One of my patients, Libby H., contacted me last week to ask for a guaifenesin refill. When I asked her how she was doing, she said, “I am doing fantastic!! It is truly amazing, I have a life again….I feel so good most of the time that I forget I have FMS. I am so grateful.” I called in the prescription and then contacted her to let her know the medication was ready. She then asked me, “As an MD do you completely believe guaifenesin is the answer for Fibromyalgia Syndrome or do you think it could be something in our minds that reverses it because we finally have hope? I know I see the results but every other doctor I talk to except Dr. St. Amand and you just don’t believe. It seems so bizarre to me that the medical society buys into one explanation that benefits Lyrica yet won’t even consider guaifenesin.”
The following is a summary of what I said to her:
Libby, you and I know guaifenesin reverses the symptoms of fibromyalgia because we can personally feel the difference in our bodies since we started the medication. I have not seen any evidence that anything “in our mind reverses” which allows guaifenesin to work. My patients who are improving on the guaifenesin protocol say the same thing.
One of the most compelling examples of how guaifenesin works without the mind being involved is with children. I care for a number of children who have fibromyalgia and they are too young to focus much on it (my youngest patient is a 5 year old). When they start guaifenesin their symptoms lessen very quickly (usually within 6 weeks). These young patients are not participating in any activity that would cause their mind to “reverse.” They are not seeing a therapist, they do not meditate or do any kind of mind-body therapies. I can feel the lessening of spasm in their muscles, tendons and ligaments that I feel with my older patients. They take guaifenesin, go about their normal kid activities, and start to feel better. One of my very young patients has stopped taking her guaifenesin (no matter how her parents disguise the granules in pudding, juice, etc she just won’t take it because she does not like the taste) and her mother has been heartbroken to see her little girl’s fibromyalgia symptoms return one by one. Luckily she is my only patient who has refused to take guaifenesin.
Body workers (such as Chiropractors, Osteopaths, Massage Therapists and Feldenkrais Practitioners) can feel the difference when patients start to improve on the guaifenesin protocol. My patients tell me that after approximately 9 months on guaifenesin their body workers comment that their bodies are more easily aligned and their muscles are more flexible and have less spasm.
Kaz Shibao, GCFP, COMT, is a certified Feldenkrais Practitioner and Orthopedic Massage Therapist at the California Pacific Medical Center’s Institute for Health and Healing in San Francisco. His work is respected by physicians and well loved by his patients (just look at his reviews on Yelp). He called me last week and said “I now KNOW that the guaifenesin protocol works. I started seeing one of your patients before she started the protocol and now that she is one year into the protocol her body feels completely different to me! She is so much better.” Indeed our mutual patient is feeling much better. She has less pain and more energy. She is well on her way to reversing her symptoms of fibromyalgia.
This is more objective evidence that the guaifenesin protocol can produce positive change in the musculoskeletal system.
Stay tuned for my next blog–my take on why many physicians are so negative about the guaifenesin protocol.