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Fibromyalgia and Sleep Therapy (Part I)

© T. Darlene Cheek

Your muscles, joints and glands are swollen, burning and painful... you may feel symptoms of depression and/or anxiety... you are exhausted... you find it harder to concentrate and form coherent thoughts (mental fog)... it gets more difficult to complete your normal, everyday tasks... you may experience irritable bowel syndrome or symptoms of arthritis... your senses may become heightened to a point where the slightest sound hurts your ears... it may become difficult to focus your eyes... sleep becomes a thing of the past.

Is this a syndrome, a disease, or a virus? You finally take that first trip to the doctor's office. You may be diagnosed with one of several diseases and put on a prescription regimen for depression and pain. Does it work? Have you been misdiagnosed? Are the drugs you are taking helping or making you sleepier and more fatigued?

This is the battle of Fibromyalgia. If you, a family member, a spouse, or a friend have Fibromyalgia, you are already more than too familiar with the symptoms. My goal with this article is to help you find alternative methods to help you cope with this disease. One point before we go on is that hypnotherapy or any other holistic therapy should never replace your physician's care, but should be used in conjunction with your health care routine.

While researching for this article, I spoke to many friends who are coping daily with Fibromyalgia and Lupus. These diseases have quite a few of the same symptoms. The one thing that really stood out in my mind is the problem with sleep. Why is a good night's sleep so very important to us? Once you reach your deep sleep period, your body begins to restore, heal and refresh itself. Several times during the night, our sleep patterns fluctuate between light and deep sleep. Our deep sleep is the time when we dream and experience REM (rapid eye movement). This also our time of deepest healing.

What happens if we toss and turn so often during the night that we do not reach our deep sleep cycle? The body and mind do not rest, refresh or heal. So, you wake up the next morning feeling as if you never slept at all. The wonderful thing about hypnotherapy is that you can reach "deep sleep" and experience "REM" in about 10-20 minutes. After a half hour hypnosis session (yes, even self-hypnosis), you can feel as though you have had a complete 8 hours of sleep. You can also use self-hypnosis to drift into your regular sleep at night, sleep through the night, and wake in the morning feeling better than you ever have.

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