felt like for me. And so I kind of know, but I don’t really know because I don’t live in your body.

Same thing with fatigue or brain fog or anything else like that.

I’m not saying we’re all our own doctors, you know. It’s not, it’s not. But we kind of are. But what we but we yeah, you’re right. We kind of are. And

we are the ones who I mean, how many times have you heard somebody say, I just knew something was wrong, right?

And then maybe they end up diagnosed with cancer or whatever. Right. And they just I knew something was wrong. I think we have to listen to that. And all too often we are sort of talked out of that. Yeah, right. Like

oh there’s you know where we started, right. Oh there’s nothing really wrong. Yeah. You know, and I actually think there’s more to what you’re saying there than what you just said.

You know, there’s no one that is more of an expert in your body than you. And we have this source of knowledge, I’ll say, a source of knowledge. We have this life that’s in us that somehow takes the food we eat and knits it into more tissue and replaces dead bad cells with new ones. And that’s, you know, my doctor in me doing those things and my doctor in me can’t do those for you, only your doctor.

in you can do those things for you. But your doctor needs certain things, and they’re probably different than my doctor. My body needs certain things. And

when we pay attention to our body, I think we’re really given the information about what we need. We just don’t always listen or we choose to disobey. I know this isn’t good for me.

I know this is not going to make me feel good, but I really want it.

You know, the

flesh wars against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. And these things are contrary to each other so that you cannot do what you want. But if you pay attention and make the good decisions and disobey your flesh sometimes because you know it is good and you’re making a good choice, you are probably going to do better and your doctor is probably going to work better.

But that’s right, if you choose to do the things that your flesh desires and you know, I really I really want to eat this. I love ice cream. I really, personally, I haven’t had ice cream in about five years. Not because, you know, I’m any, you know, spiritual giant and I can say no to everything that’s bad. I would just rather eat meat and potatoes.

Yeah. And I think

some of all of that is learning how to pay attention to our bodies again

and noticing how different things make us feel. Right. So I have a lot of clients who try going gluten free, just, you know, it’s about 50/50, I’d say, whether it helps or not for people, but it’s definitely worth trying.

And at a certain point people realize, oh, you know, yes, that bread looks amazing, but I kind of like feeling like this more than I like how I’ll feel if I eat that. Right? But

if you’re not paying attention, if you’re not making those associations, if you’re not like connecting the dots. And I think

that’s where people outside the doctor’s outside the coaches outside your body can be helpful with that, connecting those dots.

Right.

then we make different choices, like you said. Yeah. Well, how much of getting well from fibromyalgia well and how many people can get well from fibromyalgia, but how much is up to them and how much is up to the doctor.

I can’t say everybody can get to a place like where I am because there

are other issues, right.

Like other things come alongside. And if you’ve got, you know, maybe you’re in a bad car accident and you’ve got like damage in your body, like some of those things, there’s only like a certain point we can get to. But fibromyalgia itself, I help people all the time get to a point where fibromyalgia is not bothering their lives, and I don’t want to say like zero, because of course there’s always other things.

But getting to a point where you can live the life that you want to live, and that’s what it’s all about. But as far as like what your doctor can do for you versus what you can do for you, I’ll actually quote my doctor. I had gotten a lot better and was telling her about it, and she’s like, you did the really hard 98% and I did the easy 2%.

And, you know, I think that’s probably about right. Like

even if you do have a fantastic doctor, even if you have the full support of an amazing team, at the end of the day, you go home and you’re the only person who can take care of you, right? You are the one who has to go to bed.

You’re the one who has to make the choice about what you’re eating. You’re the one who has to listen or not listen to your body. It’s like if you only went to the dentist to clean your teeth and you never brush your teeth at home, right? There’s a country comedian redneck. He does this redneck bit, and he was talking about going to the dentist, and the dentist asked me, when’s the last time you floss your teeth?

He said, last time I floss my teeth,

he said, you did it. Yeah. You got to take care of your own teeth and brush daily. And going to the dentist and having your teeth cleaned once every six months probably isn’t going to do it. And it’s the same, like you just said. It’s the same way when it comes to your health and the other things that you’re doing, I completely agree.

