Scientists at Integrated Tissue Dynamics LLD (Intidyn) reported their findings in the journal Pain Medicine. Their work was part of an Albany Medical College study on fibromyalgia. The researchers found a unique pathology in the skin [1] of female patients, one they believe could be the biological basis of the mysterious condition, says Medical News Today.

Overall: They're not capitalizing 'fibromyalgia', which is correct. They cite the journal, Pain Medicine, and the company (Integrated Tissue Dynamics LLD) whose scientists reported the findings. If you're going to 'follow the money' to see what vested interests there would be, then that is helpful to the person reading this article. This also sites Medical News Today. (So that would be the NEXT place I'd go look. Do they set that up for us with a link and 'encourage that' or simply offer it as source? Not that it's the biggest factor I look at, I just find it interesting what is encouraged with links and what is not, when looking at people's presentations of information on the Internet. 

The Guardian Express (guardianlv.com) - notice that lv before .com -- hmmm, suspicious detail.

Added by Rebecca Savastio on June 20, 2013 (Saved under health, Rebecca Savastio, US). (there is no information easily seen on the topic about who Rebecca Savastio is.)

Title:  Fibromyalgia Mystery Finally Solved! Researchers Find Main Source of Pain in Blood Vessels

There is a really great graphic, which I'd include here, but it's a plug-in that didn't copy plus it was a copyrighted image from 2010 and that gets into I.P. terrain that gets time consuming). But please follow the link and go look at the original source of BOTH of these documents I'm setting up to compare and contrast. 

The first paragraph: 

Researchers have found the main source of pain in Fibromyalgia patients, and contrary to what many believe, it does not stem from the brain. The findings mark the end of a decades-old mystery about the disease, which many doctors believed was conjured in patients’ imaginations. The mystery of Fibromyalgia has left millions of sufferers searching for hope in pain medications. Up until recently, many physicians thought that the disease was “imaginary” or psychological, but scientists have now revealed that the main source of pain stems from a most unlikely place- excess blood vessels in the hand.

•  "The" source.... as I said already, that goes against our standpoint from day one at Lumigrate.com.
•  This 'ends' the mystery? Just like that? That just doesn't make sense. Why would anyone read that and not say 'WT_?'
•  At least they mention the brain as where many believe fibromyalgia stems from. But why does something to do with the hand not connect to the brain? What if there's a connection, why are they putting a hand under the microscope and not thinking holistically and about the whole person. The elbows connected to the .... and the this is connected to the that, we all learned that in the song we sang as children. Why would research being reported in 2013 be segregating something out like this? Fishy if you ask me. Very fishy. 
• Few physicians in recent years and decade(s) have thought that fibromyalgia was due to 'being in your head', certainly in the timeframe since the masses got onto Facebook and started spreading information around 'en mass'.  They recognize and are often baffled by the complex and diverse systems of the body which are affected. They don't really know what to do, which is an awful feeling for a provider being sought for advise, so they tend to shun those types of patients more than others, which is unfortunate as that affects a LOT of patients/consumers.                                                                                                 --They are aware that symptoms typically have to do with the neurological system, the immune system, and the endocrine system, and they ALSO see that there is an emotional/behavioral/mental health component and are sometimes confused as to which came first, the chicken or the egg; the mental and cognitive sluggishness -- is it cause or effect, or a bit of both. But it's rare today that I hear of any providers who think it's "made up/in your head", and I interact with a lot of providers and consumers who go to providers both inside the US and beyond. (I deal primarily with those who speak English so it's mostly the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and a bit in European countries of Germany and France).  
• HOWEVER, there are many in the US (and beyond) who were outraged with the new version of the 'bible' of psychiatric/mental health providers, the DSM-V, which has reclassified a lot of things and added many new things and changed a lot of other things, and could potentially cause some unwitting providers to go backwards in their assessing of people who present to them with symptoms that are included in those diagnosed with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. 
• Blood vessels in the hand -- look at the graphic, is the hand even one of the places that has the dots where pain typically is found in people with FM? "Fibromyalgia" is capitalized throughout when it's not starting a sentence. They use the 'sufferer' word, which I will say is generally something that is both a shortcut for saying 'who have the condition', but if you're a believer and promoter of integrative medicine, as I and Lumigrate's providers are, 'suffering' is not a word we use unless we are using it in the context to describe someone's current state of mind as a symptom. 

