Fibromyalgia is a disorder affecting some 3-6 million Americans today according to the American College of Rheumatology.  Newer estimates are ranging from 6-12 million, and the cause of this disorder, as well as its cure, are still being studied.  The pain the disorder causes, however, is very real.  Each sufferer of this chronic condition may have different symptoms, but wide spread muscle and joint pain is the most common.

Excerpt
Most people start off a book with how the day was or how they felt the day they started writing one. Sometimes they tell you about their background, or whether they have a PHD and how they have spent years researching a subject. I think I'll spare you the boring details and cut to the chase... I have Fibromyalgia and I am newly diagnosed with it.

When I first found out the the news I was overjoyed that I wasn't going to die from it and I also found out that I probably won't pass it on to my child. That was the good news. The bad? Well, it's a hard disorder and no two people experience this disorder in quiet the same way. There is also no known cure.

Doctors can help by giving you some medication and prescribe exercise. They can also feel for you. The medication is okay. It helps with the pain and allows me to move. I just don't want to be on something for the rest of my life-- however long or short that may be. I am only 32 and plan to be here for a while.

So the next logical thing that one does after being diagnosed is to start looking up the syndrome, right? You start with books (if you can find any) and you surf the net. I did both and boy what a let down. The research is unbelievable. It seems everybody who is anybody has a cure with some magic pill, or tells you that eating a certain diet will help you... for a price.

The more I researched, the more depressed I got. The books and the net stating, "you will always have flare ups, you will always have trouble sleeping, you will probably have depression and anxiety from the long term effects of the chronic disease, and you will have fibro fog (trouble concentrating) from the lack of sleep.

I did find some hope through all of the mess. All I had to do was change my lifestyle through diet, vitamins and supplements, and exercise to be flare-up free most of the time.

A good majority of the time I am flare-up free, except when I'm stressed. Stress is the main problem with my syndrome. We all have stress in our daily lives, it's just a part of our life. We all deal with it in different ways. That's what make all of us here on this Earth unique. We all deal with pain and diet differently too. I think you get my point here. Everyone is different.

Now having said that, I am not writing this book to sell you a magic bullet to fill you up with a good feeling that I have always found lasts as long as a book can be read. What I would like to achieve is to help in a different way. A way of looking at life differently through my writing and personal experiences as a Fibromyalgic sufferer. It's only a book, not a magic pill that promises things. It's not a diet that's purely natural in an almost totally synthetic one. It's just me, a person like you. I just so happen to have fibromyalgia.

The term fibromyalgia (fibro for short) was always puzzling to me. I never could understand someone being in pain all the time and yet, it having no affect to the body. I was scared thinking I'd get something else down the road like arthritis, or even something worse. My stress kept sky rocketing with this worry and my flare-ups of pain grew worse. So much so that one day while sitting on the floor with my daughter, I hit bottom. The bottom for me was not being able to get up. My legs were so weak that I couldn't put weight on them.

After going to the doctor and finally being diagnosed with this syndrome, I read about a well balanced diet. My doctor had said to me that a well balanced diet and regular exercise is what is needed to start feeling better.

The diet that some of these books prescribed was confusing to me as well, though. I couldn't understand how a diet I had been on all of my life could suddenly be the wrong thing for me. How could something like pizza or mac and cheese cause an allergic reaction in my body that in turn made me hurt all over? I was puzzled. I still tried to change it anyway.