Anemia and Fibromyalgia

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cwel

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Nov 5, 2022
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DX FIBRO
Diagnosis
09/2009
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US
State
CA
I thought I read enough about Fibromyalgia to know all about it. Well, my experience these past 6 months taught me something I did not know. I had back surgery in April. The hospital did blood work and it showed I was anemic. No one told me I was anemic, not the hospital or my surgeon. My primary care doctor, in October, saw that my hemoglobin was very low. I have been suffering with fibro flare after fibro flare. I did some research and found out that anemia can cause fibro flares. I also read that most people with fibromyalgia are low in iron. I have never read or heard this information until now. I am now taking Iron supplements under a doctor's care. I haven't been taking iron long enough to know if it helps. I will post my results. I wanted to share this information with others. Maybe it can help someone else.
 
Yeah, I am/was low on iron as well - as of last October, anyway..
Just be aware that taking iron supplements can cause/exacerbate constipation, which is something I contend with regularly and have for years
 
I'd say this isn't fibro, it's deficiencies worsening it, like might also be the case with B12, D3, zinc, etc. and in my case recently & very surprisingly phosphate - due to my oh so healthy diet completely free of unprocessed foods...
I think the problem arises from putting things down to fibro or other conditions instead of regularly checking bloods.
 
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I get a FBC done every three months on my care plan and my WBC goes up and down like a yo-yo but this time last year my VitD was basically none existent, so I am now taking VitD 50,000 eu tablets once a month. Even my gp didn’t understand why I was deficient as I am generally outside a lot.
 
I am now taking VitD 50,000 eu tablets once a month
I am curious why the large dose once a month, why not a smaller one daily? I see this posted frequently, XX dose once a month for Vit D and I have to wonder why?
I take a 2000 IU dose daily... and for a short while i was taking 2 of those a day to give the body an extra boost.
 
I had to take 1x 50,000iu does each week for a month then to one x monthly. My blood tests results for vit d I got today arnt at the upper end of normal , still at half way. I suppose my gp just waiting to get it back to top end of normal, never really asked, I think on horse table a month is better than weekly. Lol
 
ah, but my 2000 IU gel caps are quite small and very easy to swallow (trust me, i have a hard time with pills, these are easy!)
they are smaller than the standard OTC ibuprofen caplets, so I dont mind them at all..
 
Did you have a deficiency in vit d?
 
Did you have a deficiency in vit d?
yes, mine was down to a whopping 8ng/ml (normal range being 30 - 50ng/ml)
at last check it was back up to 35, but that was at the end of May this year.. not sure what it is now...

also low on ferritin, but taking the supplements for that causes me greater constipation problems.. so.. not sure what to do there. I try to eat more veg with iron, but apparently still not getting enough..
 
I had to take 1x 50,000iu does each week for a month then to one x monthly.
Also seems a rare recommendation to me. 20.000 once a week is the usual upper dose, which I've been on for years. As it's still under average I've tested taking that several times a week for a few weeks, but it made no difference.
So instead I now follow the more usual recommendation of adding vit. K2, best in the form MK7.
More sunlight in the eyes for better sleep is hopefully also tanking up my D.... Amazing how bright even overcast skies are if you look into it longer. And a lovely secret to find the sun often peeking out some days even when it seems overcast all the time. ☀️, "not": 😎.

Hyperdosing seems more usual to do with B12, which I do now: 5mg belly jabs as methylcobalamin that rocket the levels for months.
B3 as nicotinic acid I'm also hyperdosing (4g) for my lipids, which is blasting the levels, but needs TMG (& glycine) & watching liver bloods.
And now B2 (riboflavin) for energy (1.2g) after seeing mine is very deficient too, like B12 that doesn't seem to need to be balanced out.
Ironically the phosphate form of B2 may seem to be better for my phosphate deficiency, but may turn out not to be working for the B2....

So, @Harpy, I'd be very interested how your D-levels progress!
 
also low on ferritin, but taking the supplements for that causes me greater constipation problems.. so.. not sure what to do there. I try to eat more veg with iron, but apparently still not getting enough..
Morley Robbins thinks iron may be there (praps even too much), but bound up, so recommends retinol and copper. (I got to Robbins from the youtuber Melissa Schworer.) Copper facilitates iron being used to attach oxygen to iron and thus transport it to the mitochondria..
At least this as well as another tip made me get my copper checked, and I was deficient (and zinc too much), supplementing 2mg a month got that up and also reduced 100s of orange spots on my lower legs which my cardios think are iron deposits.
However I've yet to try retinol, supplemental to all my veggies, which obviously aren't enough for all this.
Not saying Robbins is trustworthy as 'magnesium man' with his 'Root Cause Protocol' and all that, but I need to try anything that seems applicable to me without causing harm.
 
