Kaoime Beats Fibromyalgia & Shares Her Story

Here is the recording and transcript from my one of my FREE December 2015 Treating and Beating Fibromyalgia Teleconferences held each and every week. You can register for free at www.fibroexpert.com

Dr. M:   I’d like to if I can, get Kaoime Malloy from Wisconsin to come on the line. Kaoime, if you are on the call if you’ll hit star 6 that should bring you on the call live.

Kaoime:               Hi Dr Murphree.

Dr. M:                   Hi Kaoime, thank you for joining me.

Kaoime:               Thank you for inviting me.

Dr. M:                   Thanks so much. You heard me just give my little introduction. What I’d like to do is have you share just a little bit about your health history, where you were several years before we met and where you’re at now.

Kaoime:               That’s complicated. As you know, my health history was really complicated. I’ve been in several car accidents which is probably the start of fibro for me. I’ve had several health challenges including interstitial cystitis, I have Lyme’s disease which I’m still being treated for. I’ve had a number of different physicians who kept telling me why should we find out if you have fibromyalgia, what difference is that going to make?  When I was diagnosed with interstitial cystitis, nobody was willing to help me treat that so I was determined to not accept that there was no cause and no cure of that. I worked with a holistic practitioner to get that under control. After getting that under control, I was determined to do the same thing with fibromyalgia, and that’s how I came to your doorstep.

Dr. M:                   What did you think when you first thought of setting up a phone consult? For some people it’s hard to get past that exchange, doing something by phone. I think that’s going to be the norm in the future, but what was that like? It took a lot of courage to do that.

Kaoime:               I’m kind of a take charge person, so I was more relieved to find somebody that would help me more than I was afraid to make a phone call.

Dr. M:                   Sure. When we first started working together, you had worked so hard to get to where you were, and yet there was still so much left to do. Your energy was 1 out of a possible 5, you told me you were exhausted all the time, your pain was all over, you had migraines, your moods were pretty low, couldn’t sleep … you were in pretty bad shape. Tell me about a typical day for you because you work full time, very demanding as a college professor too. What was it like when we started working together?

Kaoime:               Before we started to work together, I was typically sleeping 10-12 hours a day. I work probably a good 60-70 hours a week. I’m a costume designing professor so when we’re in dress rehearsals, I might work a 16 hour day, 5 days in a week. Sometimes I’ll have a 75 hour week, so I’ll come home and literally go right to bed after that. Trying to find time to grade and all that, it was very challenging to do all my course prep and everything. I was trying to stay awake during classes all the time. My moods were really low because I didn’t have enough energy to give to my students. I wasn’t able to do any exercise at all. I couldn’t lose any weight and I felt like the weight was really affecting my joints as well. It just felt like I wasn’t making any progress. I was doing a lot of herbal support, eating fairly well I thought because I’m a medical herbalist myself and used to be a massage therapist. I felt like I was doing things that were good, but I felt like there were still some things missing and I needed some support.

Dr. M:                   That’s what I often find, I have a number of patients like yourself who are real proactive. They research everything and they’re eating a clean diet. Your diet is really clean now, but even before we started working together it was a clean diet but you couldn’t lose weight. You were taking a lot of good supplements. The problem was you didn’t know what you needed to take, because you didn’t know where you were broken down. Once we did the testing and we knew that, then we had some light at the end of the tunnel. You were able to lose quite a bit of weight. How much weight did you lose on the anti-inflammatory diet?

Kaoime:               72 pounds.

Dr. M:                   Wow, that’s quite a bit. Would you say that was a game changer for you?

Kaoime:                               It really was a game changer. I have a lot more energy because of that. Right in the middle of it, I was able to start going back and swimming which I hadn’t been able to do for a long time. I used to belly dance all the time and I just started going back to belly dance classes. I thought I don’t know if I’m going to make it through a class because I hadn’t done it in a while, but I was able to get through the class with no energy loss. I make it through my days really well, I sleep really well. As soon as you put me on the 5-HTP, just being able to sleep was a miracle.

Dr. M:                   Yeah, you’ve had sleep issues for a number of years and I find that’s the first thing you’ve got to get right. In your case, we were able to get that right fairly quickly. The other thing is you had quite a number of food allergies that we found.

Kaoime:               Yeah, I knew I had the big 4 beforehand but I didn’t know about the others. I think we found 20 more than I thought.

Dr. M:                   That’s not always the case but in your case, one of the clues was the migraine. Any time I have a patient with migraine, I’m always thinking what’s trigger. Usually it’s either thyroid or food allergies. In your case, it wasn’t the thyroid but it was food allergies. Your migraines were pretty bad. Tell me about your migraines now.

Kaoime:               My migraines are pretty well controlled now. I say that having just had one over this past weekend, but it didn’t last for 5 days like it usually did. It was pretty much over and done within a day. I’ve had chronic headaches all the time, and we discovered that was from raw onions. Now that I don’t eat them raw anymore, I don’t have a dull headache constantly. I didn’t really realize how much that affected my mood and my energy level, until I didn’t have them anymore. I think that’s been going on for at least 15 or 16 years. It’s completely different not to have that pain every day.