27:24 — Sleep, Thyroid Health, and Medication

What are what was the 2% that the doctor did for me? It was uncovering some of the other things that were going on that we didn’t know were contributing. So figuring out that I have Hashimoto’s autoimmune thyroid, and I have learned that I have something called upper airway resistance syndrome, basically like

sleep apnea. I was waking up 45 times an hour every 80 seconds is how that math works out.

So of course I was tired and not getting sleep is going to interfere with getting well and cause more pain. How did you fix that? Yeah. CPAP machine. Yeah. I wouldn’t even take a five minute nap. Wow. Without my machine. Yeah, it just for me, it made such a difference. I mean, think about it. Difference between waking up every 80 seconds and maybe waking up once an hour, or maybe not even that much.

Yeah. And, you know, I’ve always told people that there’s certain things you can do for your health, and one of them is getting proper rest. Yeah. If you don’t get that, like, that’s the foundation for everything. And, you know, for me,

the last two times that I have had any fibromyalgia pain, it was because I slept on a bed that was too hard.

I was traveling, I was in London. The penthouse we were staying in just had this really, really hard bed. And the first day I woke up, I was like, oh no, I think I’m coming down with the flu, right? I was just like achy all over. I was tired and then I was like, oh, that’s my old friend fibromyalgia.

And so

what I actually had to do on that trip was we folded up some extra blankets, made some extra padding on the bed. I actually had to take pain meds before I went to bed to manage the pain from the hard bed so that I got good sleep, and when I did those things

I felt normal again.

But that to me was such a perfect example of if that had been my bed right, I would not be in remission. Yeah, something as simple as that. A lot of times I, you know, speak out against using medicine. And my take has always been that we use too much medicine, but there is a trade. You probably knew that taking a pain reliever isn’t good for you, but it is because it was buying you rest, which you needed.

So it’s a trade off and there’s definitely a time and place for it. Absolutely. And one of the things I like to say is sometimes we have to take medication so that we can not take medication, right. With fibromyalgia and with this switch that gets flipped in our nervous system, we have to break that pain cycle. And if we don’t break the pain cycle, we can’t get out of it.

And often that means medication temporarily, temporarily might even look like a couple of years, right? There are things that I was on for. I think one of them I was on for maybe six years total that I am not taking now, but I also believe if I hadn’t taken it, I wouldn’t be where I am now. Right? So sometimes we have to.

It’s a tool. well it supports another thing that I often say, and that is the purpose of medicine, is to buy you time, but it should be accompanied with a plan to get off it. You’re doing you’re making changes to fix the reason that’s causing you to need it. Yep, yep. And sometimes there are things that like, I am always going to be on thyroid hormone.

My it’s just it is what it is, you know.

but that doesn’t mean I can do all the things that make that worse. Right? I can’t like put all of my whatever into this medicine is going to fix everything, right? There is definitely a time and a place for it, but it has to come with me taking care of me, right?

The medicine can’t take care of me. I’m the one who has to take care of me, and the medicine might be part of it. It’s a

a mental shift. I think that a lot of patients need to make and a lot of providers need to make. Really? Yeah. But I personally and I wouldn’t say stop taking your medicine, but I would still look at it and say, okay, is there a way that I can better support my,

thyroid and what’s causing the thyroid issue?

Can I make changes to my nutrition, for instance? Are there supplements that I can take that would stimulate this or that or, you know, is it related to a leaky gut? Can I improve that

33:22 — Doctors, Coaches, and Pacing

when we’re getting well from fibromyalgia? Do I need a team of doctors? Do I need a coach? What’s what’s your from your experience, what do you think the best path is?

Honestly, the absolute best path is, I believe a coach I had had and you need a doctor. We’ll talk about the doctor separately though. I had been working

with honestly a great doctor for about two years and wasn’t really seeing much improvement. She was telling me all the things to do and I was really struggling to do them right, like to actually make the dietary changes she was recommending, to actually go to bed on time to learn pacing, like all of those things.

