Did You Know You Have a Functional Somatic Syndrome?
If you have any combination of fibromyalgia (FMS), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS or ME/CFS), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), headaches, temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ), PMS, interstitial cystitis, food or chemical hypersensitivity, chronic back pain or chronic pelvic pain, now you have an umbrella term to place them all under - functional somatic syndrome.
That's apparently a new buzz word in holistic medicine and a relatively new field of study called "functional medicine."
Functional medicine takes an integrative approach, looking at how your physical and emotional environments, past health problems and lifestyle work together to create your current health. Functional medicine researchers and practitioners say that even very different disorders can share common roots.
What root do they say these conditions may stem from? You've likely heard this answer before - it's chronic stress.
When they say stress, they mean both psychological and physical (including infection, nutritional deficiency and inadequate sleep.) And these folks believe that stress, when it's chronic, can actually change the way your genes work.
They also say that examining our stressors may be the key to healing. This isn't too far off base from how a lot of people (not necessarily doctors) approach FMS - we work to reduce stress, and it usually helps. For me, quitting my full-time job was a big part of that, and it definitely helped.
What do you think about functional medicine? Do you think it sounds like a good approach? What's your opinion on the role of stress in FMS and other related conditions? Leave your comments here or in About.com's Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome forum
Suggested Reading
- Risk factors for fibromyalgia.
- Possible causes of fibromyalgia.
- More information on functional medicine.
- Learn how to manage your stress.
Comments
Well…I certainly feel that it couldn’t hurt. I do believe that stress plays a vital part in all of these symptoms and that chronic stress may change the way our genes work…so reducing stress in any fashion is a good idea. However, unless one joins a group who meets periodically; attends counseling regularly; does weekly yoga or something of that nature, it’s easy to slide back into the same patterns and habits as before. Getting rid of stress is a huge challenge in todays world.
I read this article once, continued looking at others and had to come back here. This new category that the powers are trying to fit fibro into just doesn’t set right with me. It seems to trivialize this plight. If you aren’t stressed you won’t get fibro? Am I just interpreting this wrong?
Melanie,
That was my first impression of this as well. When I realized they were including physical stressors in the definition, though, it made more sense to me. For instance, I’m certain that chronic sleep deprivation was a big contributing factor in my illness. Infection is also a physical stressor.
As far as treatment goes, it’ll definitely be interesting to see what kind of results they get from this approach.
In our current culture, for the most part, people who “succumb” to stress (or to stressors) are viewed as weak, defective and are subjected to stigmatized responses that tend to dismiss and blame.
I think this functional umbrella approach may bring new information and helpful treatment to people who suffer, but I
imagine the significant segment of our society that believes the weak and damaged among us should fend for themselves or die off will have a heyday with this. As may the insurance companies and others who are in the health care “industry” to get rich.
We see evidence that chronic pain destroys areas of the brain. Yet I have been told that prolonged pain itself, though screaming for attention in my body, will not hurt me. Truth becomes a tool for self-serving unless life in the broadest sense is highly valued.
Despite these observations, I hope for the best outcomes from this new nomenclature and view of interrelated symptoms.
It makes perfect sense to me. I have always felt that years and years of poor sleep – meaning that for some reason I do not deep sleep – has been a contributing factor in my Fibromyalgia. Plus, the fact that poor sleep will also affect the immune system may also be a contributing factor in my Rheumatoid Arthritis. I’m not sure about that one, but I know that the Functional Medicine approach might come up with more answers than I am getting now.
Well, I don’t think much about that. I feel that when the experts don’t know what causes a problem, its too easy to say that its a result of stress or a stressor. Do they say that about M.S. or cancer or heart disease, etc.???
I think not. However, they did before they learned the truth.
That doesn’t mean we should not all examine our priorities from time to time and learn how we might better live our lives and how we spend the precious few years we have when we are in good health before its not so good anymore.
