Today our discussion on Fibromyalgia has a new topic: Intimate Partner Violence or IPV and its consequences. Anytime physical, psychological, emotional or spiritually-based violence is a part of your world, it puts you at greater risk for experiencing the symptoms of Fibromyalgia. People who undergo traumatic events are simply more susceptible to coming down with this type of health problem!

Proof of this can be found in our current homes and our childhood homes. I know I certainly encountered it as a small child. Back then no one knew how children could be so dramatically affected at seeing and hearing their parents scream at each other. Other than the presence of your tears, what would let them know that you were being harmed?

If you’re still living in such a harmful environment, please take this information to heart. Your chances of getting well and healing are poor unless you can find a way to STOP experiencing this kind of ongoing trauma. No one responds well to it. See the report issued by the CDC. The best part of it is discussed below, but if need the complete reference, check out the CDC website.

Physical aspects of intimate partner violence:

Several health conditions associated with intimate partner violence may be a direct result of the physical violence (for example, bruises, knife wounds, broken bones, back or pelvic pain, headaches). (*I am adding sexual assault. It happens!)

Studies have also demonstrated the impact of intimate partner violence on the endocrine and immune systems through chronic stress or other mechanisms (Crofford, 2007; Leserman and Drossman, 2007) This is huge and directly tie in to Fibromyalgia. Examples include:

• Fibromyalgia
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Gynecological disorders
• Pregnancy difficulties like low birth weight babies and perinatal deaths
• Sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS
• Central nervous system disorders
• Gastrointestinal disorders
• Heart or circulatory conditions

Children may become injured during IPV incidents between their parents. Sometimes children try to interceded in parental arguments and end up getting hurt. A large overlap exists between IPV and child maltreatment (Appel and Holden 1998).

Social aspects of intimate partner violence:

Victims of IPV sometimes face the following social consequences (Heise and Garcia-Moreno 2002; Plichta 2004):

• Restricted access to services
• Strained relationships with health providers and employers
• Isolation from social networks

*Plus I suspect that some children evolve into the caretaker role, wanting to take care of an injured or abused parent. This is just wrong!

Health Behaviors aspects of intimate partner violence:

Women with a history of IPV are more likely to display behaviors that present further health risks (e.g., substance abuse, alcoholism, suicide attempts) than women without a history of IPV.

IPV is associated with a variety of negative health behaviors (Heise and Garcia-Moreno 2002; Plichta 2004; Roberts, Auinger, and Klein 2005; Silverman et al. 2001). Studies show that the more severe the violence, the stronger its relationship to negative health behaviors by victims.

• Engaging in high-risk sexual behavior
• Unprotected sex
• Decreased condom use
• Early sexual initiation
• Choosing unhealthy sexual partners
• Multiple sex partners
• Trading sex for food, money, or other items
• Using harmful substances
• Smoking cigarettes
• Drinking alcohol
• Drinking alcohol and driving
• Illicit drug use
• Unhealthy diet-related behaviors
• Fasting
• Vomiting
• Abusing diet pills
• Overeating
• Overuse of health services

You don’t have to do any self-reporting here unless you want to, but I would love to see this blog post sent around Twitter and Facebook big time. Thanks so much!

Cinda Crawford, your host of
The Health Matters Show

CFS and childhood trauma can easily be linked together. Think of your accidents, scrapes, falls, and mishaps when you were little. Then think of all of the other kinds of trauma that you could experience as a youngster besides physical trauma. Wow. It’s a lot! I’ll cover some of it starting with the birth process and demonstrate how it can be intimately related to CFS.

I remember how awkward I was as a child. I’m still pretty clumsy. I had more knee scrapes and bike wrecks than any one kid should have. But before that I had the severe trauma of an abnormal birth. My mother’s labor stopped in the middle of the process and some badly-handled forceps pulled me from her body. Not to mention the fear I must have felt, physically I looked like a monster by the time they took me to the nursery. Barely alive and wondering if I should hang on… .

(That passage is paraphrased from my new book, which is almost ready for publication, From the Floor…Looking Up. Sign up in the box at the right to get the notices and special goodies surrounding its release!)

Studies have been done that indicate that CFS may be brought on by trauma like a car accident. A recent study by the CDC found that childhood trauma can be a risk factor-although the CDC points out that childhood difficulties do not cause the disorder. They insinuate a pre-sickness trigger or pre-event that is the subject of their investigation.