And that’s where my coach was helpful. I would meet with her once a week. Can we back up? Yeah, yeah. So in other words, the doctor was telling you the right things to do, but you would only have so many doctor visits. So there wasn’t maybe like an accountability. Is that the difference? Yes. Yes. And the time spent too.

Right. So you know traditional doctor system. Right. 15 minutes and you’re not seeing them weekly. Okay. My coach I saw weekly and we usually met for about an hour. And you said something about pacing. What’s pacing, how you use the energy that you have. It’s budgeting your energy. Yeah. Like you would budget your money. You only have so much.

How do you want to spend it? Right. And being conscious of those choices, I mean, I could give you a more medical answer,

that’s really what it’s about, is making those choices on how you want to spend your limited energy, because if you exhaust it, what happens?

Well, I like to say that healing takes energy, right? So if you’re falling into bed at the end of the day and

you have used every shred of energy that you have, there isn’t anything left for your body to actually improve, right? So you are going to basically be treading water or maybe even sliding backwards

if you do that.

The other thing is, if we’re not conscious about how we’re spending our energy, we’re going to be

spending it on things that aren’t as important.

Like all the demands on us, right? We end up giving our families and ourselves the leftovers.

And pacing is really about being more intentional, being more purposeful, making sure you’re spending your energy on the things that create the life that you want to have, and that it’s different for everybody, right?

Sure. What’s important? Sure. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So I find a coach, and I know that we can find them through your website. Right. Okay. Yeah. That are actually specifically trained and certified in coaching through fibromyalgia. What are some of the areas in if I have fibromyalgia and I find myself a coach, what are some of the areas in my life that are going to be addressed?

So it does depend a little bit on which coach that you choose. I mean there’s a certain amount of training that I

give all of them, but they also come with their own backgrounds right. So one of our coaches, Dr Robyn, she was a psychotherapist for 25 plus years. Right. So what you would do with her is different than what you would do with me, because I don’t have that background.

So depending on the coach, you know, we’ll just kind of set those things aside. There might be extra things, but we’re going to be looking at how you’re spending your energy,

how you’re living in the body that you have.

So I think of a lot of these things as sort of the lifestyle piece of stuff.

How are you? What are you eating? How are you moving all of those things? How do you sleep? We’re also going to help you figure out what those other things are that are going wrong in your body. We’re not doctors. We’re not diagnosing, we’re not treating. But we can say, you know, that thing right there? That sounds like something else.

Have you had your thyroid checked? Have you had a sleep study? You know, that’s not a typical fibro symptom. You need to talk to your doctor about that so we can help you figure out the things that might also be going wrong in your body. And then the third, like large group of topics is up here, right? Your mindset, how you relate to the body that you have.

So how do you think about your body? How do you think about your illness? How do you, you know, relate to all of that? We really need all three of those pieces and everybody it’s going to look

a little bit different, which things get addressed within those three areas right. Some people will, you know, need a thyroid situation.

They’ll need help with their thyroid. Some people will need help with their sleep. And other people are doing pretty good.

but the big things are we are going to look at diet. We are going to look at movement. I don’t want to say exercise because some people, depending on where they’re at, they actually need to not exercise.

Let their body heal a little bit and then exercise. We’re going to be looking at sleep. We’re going to be talking about, you know, pacing, right. How do you use your energy?

a lot of different things. What I do in a coaching call is I basically walk through my clients lives with them. So the first question I always ask is, so how did last week go?

Right? And we kind of talk through the week. And my goal there isn’t so much to fix them but to help them think differently. Yeah. Could I have done anything different in that situation. Yeah. Maybe I’ll try this next time. Or you know what I really couldn’t. So it is what it is and move on. Right. And then doing the same thing looking forward.

So for your week coming up is there anything we need to strategize about. Is there a doctor visit we need to talk about. Is there something that’s going to be happening at work. And we want to make sure you’re prepared, right. Both physically and mentally prepared for whatever’s going to happen. So

it really is individual. Really. What about in the book Take Back Your Life?