But I’m afraid I have to say that more research is needed in so many areas to find the underlying cause of so many things. Our society as a whole spends way too much money on things of no consequence when there are people suffering in a supposedly affluent society.
The focus should be on how to determine the underlying cause of something and how to prevent as much suffering as possible. Nobody gets through this life without dying from something sometime. However, some of us spend far too much time suffering needlessly with the important people (our governemnt?) not caring that we are suffering needlessly.
We are pushed aside as if we don’t matter.
If I sound cynical, perhaps I am. But this comes from 25 years of suffering and more importantly watching others suffer even more than I am. Much of that suffering could be prevented and that is what gets my dander up.
Healthy people see the word stress and decide to judge us as people who can’t deal with stress rather than trying to understand we are sick!!!!
Grannycfs (Nancy)
I think your first impression was right, ‘functional’ is merely a new word for ‘crazy’. The whole thing of ’stress’ is just a smokescreen by either the people who promote the ‘functional’ diagnosis or people who aren’t aware of the context in which it is being used.
“There is a great deal of confusion about what to call such illness. A wide range of general terms has been used including “hysteria”, “abnormal illness behaviour”, “somatisation”, and “somatoform disorders”. Recently the terms “medically unexplained symptoms (MUS)” and “functional” symptoms have become popular amongst researchers, as they do not assume any particular aetiology.”
http://www.unumprovident.co.uk/Home/AccessiblePDF/CMOReport2002.htm
Further reading-
http://www.cfids-cab.org/cfs-inform/Cfsdepression/sharpe05.pdf
http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/Quotes_from_Mike_Sharpe.htm
Those articals are mind blowing. It is remarkable how such a spin is put on “functional somatic syndrome” stuff that people could go along with it. After reading the actual theories we can see that these people have no idea and are promoted by the insurance companies who will use these not to pay out on claims. The government also has a vested interest to avoid paying benefits.
You are right, it is just another word for crazy and the FACT that ME for example is clasified as a neurological disorder is ignored together with evidence that CBT and GET do not work.
This is just another label for “crazy.” I have Interstitial Cystitis and have physical signs of inflammation in my bladder, including scar tissue, yet my doctor told me it was all in my head. Funny how he was willing to put me on Cyclosporin-A for a disease which was supposedly all in my head in the first place.
What was my reaction upon being so incredibly betrayed and abandoned by the medical community?
I attempted suicide.
I have not gone back to a doctor for my IC since then. Nor will I ever, unless and until a cure is found and all of a sudden it becomes a “real” disease since a cure was found and drug companies can make money off the disease.
I also refuse to have anything to do with the mental health community that was so willing to tell me my pain and suffering were just signs of my being weak and defective. My “impure thoughts” created my disease, apparently.
FU*K all these researchers, doctors and insurance companies that have decided the best way to treat these diseases is to label the patients “crazy” and turn their backs on the suffering patients.
I have no way of describing how much I hate these doctors and researchers. I hope they all burn in hell, I really do.
Functional Somatic Syndrome is psychiatry’s way of trying to trick people into agreeing that these illnesses are all in our minds. Here is how they see it:
Functional somatic syndrome refers to several related syndromes characterized more by symptoms, suffering and disability than by disease-specific abnormalities of structure or function. Physicians frequently encounter patients with disabling, medically unexplained symptoms, many of whom have already given themselves a diagnostic label for their complaints. These patients resist information that contradicts attribution of their symptoms to a specific disease. The functional somatic syndromes include entities such as multiple chemical hypersensitivity, sick building syndrome, repetition stress injury, chronic whiplash, chronic Lyme disease, the side effects of silicone breast implants, candidiasis sensitivity, Gulf War syndrome, mitral valve prolapse and hypoglycemia.
from The American Academy of Family Physicians
http://www.aafp.org/afp/991001ap/tips/23.html
Apparently we all just want to be sick so badly that we diagnose ourselves. Science is now finding all kinds of biomarkers for conditions like Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). These psychiatrists need to be made to eat their words and their made-up diagnoses.