The Brief History of My Doing Outreach and Education from Brick and Mortar Person-to-Person to Internet Person-to-Person

It was the summer solstice and first day of Country Jam 2008 when my collaborating PhD psychologist building-mate and I held our first get together with invited patients to start what became known as 'The Fibro Forum'.

I rapidly discovered the limitations of having people who wanted educating having to travel to a location every week in order to advance what they knew about fibromyalgia by either listening and watching and learning (aka receiving) or speaking, writing and teaching (aka transmitting). 

We'd been allowed to use the building's conference room 'guaranteed' every week all year long from 4 to 6 on Thursday afternoons. It seemed that would be a good time for providers, they could knock off from patient care two hours early if they wanted to attend, and for patients with chronic illness, they preferred the afternoon timeslots when I was their occupational therapist in the outpatient clinic in the building. 

There was a growing number of school-aged "girls", young women, being diagnosed and finding their way to us as well, and so this was that prime 'after school' time that their parents liked to have for getting them to appointments. Often the young girls were being schooled at home or unable to matriculate with schoolwork at that time due to the limitations from their medical problems, but there were siblings who needed to be picked up or run here or there, and so I thought 4-6 was a fine time for our yet-to-be-named group to meet. 

You see, Dr Young and I met weekly for an hour from spring to summer to talk about the need for the group, figuring out how to get a group going that would ultimately, in the LONG RUN, be for the patients and by the patients with our oversight and input. So they were going to name the group and we'd 'seed' the startup of it with our patients who we'd worked with, if they would want to participate. I believe all asked did. 

My background began in environmental research program administration at Colorado State University on a Federal contract, health education and peer health education at Colorado State University, occupational therapy (skilled nursing/home health/'eldercare', driving rehabilitiation, hospital inpatient/outpatient, and then private outpatient clinic contract for general adaptive equipment expertise, functional assessment, occupation of health care advisement, hand therapy, neuro/brain therapy.

Dr Young's career included military medicine early on, and I'd done internship at the VA, in psyche and physical disabilities and so we both had seen the benefits of meeting and collaborating over common cases, and he specialized in neuro/brain and pain. Hence our professional 'overlap' and collaborations that just 'happened' it seemed, effortlessly, as long as we were in the same building and referring to each other as needed and appropriate.

So the education group (NOT a 'support group') also 'got off the ground' well. Once we were underway, I designed and printed 50 copies of an attractive flyer and gave them to various medical offices in our building, and the providers didn't at all think of coming themselves, which we very much wanted as THEY needed the EDUCATION as much as anyone, but they handed the flyers off or mailed them to the patients who stood out in their minds as having EXTREME problems with fibromyalgia. 

So that was a problem we'd nor forseen, it tipped our group when these providers' patients started coming, a new one every week, tearful that 'someone finally understands'. Tears of frustration and relief, and we understood that and why, etc., but the others in the group weren't so up for 'processing that' every week, the first week or two it was okay, but after that it was like we were going back to the Intro to FM 101 class every week, when they were ready to learn 301 or 401 or even graduate level information, relatively speaking. 

I would have really loved to have had their providers who sent them in the room, obviously, because if we could educate one provider who would then treat their patients differently, then we'd not have this frustrated, crying/emotional consumers starting with us every week and our group could get back to what we'd intended, which was learning something new every week, providers and consumers alike.  

So we regrouped and figured it was okay -- we'll start with the patients and then get the providers coming by them asking their providers to make it a priority to attend. But again, that meant the providers taking two hours of patient care time off their schedule out of a 40 hour workweek, and that seemed reasonable for FREE education, and education that would increase their efficiency with all patients with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and the other 'overlapping conditions'. 

We proceeded, the medical consumers and the two of us providers who started the group, to talk every week at 'the forum' meeting about what we knew about fibromyalgia, and where we learned it. Some brought in books or just told people the titles. Many of Dr Young's and my patients had gone to the same providers in town, known for their abilities for working with environmental illness and these types of conditions. I had also gone to, or knew professionally, all the providers that the 'successful, satisfied' patient/consumers had found to be helpful.