What are the things that I might identify in my own life that need help by reading that book? Yes. So

the chapters are really about

the primary fibromyalgia symptoms, right. So how do I manage my pain? How do I get better sleep? How do I clear the brain fog? How do I have more energy?

So those are like the key topics there.

I do talk a lot about how you can help yourself. The word self-care gets used so much that sometimes I think we kind of forget what it means a little bit,

but really, it’s just how can you take better care of yourself? How can you support your body in its healing work? That’s what it was made to do, is heal itself.

So we want to give our bodies the resources and the opportunity to do that. And there’s also a chapter on how you can work with your doctor better. So some suggestions on ways to have conversations.

like prioritizing if you only have a because I used to do this when you only have a six minute doctor appointment, you can’t save the important thing for last.

That comes first. Tip number one have your priorities straight when you get that six minute visit,

41:21 — Mindset, the Body, and Faith

right? Very, very good, very good. Let’s talk about the mind from your experience. How much of it is mindset?

For me, I think mindset is the foundation that everything else grows out of more than it’s like a separate category of things,

Because at the beginning, I really saw my body as this defective thing I was stuck inside of. And I remember one day raging at God,

if my body was a car, I would have qualified for the lemon Law by now, right?

I’m glad you can laugh about it. We all have defective bodies, but some are more defective than others. None of us is perfect. But. But that idea, though, of the real me, is stuck inside this defective body that is a lemon caused me to treat my body in unhelpful ways.

I would force myself to do things when my body was begging for sleep, right?

And we would have these projects at work where we had to, like, turn things around super quick. And it was like I would be sitting at my desk for eight, ten hours, barely getting up to go to the bathroom or have something to eat.

and that is if we flip that around and we think about somebody else doing that to us, or us doing that to somebody else, that’s abuse.

But we don’t we don’t call it that when we’re doing it to ourselves. And so that mindset is that foundation that says, oh, you know, okay, buddy, we’re on the same side. We’re on the same team. What do you need? I’m going to treat you with kindness so that you can support me. Yeah, right. And in my classes, I often will talk about the body using

pronouns.

And I very specifically, I mean, most of my clients are women. So I often am using feminine pronouns, but, you know, guys use your male pronouns. It’s more effective, I think, than the gender neutral pronouns, because when we hear

somebody talking about their body, she needs this. That is so much better than they need this or it needs this.

It becomes a thing. And when we can like give it

that connection to your body is a person and that person is you. Right? It’s absolutely. Yeah. Have you resolved your anger issues with God? Oh yes. Oh yes. Fibromyalgia is the best gift I ever received. There’s so many things in my life like my best friend, I never would have met if it wasn’t for fibromyalgia.

I wrote two books. Guess what they’re about, you know, and so

it doesn’t always seem like a gift, these things that come to us, but

sometimes they are the greatest gift. And

I will fully admit that is like,

level 20, you know, experience that I’m not expecting somebody newly diagnosed to be like, oh, thank you for this gift.

No. But after,

20 years of living with this and all of that, it’s fibromyalgia is a friend. The gift that keeps on giving but doesn’t have to. Yeah. Well, I guess it could, because, you know, once you figure it out and know how to make your body work like it’s supposed to, or more like it’s supposed to, then you have this to give to others.

That’s right,

And

mean, you and I wouldn’t be talking if it wasn’t for fibromyalgia, right? As a little girl, I did not dream of growing up and having fibromyalgia. Absolutely. But it has brought so much good into my life, so much joy into my life. I think it’s made me a better person, a more compassionate person.

And I think it just it is the gift that keeps on giving. You know, there’s no joy. Like someone saying, you helped me. I’m you know, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be where I am at this point. For instance, in your life, who would you say that about? Oh, my coach. Absolutely. Bonnie. If it wasn’t for her, I

would probably still be stuck.

46:00 — Improvement, Evidence, and Common Patterns

Yeah. And now. And I’ve had some amazing doctors too. But like we talked about, you know, it was really her coming alongside me that helped me do all the things that my doctors have been telling me to do. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So what percentage of people and we talked about this at the beginning. What percentage of the people can overcome fibromyalgia.

if we limit the answer to fibromyalgia itself, not all the other things that it can go with, I would say a vast majority. I don’t want to say 100%, but I easily would put it way up there like 80/90. I think fibromyalgia is very, very solvable

for me, it’s like I mean, I do this every day, right?

