Lisa Beats Fibromyalgia and 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

– Lisa Before and After –

Dr. M:  Now what I’d like to do is, I’ve got another one of my patients who I’d like to see if we can get to come on. Lisa Hodge is from Tallahassee, Florida. Lisa if you can hit star 6, that’ll bring you on the line.

Lisa: Hi Dr Murphree.

Dr. M: Hi Lisa, thank you so much for joining me.

Lisa:  Thank you, it’s a privilege to be able to do it.

Dr. M:

I appreciate you saying that, you’re so kind. You heard Kavie’s story and her story is very similar to yours, there’s a lot of common denominators there. Can you share with us a little bit about your past history and what you’ve been through, and then your experience of working with me these last several months?

Lisa:

I believe that I have probably had fibro all my life, because some of the major symptoms I can remember from my childhood even having then. I wasn’t diagnosed until 1993. I’ve had pretty much a lifelong struggle with problems getting to sleep and staying asleep, waking up several times during the night. They did a sleep study on me years ago where they hooked all the electrodes up to my head, and that study showed that I was waking up 5 to 16 times a night. That’s with medication, so I had severe sleep problems. That causes exhaustion that you never recover from. I believe that that’s the source of the pain of fibromyalgia because your muscles don’t get a chance to repair themselves during the night, which is what’s supposed to happen during normal sleep. I also had problems concentrating, what is called fibro fog; poor memory, losing familiar words mid-sentence, just all of the common symptoms of fibromyalgia.

Back in 2007, my life really went through an upheaval and I had several emotional things that I went through, very stressful. That’s when my fibromyalgia really got much, much worse. I was on several medications. When I was first diagnosed, they immediately put me on antidepressants, muscle relaxers and several different prescriptions which would help for a little while and then I would go right back to the way things were before. I was addicted to Ambien for over 6 years.

During all this time period, I kept searching the internet and reading every book I could, trying to find some answer. I came across your videos on the internet where you were teaching health care professionals about fibromyalgia. I watched all of the videos and I thought, this really makes sense what he’s saying. Then I decided to get your sleep program, the electronic Fibro Sleep Program. I started reading your book, then bought a hard copy of the book but I was really having a lot of difficulty sorting out my problems and what to do on my own, and retaining what I had read in the book. That’s when I decided, I need some help with this. That’s when I contacted the office and signed up for the phone consult.

Dr. M:  What was the experience like for you, the phone consult, the process?

Lisa: The office staff are just so helpful and very responsive when I had questions. It was a little unusual because I’m not a young chick, so it’s a little different things doing things by telephone but it’s been a good experience. I’m so glad that I made that decision and started, I think it was around the beginning of March.

Dr. M:  I’m so glad you did too, because you were in a bad shape. I can say that, I know you agree with me.

Lisa:  Yeah, I was in real bad shape.

Dr. M:  You had Type 2 diabetes, the high blood pressure, you were on Lyrica, Pristiq and your immune system was really bad … all the sinus infections, energy was 1 out of 5 so no energy, and the pain. You had pain everywhere.

Lisa:  I had off the chart pain.

Dr. M:  Yeah. You woke up every day and you were basically just trying to get through, you had no energy and you told me you felt miserable. I remember you telling me that.

Lisa:

I really did. I was making myself go on, I worked full time and had continued to work full time because you had to pay the bills. All of my energy was devoted to just getting to work, and I was still calling in sick a lot. I was on 8 prescriptions when I started with you. I had tried to start eating healthier back in November 2013, my husband I started a very healthy program. We were eating pretty good but I wasn’t real successful with losing the weight.

Dr. M:

Tell me about the diet. I guess I need to point this out, because not everybody who has fibro that I work with needs to lose weight. It’s not about the weight loss, it’s about the lifestyle. In your case, one of the big advantages of losing the weight is it allowed you to come off the Metformin and Lisinopril, so your blood sugar was normal and your blood pressure was normal. That was one of the big things we wanted to do for you. You’ve lost a good bit of weight, didn’t you?

Lisa:

I did. I’ve lost a total of 57.2 pounds since my highest weight. I lost 35 pounds on the anti-inflammatory diet which I started May 30^th.  I’ve lost a total of 34 inches over all my body.

