Healing Fibromyalgia Forever
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How to Protect Your Self Against
Winter's Aches and Pains
By Gregory Lee, Co-founder of the Two Frogs Healing Center

Ever get brain freeze when you eat ice cream too quickly? That headachey, cold, stabbing feeling is called sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia by scientists. The palate in your mouth gets cold and then warms up quickly afterwards again. The nearby blood vessels constrict with the cold and then open up quickly as the palate warms up again. The nerves interpret the constriction and the opening up as pain in your brain.

Does winter lead you to have brain freeze all over?
Winter is like eating too much way too much ice cream. As the cold and dampness gets inside, your body aches more and more. You try to feel better by spending the next several months curled up with your electric blanket trying to keep the cold from getting in, turning the thermostat way up, and not going out into the cold. Even when you do all these things, you still get the aches and fatigue that come in winter.

Warming up and exercising doesn’t make you feel much better
When your electric blanket or exercise doesn’t work to keep your body from aching and feeling fatigued, then you the coldness and dampness have gone deeper inside. You can heat up the surface with a blanket, but that is not enough to keep you from feeling worse in winter.

How the cold and damp gets inside
One of the main reasons that cold and damp gets inside, is because of a weakness in your body’s ability to protect itself. This occurs when you eat too many foods that make you cold on the inside. Also, eating too many carbohydrates, sweets, and fats leads to being way too damp on the inside. This accumulates over time and eventually your body can’t get it out. So it sits inside.

Not getting adequate rest and pushing your self beyond your limits until you are exhausted weakens you to the cold and the damp. When you are tired, you body has less energy to push out cold and damp from the outside. It also has less energy to warm up and dry out on the inside.

A third reason is having a chronic illness. More and more people who contract Lyme disease often get diagnosed later with fibromyalgia. Their immune system is overwhelmed by the Lyme bacteria and can’t maintain a healthy level of internal warmth and dryness. Excess dampness builds up and leads to Fibromyalgia aches and fatigue.

Four steps for getting the cold and damp out of you
Step 1: Limit your intake of foods that are cooling. In order to warm up, you need to stop cooling yourself down. So, limit these cooling foods:

• Raw fruits like: apples, bananas, pears, persimmons, cantalope, watermelon, tomatoes, oranges, tangerines, lemons

• Veggies like: radishes, cucumber, asparagus, Swiss chard, eggplant, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, summer squash

• Soy products like: tofu, soy milk, miso, tempeh, and soy sprouts.

• Grains like: wheat, wheat products, and millet.

• Dairy products: yogurt.

• Seafoods: crabs, clams, and oyster shell calcium.

• Herbs and spices: peppermint, nettles, lemon balm, cilantro, marjoram.

Step 2: Limit your intake of foods that create dampness on the inside. In order to dry out, you need to stop over moistening your insides. So, limit these dampness producing foods:

• Soy products mentioned above.
• Carbohydrates like: products made from wheat, breads, pasta, desserts
• High fat foods like: fried foods, fatty meats
• Foods containing refined sugars: desserts, soda, candy, sweetened drinks, sweetened foods
• Alcoholic beverages
• Highly processed foods: hot dogs with nitrates,
• Artifically sweetened foods

Step 3: Increase your intake of foods that are warming. In order to warm up, you need to eat foods that generate internal heat. So, increase your intake of these warming foods:

• Eating foods that are warm to hot. Avoid very hot foods as your body will react by cooling itself down.
• Grains: oats, spelt, quinoa, sweet brown rice
• Herbs: ginger, cinnamon, cloves, basil, rosemary, fennel, dill, anise, cumin, carob, parsley, small quantities of hot peppers like cayenne and black pepper
• Seeds: sunflower seedss, sesame seeds, caraway seeds
• Legumes: black beans, aduki beans, lentils
• Nuts: walnut, pinenut, chestnut
• Vegetables: parsnip, mustard greens, winter squash, cabbage, kale, onion, leek, chive, garlic, scallion
• Fruits: cherry, orange peel, lemon peel, dates
• Small quantities of unrefined sweeteners: barley malt, rice syrup, molasses
• Seafoods: anchovy, mussels, trout
• Meats: chicken, beef, lamb

Step 4: Increase your intake of foods that reduce dampness. In order to dry out, you need to eat foods that reduce internal dampness. So, increase your intake of these drying foods:

• Grains: barley, rye, amaranth, alfalfa sprouts, corn
• Vegetables: celery, lettuce, turnips, kohlrabi
• Seafood: seaweeds like nori, wakame
• Dairy: raw goats milk
• Sweeteners: raw honey
• Herbs: white pepper, pau d’arco, chamomile, 
• Fungi: mushrooms

Four steps make you stronger against the chill of winter
When the weather starts to turn cooler, I recommend making small, achievable steps in your diet. As you plan on making changes, I recommend developing a diet modification plan with a health care practitioner that is trained in Chinese herbal medicine. As your diet warms you up and dries you out, you will notice a decrease in your cold-induced fatigue and your aches.

Internal warmth and dryness makes winter more endurable
External warmth is not always enough to prevent winter’s aches and pains. You will experience much less “brain freeze” symptoms in your body as you warm up and dry out on the inside. This helps you to push out the internal dampness and cold that cause the aches and pains in winter. Greater internal warmth makes you more impervious against external cold and dampness from getting inside your body.

If you haven't done so already: (That's a clue!)

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Gregory Lee is a licensed acupuncturist, Chinese herbalist, and Master Sufi Healer in Maryland. He is co-founder of the Two Frogs Healing Center in Frederick, Maryland. He has helped clients to reduce their pain and fatigue through the Healing Fibromyalgia Forever System.

Note: This information has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is generic and for general information purposes only, and is not meant to prevent, diagnose, treat or cure any condition, illness, or disease. It is very important that you make no change in your healthcare plan or regimen without researching and discussing it in collaboration with your professional healthcare team.

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