But I do think it’s a solvable problem where some other things are less solvable. Is there research on it that maybe gives an answer to that, or is it purely from your experience and through the people that you’ve coached? Yeah, that’s

purely my experience and the people that I coach, I will say the you won’t hear that most places from a medical perspective, it’s, you know, it’s either it’s either in your head and doesn’t actually exist or or this is now life as you know it.

Fibromyalgia is not something that’s doctors are taught in medical school, right? I think it’s something like an average of nine hours of pain management total for all kinds of pain. So it’s like you’re not going to get that answer there. And I was at a conference. This is so interesting. I was at a conference. One of the doctors was, you know, doing his thing, and another one of the speakers was in the audience, and he raised his hand and he said, why aren’t we studying the people who got better?

And I loved that question because we’re studying the people who are sick. And that’s important to write because we want to figure out, like, what’s going on there. But nobody’s studying people like me.

And I think the answer is here. Right. What makes me different? What did I do that was different?

that means that I’m in remission now, where maybe somebody else isn’t like.

I think that’s where the answer lies, is in the difference between those things. And we don’t really need to know the disease process. We just need to know how to get better. Right. That would make complete sense. You know, how many of you changed your diet? how many people got acupuncture or chiropractic, or did you lie on a PEMF mat

Or did you get red light therapy? Or did you start sleeping better? You know what? And you could probably see some real commonalities in how people got better, I would imagine. Yes, yes. I mean, it’s what I do in my work,

So

we talk about their thyroid, we look at adrenals, we look at sleep issues, potentially sleep disorders.

You know, we look at what other conditions aren’t being managed. One of my clients improved her fibromyalgia impact questionnaire score by I don’t know, it was like 80%. And all she actually did was work on getting her migraines under control. And once those migraines were under control, the fibromyalgia came down—like an 80% improvement.

sometimes it’s the fibromyalgia, sometimes it’s all the other things that fibromyalgia is now amplifying.

You really need somebody who can sift through that with you. But yeah. To me it’s a solvable problem. So from what you’ve seen to the people that you’ve coached and the people that you have coached, coached. what are some of the commonalities?

For the things that they’ve done to for the ones that got well? Yeah, yeah. Sleep definitely. That is it’s a tricky thing, right, to tell somebody who is getting terrible sleep that you’re not going to get better if you don’t get good sleep because you’re getting terrible sleep. But there are, you know, like working on that, getting that improved as much as possible,

not just being passed out for eight hours, but like actual quality sleep.

There are some things that are unique to fibro sleep. We don’t get REM sleep. We don’t get deep sleep like so working on those things. Sleep is definitely

a commonality there. I already mentioned like thyroid and adrenals. Those are usually part of the equation for almost everybody. Not everybody, but almost everybody. Tuning back into your body. I mean, this is going to be kind of vague how I say it, but like learning to listen to your body, because when your body says, I need to sit down and rest, and then you sit down and rest like that gives your body the opportunity to get better,

To heal, to not be pushed to the limits all the time.

so that is a big thing like

that self-efficacy to right of being able to do the things you need to do to take care of yourself. Yeah, diet for a lot of people is an issue, but it’s not usually diet the way that you think.

Like I said, it’s about 50/50. Whether going gluten free actually helps someone, but almost everybody comes in not having enough protein, not having enough healthy fats. And those things will directly affect pain, brain fog, sleep, you know, energy, all of that.

is that basically stepping back looking at their diet and just saying okay, are you getting a balance of fats, proteins and carbohydrates or how do you know that they’re not getting enough protein?

Yeah. So the first step that I actually do with people is I just have them track their protein. So like don’t do anything different, just like write down and then calculate out how much protein you’re actually getting for the day. And most people coming to me are like 20, 30g maybe. And it needs to be more like 80 to 100.