Dr. M:                   I think it’s a real eye opening experience for people to see that the foods they eat can make them feel a certain way. We just take it for granted that we eat food, maybe it’s healthy for us or it’s not or it tastes good or doesn’t. What we don’t realize is, if we’re eating 3 meals a day and some of us of course are snacking so it’s 5-6 meals a day, you’re doing that over a year’s time, you’re looking at 25,000 times you’re putting stress into your body. That has the potential to harm you or help you, and unfortunately most people are putting things in their body that is harming them. Losing the weight was great because it did a lot of great things, but also what you found is by going through that process you were able to uncover foods that when you put them back in your diet, they actually had a negative impact and you didn’t realize that. Is that true?

Kaoime:               Exactly. Now that I’ve been off the diet, I think this is seventh week off the diet I’ve really charted as I put those foods back in, what’s happening. I’ve found 1-2 other ones that I can’t eat all the time. If I eat them too regularly, I’ll get a negative reaction to them. That was great to be off it, so now I have a safe list, an occasional list and a never list of foods.

Dr. M:                   That’s smart that you’ve sequestered it that way. You were able to come off some meds and your pain level is not rally an issue now. Tell me about your pain. Does it give you any problems?

Kaoime:               I still have some trouble with my neck and lower back which is from the car accident, but I tried to think really hard today about what’s different fibro-wise. I used to have a lot of pain down the sides of my legs all the way from my hip down to my ankles, and now that pain is completely gone. I could lightly rub my finger down my leg and it would excruciating; that pain is gone. I used to have a lot of intercostals pain, so even breathing or the tension of my bra around my ribs would be really uncomfortable. That pain is almost completely gone. My clothing would sometimes be uncomfortable on my body, that pain is completely gone. The only thing I sometimes have if I’m using my hands a lot, I’ll get some discomfort there but I think that’s just me being over 50 … just a little bit from the old injuries from the accident. Beyond that, I feel pretty good.

Dr. M:                   What would you like to share with those that are listening tonight or may listen to the replay? Anything you’d like to share with them?

Kaoime:               One of the biggest things that happened for me on the diet, one of the biggest discoveries we made was finding out that we didn’t have any beneficial bacteria in my colon. People in my generation are from the clean plate club, we heard our parents tell us to clean the plate all time. I remember telling you that I always never really knew when I was hungry and when I was full. One thing that the diet really did and finding out about that lack of bacteria and replenishing that, is now I am really aware of when I am hungry and when I am full. I’m so grateful for knowing that now, because I always felt like this was some psychological problem with me. I had this weird relationship with food because I couldn’t feel that physically, and now I do. That I think is the biggest change for me. Now I know when my body needs to eat and when it doesn’t need to eat, and that’s been a big game changer.  A friend of mine just started the diet too and it’s working for her, she lives out in California. She’s seeing some changes with the way that she feels, there was a lot of shoulder and joint problems. It’s not just me, it’s working for her everybody.

Dr. M:                   What would you counter to those people that say, you can’t successfully treat fibromyalgia with diet and supplements, which of course is exactly what I’ve done for 20 years successfully? What would you say to those people who say that supplements don’t matter?

Kaoime:               I’ve always felt really strongly that food is medicine, and what we eat is so important. You can’t always get a therapeutic dose of what you need vitamin wise, through what you eat. Sometimes you have to take supplements in order to get that. I was also told that I couldn’t treat my interstitial cystitis at all, there was no cause and no cure to it. I proved my urologist wrong, doing that as well. I don’t believe that things just happen and there’s no way to fix it. There always has to be a way to fix it. I read your book months before I actually set up the consultation with you. Everything in there made so much sense to me based on what I had done for the IC. I would just tell you everybody that you have nothing to lose by trying, and everything to gain by doing this.

Dr. M:                   Was it worth it? You don’t take a handful of pills and then you’re well. It’s work, you had to do the testing and we had to sift through all that. You did the diet, I asked you to do things that probably were not very pleasant. There was a period of time where you were taking a bunch of pills, you were on the thyroid … was it worth it?

Kaoime:               It was completely worth it. I think it’s always worth it to regain your health and defy what the negative outcome that other people generate for you. I feel so much better. I know I could get there and I’m so grateful to be able to find somebody who was willing to help me get there.

Dr. M:                   I appreciate that. Kaoime, thanks so much and we’ll be talking soon. I appreciate you joining me tonight. I look forward to talking to you soon.

Kaoime:               You’re welcome, thanks for having me.

Dr. M:                   You’re so welcome.

If You Are Sick And Tired Of Being Sick And Tired – Do Something Different.

If you want to feel good again like Lisa you need to get healthy. The only way to beat fibromyalgia, is to get healthy. Patients who work with me personally get healthy and stay healthy. Drugs don’t make you healthy. In fact they often lead to more symptoms. You can’t drug your way out of fibromyalgia. Covering up the symptoms of fibromyalgia, chronic pain, fatigue, poor sleep, only leads to symptoms. The key is to find and fix the underlying reasons for you pain, fatigue, and poor sleep.

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