Non-surgical treatment of fibromyalgia - an interview with Dr. Paul Whitcomb

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Non-surgical treatment of fibromyalgia - an interview with Dr. Paul Whitcomb
June 14 2005
by Mike Adams
NewsTarget.com


Ben:My name is Ben Kage. I'm here with Mike Adams. We're excited about what we've read regarding your treatments for fibromyalgia using chiropractic medicine, and we wondering if you'd be able to enlighten us on a few questions we have for you.
Mike:And I want to mention up front also, this is to benefit the readers out there who may be suffering from this condition right now. They don't know where to turn. A lot of them are on pain meds as I'm sure you're well aware. Let's open their eyes and give them some new possibilities that they can pursue. That's what this is all about.

Dr. Whitcomb: Okay, that sounds good to me.

Ben: I was wondering how precisely your particular treatment affects fibromyalgia. Not getting down to the scientific, biological level or anything, but what does your treatment actually do to treat fibromyalgia and help patients feel better?

Dr. Whitcomb: Well, the interesting thing about this is that fibromyalgia is an upper cervical spinal stenosis, which is actually a choking off of the spinal cord structures -- but not so much of the spinal cord as the meninges, the coverings of the spinal cord itself. Now, a lot of this is still theory, but I believe this is exactly what's happening because it makes perfect sense.

There are a couple of doctors who are neurosurgeons who do surgery for this condition. These guys are enlargening this area, and they're getting rid of fibromyalgia with surgery. You might want to interview them too. They're really sharp guys and very pleasant. What I have found is that they're right: It is the spinal stenosis, but it's caused by movement of the first vertebrae up against the meninges. When that takes place, it pulls on the meninges, which are not that flexible and which are attached to all the nerve roots all the way down the spine. The reason it attaches to the nerve roots is so that it can hold the cerebral spinal fluid in. The fluid that bathes your brain and your spinal cord is held in by the meninges, like a balloon, but the nerves have to go through those meninges to get out. There's an attachment where they go through, and when you pull on the meninges it makes those nerves fire.

So what ends up happening is that all of the nerves are firing at one time into the patient's brain, and now these poor people have symptoms of everything that comes from these nerves. So you will hear them say they feel pain, numbness, tingling, burning, cold, itchiness -- those are just all the proprioceptive fibers that go to the brain from the different areas. That's why they have these sensations, because these nerve roots are all firing.

Now, different nerve roots will fire with different types of pulling and different types of rotations of the first vertebrae, so it's a little different for everybody. One person will maybe have pain in one side. I've had four patients who only had pain in one side. Maybe one patient will have more pain in the legs and the hips, another patient will have more pains in the neck and the shoulders -- all of these things are a little different from person to person, but they're definitely caused by essentially the same thing. So in addition to that, the sympathetic nervous system is affected, so it runs full time. If you walk into your house at night -- and it's dark and you think you're alone -- and somebody grabs you from behind, the feeling you get is a sympathetic nervous system firing. It's really made to help you fight and help you run away from danger. So it's that fight-or-flight syndrome -- that's the sympathetic nervous system. It also causes the adrenal glands to pump adrenaline to give you that extra strength to either run or fight. But with a patient who has fibromyalgia, the sympathetic nervous system runs unchecked.

Mike: Wow, so this explains some of the fatigue that accompanies this condition as well.

Dr. Whitcomb: Exactly. You're one step ahead of me. That's good. So now this patient who lies down to sleep at night has their sympathetic nervous system running, and the adrenal glands are pumping adrenalin, and they can't sleep. Even if they do get sleep or take medication to sleep, they still wake up exhausted. Usually, without medication, they'll stay awake until four or five. They then don't sleep; they pass out from sheer exhaustion.

Mike: Wow.

Dr. Whitcomb: Then they'll wake up the next morning with the sympathetic nervous system going. They're already feeling the anxiety, so they feel like something bad is going to happen -- the definition of anxiety is a feeling of forthcoming evil, some kind of destruction coming upon you. So they feel this horrible anxiety, and a lot of them have panic attacks. All of that is because of the sympathetic nervous system. In addition to that, the sympathetic nervous ...