So we don’t even worry about everything else. We’re just like, okay, let’s see how we can increase your protein and get to that level. I mean, your protein stores are in your synovial fluid in your joints. So if you don’t have enough, your joints are going to hurt like it is a direct, you know, connection between how much protein you have, how much pain you’re in, how much energy you have, how much brain fog you have like

that’s low hanging fruit, right?

Where something like going gluten free, figuring out food allergies, like changing your whole diet, maybe to be healthier, that can feel overwhelming. But one thing, my protein levels, that’s

low hanging fruit. That’s easy. The other thing that’s a challenge with all of this is sometimes with fibromyalgia, it’s like, okay, this is how I know I’m supposed to eat, but my choices are I can either go to the store and get the stuff, or I can put the stuff away when I get home, or I can cook something, or I could clean up like it’s not an and it’s an Or.

And so starting with sometimes we don’t start where you think you should start because we have to get enough better to have the energy and to have the pain levels be low enough that we can then do other things. So just starting with something as simple as making sure you’re getting 80 to 100g of protein can give enough of that boost that now other things are possible.

Yeah. Where do you get your protein from?

what do you eat? What do I eat? So I honestly like left to my own devices, I would probably be one of the 20/30 people because I really don’t like meat, right? Like I could easily be vegetarian just or pescatarian, really, I do. I do love seafood. I like cheese too much to be vegan, but like, meat is just kind of gross to me.

not like any philosophical thing, but just like I don’t like it that much. And so I can do it occasionally, but most of my protein, honestly, I do use protein shakes because I know that’s a hard thing for me. And I will do, you know, eggs, cheese, nuts. Sometimes I’ll do, you know, meat, red meat or chicken or turkey.

I do a lot of seafood, those kinds of things. Yeah, but it’s something that I have to be conscious of and consciously choose because like I said, left to my own devices, I’d be eating like fruit and bread and cheese like that. That would be like my perfect meal. Yeah. Same. And, you know, it’s on a previous podcast that was the one.

Last one we did was about bread. I believe it was the one before. But his take on it and I kind of agree with this, is the bread is so much different now and that’s what makes it bad and so inflammatory. And he was talking about how you need to ferment it, I think he said for two days before making it and fermentation, things change and break down and it becomes a different food

But I you know, I probably eat more like you do as well. And I get my sources of, you know, animal protein, we like our eggs, not necessarily store bought,

but, you know, as close to real as they can be. And when it comes to beef, you know, we want it to be grass fed and not filled with hormones and pesticides and herbicides and fungicides.

Yes.

the study God,

this would have been, what, ten years ago or something like that. The study where they looked at beef and grass fed beef

not being inflammatory, that it was actually anti-inflammatory when it was grass fed and if not, not. And I was like, well, yeah, of course, like if, if the cows eating well, the cow is going to be healthier.

And so then when I eat the cow, that’s healthier too. I just found it so fascinating. Yeah. This guy Jordan Rubin said something along the lines of, you know, you’ve heard it well said that you are what you eat. But when it comes to animal foods, I say that you are what they ate. Because if yes, you are what you eat and

they are what they ate.

So it’s definitely a different food source. He would look at foods from three main perspectives. One is traditionally, you know, where did the food come from or what would traditionally beef, you know, the cows were in the pasture. They weren’t in these confined animal feed operations.

Scientifically, we know that it is, you know, higher in omega-3s

less omega-6s and it’s more anti-inflammatory than inflammatory.

So we have, we have tradition and we have science. And then the third one that he looked at would be biblical for him. You know, if you’re, you know, you can eat beef, but you can’t have pork, you know, would be an example. Right. And it just so happens to match up scientifically that they’re very different meats and different on your body.

But that would be his criteria. It’s not necessarily going to be acceptable to everyone that’s listening to this. Some people are going to be vegans. You’re going to have to find your sources of protein and work hard to make sure you’re getting your B12 and all those other things.

It can be done. You just have to be, yeah.

58:30 — Resources and Final Encouragement

Purposeful, conscious. Yeah. Tammy, make good choices. Give us some selfish plugs. Tell us where to get your books. Tell us about your podcast,

your social media channels and everything else. How to find a coach.