From the suggestions in the discussions in forom time, I wrote out a list on our big whiteboard of who we'd like to invite to come and present, and we hoped those providers would also start coming on a regular basis, not just to 'present'. But that was not to happen, in reality it was just asking too much to have the providers losing 2 hours of revenue a week. However, every provider asked did make time to come present once. Which was great, we had a nice 'series lineup' week after week for many weeks going up to the holidays. Unfortunately, the building's management decided just after this point in time they were going to need the area we were using for the whole month of December, and computers would be set up in the room so we couldn't use the space. That was quite a monkey wrench if you know how difficult it is to find free space and herd a bunch of people when you don't have a website yet, and nobody was on Facebook (I'd not heard of it even, at that point, I barely learned of YouTube in 2008!) -- how to change locations after you've released a 'lineup'.

Ugh. Considering a good % of my revenues as an OT went to the building, I wasn't happy they pulled the rug out from under me/us on that. I had the opportunity to move to a new clinic that was being formed and ultimately started Lumigrate there, but there were unfortunately the same and more difficulties there, and so I was off to "Plan C" within two years of when the Forum concept was first laid out by Dr Young and I. 

And ironically, the 4 on Thursday time slot actually became a limitation for Dr Young as well when his only other male therapist at the time suddenly retired due to medical/family issues which were his priority at that time. I also sometimes was torn leaving the clinic at 4 pm for up to a couple of hours because we had grown, with my assistant's talents, to have a robust hand therapy component on top of my brain/neuro/functional medicine component, and he only worked 32 hours a week (his choice). I arrived late after Dr April Schulte had started speaking (she wasn't yet a Dr, actually, she is now) about traditional Chinese/oriental medicine, because my new hair stylist had been very slow compared to my old one. And it was okay because those in the group rose to the occasion as we'd been giving them equality in the forum group, so that was really cool to see. Ultimately, though, nobody with fibromyalgia much wants to take on any kind of responsibilities due to their awareness of fluctuating abilities as their wellness/illness teeters and totters.

That first meeting and month when we started 'the forum', It was the HEAT of summer, and at 4 pm it was too hot for some with chronic illness, they reported. Later when it got to be wintertime, it was dark at 5:30 or 6 when the guest presenter would be finished up and some people had issues with darkness because of what had occurred to them in the past related to psychological trauma. Or it was too cold. I joked that it was like everyone with fibromyalgia is like Goldilocks, and I understand that: I've been dealing with working around the symptoms of fibromyalgia since I was in occupational therapy school in the mid 1990s, which is when I had my onset, while attending the esteemed program at Colorado State University. 

But we proceeded, with my knowing the providers would like to learn more but they would need a way to do it in their sleep or something. Kidding/joking, I am, but they are famished and fatigued as much as anyone at the end of a workday, so the only way you can get them doing something right after work is to have food and drinks for them, and that was a whole undertaking financially that we weren't up for doing, although I did have one dinner I provided to simply get those who were coming to speak at the Forum together so they'd all get to know each other and have one hour-long conversation about what fibromyalgia was from their vantage point. In reality what happened was some were on time, some were late, some had to leave early and they all only overlapped for 10 minutes at the most. So I was learning and changing my approach each time. That was in the fall of 2008.

In the fall of 2012, about six months ago or more now, I invited the same number of providers and others interested in a particular health topic (fluoride in water) on a Thursday at 6 pm ... same basic night of the year, same time, and only about a mile away. Not only was everyone on time, half arrived anxiously and eagerly five minutes early! Some said they'd have to leave at 8 pm because of family responsibilities or other tasks, and you saw the cell phones and texting going on quickly that was letting others know that THIS was where they were staying. We were thoroughly talked out at 9 pm when the 'party' broke up.

Dinner was not 'provided' everyone had been given instructions on how to order their meals and pay for them from a local deli, which delivered. We legally had wine via our city's and state's liquor laws related to events that are private parties. And so, that is where I am currently, looking for my next move in 'getting the word out', 'bringing people to the table', providers and consumers alike, in the challenging and exciting field of medicine in the United States, Colorado, Grand Junction and 'beyond'. I hope what I present here helps YOU! Whether YOU are a provider or a consumer. I hope YOU find success in your pursuits -- it took me four years to have success in getting a lively group of experts around a table to converse and have a good time, stay for hours AND pay their own way. And they all asked to be invited back the next time. What an honor.