Morley Robbins thinks iron may be there (praps even too much), but bound up, so recommends retinol and copper. (I got to Robbins from the youtuber Melissa Schworer.) Copper facilitates iron being used to attach oxygen to iron and thus transport it to the mitochondria..
At least this as well as another tip made me get my copper checked, and I was deficient (and zinc too much), supplementing 2mg a month got that up and also reduced 100s of orange spots on my lower legs which my cardios think are iron deposits.
However I've yet to try retinol, supplemental to all my veggies, which obviously aren't enough for all this.
Not saying Robbins is trustworthy as 'magnesium man' with his 'Root Cause Protocol' and all that, but I need to try anything that seems applicable to me without causing harm.
hmm, sent me down another rabbit hole, you did...

From Mt Sinai - Signs of possible copper deficiency include anemia, low body temperature, bone fractures and osteoporosis, low white blood cell count, irregular heartbeat, loss of pigment from the skin, and thyroid problems.

anemia is a problem, obviously, with low ferritin, and I do tend to have low temps with a forehead scan thermometer (not super low, but a few points below normal) but WBC count is well within normal ranges, no pigmentation loss, no bone fractures or osteoporosis (if anything i have the opposite problem - bone spur creation!) heart is good... thyroid is a maybe... TSH was slightly elevated at my annual physical time (Sept) will be getting it checked again next week to see if it remains elevated, or no.
I also eat plenty of things that are rich in copper, like shellfish, fish, peanut butter and chocolate (dark preferably) so... kind of thinking probably not a copper issue... i dunno.. can discuss with my doc at next appt.
 
anemia, low body temperature, bone fractures and osteoporosis, low white blood cell count, irregular heartbeat, loss of pigment from the skin, and thyroid problems.
Well my copper was quite a bit below the minimum and I have/had none of these, so I don't think it's that necessary.
Well OK, I do 😊 : temperature, WBC and thyroid all on the low side.
And now you're sending me down the WBC connection, cos I've been puzzling over why my lymphocytes (a type of leucocyte) have always been notoriously low. A tiny note on naturalremedyideas after all the big causes confirms: "Other causes of low lymphocyte count include cancer, spleen enlargement, sepsis, folate deficiencies, Sjogren’s syndrome, and steroid use. Copper and zinc deficiency can also cause it."
All of these can be / have been excluded, folate I need to get checked anyway, but copper...
Thank ye kindly! 🤝 👍 💯

Edit: selfdecode and draxe say neutrophils (the granulocyte type of leucocytes) are (also?) associated with copper.... but that doesn't mean naturalremedyideas is wrong, just means I need to go down their hole further... but they don't reveal any sources... how poor is that?...

... and.... can't substantiate either on pubmed, so I may just have to see if increasing my copper increases my lymphocytes...
... even selfdecode with "98 sources" refers to an old case study, the details of a recent review on copper deficiency is behind a paywall...
 
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is behind a paywall...
that just irritates me when they do that.
I get that the publisher wants money to fund new publications, but after say 3-5 yrs, make that stuff available.. no reason to have older studies behind paywalls...
and it isn't just medical stuff, either... any kind of scientific paper/publisher does this and it is really kind of detrimental when you think about it.. they want new people to be interested in the sciences, but wont let you see anything related to the field you are interested in..
 
refers to an old case study, the details of a recent review on copper deficiency is behind a paywall...
I get that the publisher wants money to fund new publications, but after say 3-5 yrs, make that stuff available.. no reason to have older studies behind paywalls...
I'm not sure if there are older studies behind paywalls - here the recent review was, the old one was accessible 📖 😊.
I keep thinking about joining a (specific) institution to get behind the walls, but it's not that many resources I can't get at and so much I can, need to get thru all my doc/research webinars first. If I can't get at one, I can often find it by searching for the title and finding it elsewhere, like europepmc, sciencedirect or an author's site.
 
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