Dr. M:

Again the weight loss is wonderful because you store inflammatory chemicals in any extra fat cells that you have. Typically and I think you’ll agree with me, what you find is that when you’re doing the diet, you have less pain and you have more energy. You also have this process of discovery that you’ve been eating foods that when you try to eat them again, you realize those very foods actually caused you to have pain, fibro fog or depression. You would agree with that.

Lisa:

Yeah. Through the testing that you did, we found out that I was not exactly allergic but sensitive to foods that I had been eating my entire life. Very common things like eggs and cheese, yogurt, wheat and gluten … I had no idea that I was poisoning my body by continuing to eat those so-called healthy foods. My body just reacts to them and it reacts with inflammation, which leads to more pain.

Dr. M:

Exactly. One of the big catches and I see this so often, I talk about this on a lot of these calls is that you had all the symptoms of low thyroid – fatigue, headaches, cold hands and feet, migraines, the weight gain. Yet they kept telling you there was nothing wrong with your thyroid. When I did the advanced thyroid testing that I typically do, we found out that you had Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Your body was actually attacking your thyroid, no wonder your metabolism was compromised and you couldn’t lose weight even if you wanted to.

Lisa:

I had no idea because every medical doctor was saying, “Oh no, there’s nothing wrong with your thyroid. Everything is fine” even though like you said, I had all the symptoms including thinning hair my entire life.

Dr. M:

Tell me about your pain now. Do you have any pain at this point? Is pain an issue?

Lisa:

The pain is so much better. On the days that I do have some pain, I can immediately tell it’s because I had a stressful day yesterday, I didn’t sleep as well last night. Even my not so good nights of sleeping … most of the time it was common for me to wake up 5 times a night and have to get up and go to the bathroom, and waking up in between those times and not getting up. Now I’m waking up twice a night, having to get up and go to the bathroom and sleeping solidly in between. That’s much more common for me. Whenever I have the occasional night where I wake up more than twice a night, that’s when I have some pain the next day but I immediately know where it’s coming from now.

Dr. M:

One of the things that I was so happy to see is you were able to come off the Lyrica, and you didn’t even miss it. I think Lyrica for most people is a disaster.

Lisa:  Yeah, I never missed the Lyrica or the Pristiq. Neither one was doing me any good at all.

Dr. M:  Exactly. Your energy too, your energy is really phenomenal at this point.

Lisa: Yeah, I’ve got a lot more energy now. My daughter gave birth September 18, so we have a newborn baby in the family. I have enough energy to be able to help her with him, feed him his bottle and change his diapers and play with him … it’s wonderful.

Dr. M:  It is wonderful, how fun. Is there anything you’d like to share with those that may be listening tonight, anything that you’d like to share with them?

Lisa:

The main point that I want to make is that if you’re listening to the teleconferences or the recorded sessions and you’re thinking about this, believe me it is well worth the time, the effort and the cost involved. My life has improved dramatically in the time that I’ve been working with Dr Murphree. He and his staff are the most supportive, encouraging people I have ever worked with on my fibromyalgia. I’ve gotten the most benefit from working with them, than I have anybody else.

Dr. M: I so appreciate that. I think you’re such a wonderful person and I’m excited about you being a grandmother, being able to enjoy the grandbaby … it brings a smile on my face just thinking about it.

Lisa:  Me too.

Dr. M:   Thank you so much for joining me Lisa. I know we’ll be talking soon, I look forward to talking to you soon.

Lisa:  Thank you.

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.

New Patient Phone Consults Available Learn More at www.fibroconsults.com

Or call the clinic 205-879-2383

Join Me Every Week For My Free Treating and Beating Fibromyalgia Facebook LIVE @ 6pm CST

NEW PATIENT PHONE CONSULTS AVAILABLE:

ARE YOU SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED?

You can feel good again! 17 years specializing in fibromyalgia – I’ve helped thousands feel good again!

Are you next?

YOU DON’T HAVE TO TRAVEL TO BIRMINGHAM AL. 90% OF MY PRACTICE IS PHONE CONSULTS.

Call 205-879-2383, or visit FibroConsults.com to schedule your consult today!

Find out more at FibroConsults.com

---