So you can grab free copies, free downloads of my book Take Back Your Life that we’ve been talking about, and you can get that at takebackyourlifebook.com

It is the whole book. So it’s a free download of the whole book there. The podcast, the fibromyalgia podcast we have been running since 2019, I think, and I’m just about to record episode 200. We’ve got

a full range of things there, everything from me teaching and coaching to experts coming in, patient stories. So whatever it is that you need, there’s a ton of information there.

That’s at fibromyalgiapodcast.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. I am fibro coach on almost all social media. So if you just, you know, facebook.com/fibrocoach, you’ll find me Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn is my name. And then as an easy place for folks to start, I would actually recommend my Fibromyalgia Wellness style quiz. It’s a personality quiz, but we connect personality with how you manage your fibromyalgia.

Each of us has different, I don’t know, challenges, right? Like natural instincts that help us in natural instincts that don’t so much. And so that quiz will kind of point those out to you and tell you how to work with your strengths instead of, you know, trying to fight your natural instincts. So that would be a great place for folks to start.

That’s at fibroquiz.com Super easy. And then if you’re looking for a coach, any of those links that I gave you will also have a find a coach thing

in the menu. You can also go to findafibrocoach.com And we have got a whole range of coaches, everything from, you know, people with experience, like I mentioned Dr Robin, all the way to brand new students who are needing to practice.

Right. And of course a full range of

prices and experience and, you know, all of those things. But we’ve got and all over the world, to be honest. So we’ve got a lot of coaches out there. You can go to findafibrocoach.com fill out an application, choose the coach that looks like the best fit to you.

We do have photos, bios, things like that, so you can learn a little bit about them. And yeah, we can we can help. Excellent. I’ll make sure I have links to all those things in the description on whatever platform you’re consuming this content. Is there anything that I should have asked but didn’t that we left out and this just wouldn’t be complete?

And if not

or and maybe that and some final words of encouragement for anyone listening.

Yeah,

I think the two things that I want people to leave knowing is that fibromyalgia is a fixable problem. Right. We talked about that. You can feel better. You can feel a whole lot better than you do today. How much depends on a lot of things.

But like, there’s no doubt in my mind, every single person listening, including you and including me, can feel better than we do right now. So that is

the number one thing. Fibromyalgia is a fixable problem. The second thing is just because you haven’t found answers, or just because the people you’ve been asking don’t have answers, doesn’t mean the answers don’t exist.

And just because they can’t help you doesn’t mean nobody can help you. So I want to make sure people are leaving with that hope and that understanding

that

you can feel better. There’s so much that can be done to address fibromyalgia symptoms. You can have your life back. And that’s not some kind of, you know, pie in the sky, toxic positivity.

I mean, I’ve been doing this for almost 20 years and I see it every day.

So yeah,

those are really the two things that I want to make sure that

people know. We didn’t really get into, like all of the science behind fibromyalgia, I know we talked about we don’t know the disease process, we don’t know what causes it. But there are also a lot of things we do know. And so fibromyalgia is a real condition, like it’s a real thing where things are actually going wrong in your body.

It’s not something that you just created yourself in your mind, like there are physical things that are wrong that need to be addressed and corrected. So don’t think it’s all in your head. Don’t feel like a hypochondriac. Don’t let anybody tell you that it is real. And if you have a provider that is telling you it’s not real, go somewhere else.

And I guess there are certain things you could measure, like inflammatory markers or something like that, that show this is real. And here’s how we know. And that’s probably maybe some of the signs you’re referring to some of that. But they’ve also seen things like mitochondrial dysfunction they’ve been able to measure in research. Interestingly, ten different areas of the brain light up when someone with fibromyalgia experiences pain versus only two areas of the brain.

For someone who doesn’t have fibromyalgia. So very clearly there is something physical

that is happening.

there’s actually a bunch of different studies that show pieces of that elephant. Excellent, excellent. Tami, thank you so much for sharing your expertise today.

Thank you so much for having me. This is very fun and it’s been a great time.

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