Think how possible it is that:

• the energy from every argument you ever witnessed remains lodged within you
• every memory cell in your body can recall every physical pain or traumatic event that you’ve ever had
• every negative spiritual encounter continues to ravage your soul and deny it peace
• every trauma you have ever experienced is still a part of you, that is…UNTIL YOU WORK TO REMOVE IT.

Removing these kinds of trauma will give your mind, body and spirit a clean slate and enable your own healing. You were meant to be healthy.

Yes, the CDC has found evidence of neuroimmune-endocrine dysfunction, but any sacred, energetic healer could have told you that. I work with these types of trauma in my clients everyday. The damage from unresolved trauma is as real as it gets. Hello illness!

CDC: ‘It is increasingly clear that persons with CFS have altered responses to physical, mental, and emotional stressors. Moreover, physical, infectious, and emotional stressors are risk or triggering factors of CFS. A large body of evidence shows that stress early in life (such as childhood abuse, neglect and loss), within a genetic window of vulnerability, permanently programs an individual’s responsiveness to subsequent stress throughout the lifespan.

These long-term consequences of early life stress occur through direct effects on brain circuits involved in the mediation of cognitive-emotional regulation, vigilance, arousal, and the integration of endocrine, autonomic, and immune regulatory systems. Of note, similar changes in these circuits and regulatory outflow systems have been implicated in the pathophysiology of CFS.’

It’s also no longer impossible to get rid of these negative energies and the damage they inflicted upon you. Think about how this could really help and be the answer you’ve been searching for. Email me with your questions: cinda(at)getwellhealth.com.

Thanks, Cinda Crawford
Host of the Health Matters Show

PS- I invite your comments. Be anonymous if you like. Have you ever suffered because of something horrible someone said to you? Done to you? Inflicting long term damage on you that you’ve never gotten over?

When I say that Fibromyalgia symptoms are caused by trauma, what I mean is that traumatic events that you experience at any time in your life can impact your health in the most dramatic ways imaginable. Whether trauma occurs en utero, during your first moments of birth, at age 2, 5, 10 or later as a teenager or adult, everything that happens to you, which your body, mind and spirit interpret as being traumatic, very likely can and will do significant damage to you…eventually.

Enter Fibromyalgia. This illness like all ‘invisible illnesses’ commonly results from physical, mental/ emotional, psychological, spiritual or sexual trauma.

Now stay with me. Beginning in this post and ending with the Friday Health Matters Show podcast, I’ll explain this concept really well -and- how this impacts your chance at getting well.

In a new book that I’m writing, From the Floor…Looking Up, I demonstrate how and why these concepts are true and how you can take advantage of this earth-shattering information. Know this: your body will never be truly healthy until you get rid of the negative energy created by trauma.

Now Enter: Mind Body Healing, the one mechanism that can help you get rid of the damage from traumatic energy and get you back to being healthy.

a) Physical trauma of (1) the birth process on your body, as a newborn; (2) the physical trauma inflicted upon your sensitive, young, electrical body if it is deluged with shots, immunizations, prescription drugs, surgeries or invasive procedures, and (3) trauma that can happen throughout your lifetime in the form of accidents, car wrecks, etc. One example written up in the health journals is when a person gets a whiplash, Fibromyalgia often results.

b) Mental/ Emotional trauma of people arguing and fighting around you (either while you’re still in your mother’s womb (before you were born) or afterwards. Emotional trauma can occur at any time in your life. Disturbing people and troubling events leave you with emotional trauma and damage to your mind, body and spirit in the form of ill-health and dis-ease.

c) Psychological trauma occurs when someone demeans your self-worth, self-value or any of the self-esteem issues that are present and valued in a loving, healthy relationship. (These can arise soon after birth, but often occur later in life as evidenced by teasing, cyber-bullying or after a physical assault, rape or incest.) Perpetrators of psychological assault and trauma are not people you want to be around.

d) Spiritual trauma is not pretty, but we see the results often when someone doubts his or her being really wanted or valued in their world; of doubting that the “self” should hang around. Spiritual trauma often results from the overwhelming influence of emotionally and spiritually unhealthy, negative people. Their influence can be strong and it can damage you severely. (*Spiritual trauma can be one of the toughest traumas to recognize and overcome. It also can be the result of a spiritual assault, but that’s a huge topic and too involved to go into here.)

e) Sexual trauma that some children experience, due to the inappropriate actions of other children or adults in the family -or- outright abuse from a stranger. You may be aware that sexual trauma occurred in your life or you may have totally repressed the memory of certain events. Either way that does not mean that sexual trauma isn’t bothering your long term health. It definitely will. Sexual trauma includes aspects of physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual trauma combined. That is a major reason why this type of trauma can be so difficult to overcome.

There are more examples of trauma than the ones I’ve listed here. I talk about traumatic situations and the resulting damage they can do you in depth in my new, upcoming book. I’ve almost finished it and I’m so excited. I will explain this and reveal the details about how you can get well by using the mind body healing concepts that I teach.

While you have a moment, I urge you to do more research into From the Floor…Looking Up. Sign up below to be notified when thie book is published. You’ll also receive all of the goodies that I will offer my first readers. You’ll get lots of information, extra bonuses, and the very first help. You deserve to find the answers that can guide you back to real health!

Yes, Fibromyalgia symptoms are often caused by trauma. I’ll explain a really important part of “why” trauma causes Fibromyalgia Friday on the Health Matters Show podcast. Be sure that you return to hear why this revolutionary approach to healthcare works so well…even for a tough, chronic illness like Fibromyalgia!

Thanks, Cinda Crawford
Host of the Health Matters Show

During this interview and the previous one with Dr. Mike Funicello, DC, he explains why you may be sick with Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, what happens during the illness process, what you can do at a physical level to relieve the trauma your body has stored, plus he offers a tantalizing opinion of where health comes from. By all means, take time to listen to the whole Health Matters Show today!

(Then when you get a chance, go back and review the previous interview, if you haven’t already heard it.)

When energy is stored in your body after a traumatic event, it has the capacity to influence your health very negatively and for a very long time.

(This whopping interview is 23 minutes long and includes information that could potentially help you. Listen here on the website by clicking the right-facing arrow on the left of the blue bar. To download this interview to your computer, iPod or telephone, right click your mouse directly over the hyperlink that says, “Download MP3″. Then left click it to save the file where you can find it on your device. Enjoy. )

Dr. Funicello and I discuss muscle memory in the body and how it relates to 1) a type of chiropractic care called Network Spinal Analysis and b) an exercise-type process called Trauma Releasing Exercises, which is done for the purpose of removing trauma. The following is paraphrased from our talk:

…Trauma can show up after any physical, mental or emotional biochemical event. If we do not adapt well after the event is over, the body lodges the energy bound to the event as actual trauma. *Where trauma is concerned, we’re talking about the difference between safe and un-safe experiences. How our bodies react immediately and, very importantly, how they react long term is critical to whether we’re healthy or suffer with chronic illnesses.

Our discussion reached a defining moment when we began discussing our healthcare system. In its present form, our present medical environment is not good at helping us resolve the underlying reasons for our (personal) recurring health problems. All too often many of us spend our life savings looking for answers that are not within the realms of traditional medical care. They don’t exist.

That includes a lot of people suffering with Fibromyalgia and/or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. If you’re one of those people, you need the right answers now, you need answers you can afford and you need to find the people who can really help you make healing happen!

I enjoyed my extended interview with Dr. Mike Funicello, who is a wise medical practitioner and, I’m sure, a skilled and compassionate chiropractor. The websites and books that we discussed are listed below for your ease in locating them:

Reach Dr. Mike Funicello at the Infinite Healing Arts Center or to find out more about Network Spinal Analysis, either read the information on Dr. Funicello’s website—

Or find a professional in your area to work with at this website.

To find out more about the Trauma Releasing Exercises and the author/originator of this healing concept, Dr. David Berceli, check out his website.

To get your own copy of 12 Stages of Healing by Donald Epstein, DC, check it out here at this Amazon.com link. It will take you to a page where you can create an account or log in:

Dear Ones, I hope you act on these suggestions today while they’re on your mind. You can see from the price of this great book that you can begin to use the concepts for as little as $3.47 plus shipping. If you would like information about the alternative healing concept that I have to offer and figure out how to get rid of the trauma causing your health problems, please check it out. Either way you start your healing process, you will be leaps and bounds ahead of standing still and doing nothing. Wellness… here you come!

Thanks so much for dropping by. Please comment below, Tweet this post or send to your buds on Facebook. Let’s spread the word that there are some health practitioners who do understand us and our illnesses, have compassion and are very skilled.

Cinda Crawford, host of the Health Matters Show