The Three T’s
A New Way of Looking at Fibromyalgia

Socrates said, “I only know one thing and that is that I know nothing.” I have to remind myself of this wise insight whenever I am asked for advice about anything, especially in the health care field. I’m not so sure my 21 years in the healing arts have brought me closer to definite answers about the mysteries of health and disease.
All I have are my experiences, which I feel privileged to share here.
  In 1998, after extensive dental work and colliding head first with a sliding glass door, I developed what was diagnosed as fibromyalgia. At first it manifested itself as severe neck stiffness, but soon took on all the characteristics of what has become known as classic fibromyalgia.
My wife and I had just purchased a large home on 10 acres, which required a lot of work to maintain. Over the next year, we came close to selling our home, since I could not move due to severe pain. In fact, I remember looking at my term life insurance policy wishing the payout was larger. I felt as though I could die from this awful affliction. Needless to say, my family was in a state of shock. I had never been sick prior to this. I was 43 years old.
I decided to visit a national fibromyalgia organization to see how I could go about getting well. The secretary told me that the head of the organization was unable to speak to me. After inquiring why, I was told that this person never knew when she would be at work due to her own fibromyalgia.
“How long has she had fibromyalgia?” I inquired.
“Twenty years” was the answer. Right then and there I decided that a different approach was needed.
For the next two years, I worked at becoming healthy. As a chiropractor, I knew that this group of symptoms, known as fibromyalgia, was an expression of ill health. I had to have been sick or vulnerable prior to getting fibromyalgia. At the very least, my body was not in a position to fend off or cope with  whatever it was that had made me so sick.
I also knew that treating the individual symptoms would not be a smart way to go and that the toxic drugs often associated with the allopathic approach simply contradicted common sense. I had to put to the test what I had taught my patients for many years: “The body needs very little help in getting well; it just needs no interference,” a philosophy adopted from the late Dr. B.J. Palmer.
I started by dealing with the “Three T’s”: trauma, toxins and thoughts. I believe that a majority of disease is caused, or at least facilitated, by the body’s inability to adapt appropriately to the stress caused by these three primary stressors we are all exposed to. Gentle chiropractic adjustments three times per week to remove neurological interference (trauma) commenced my journey to wellness. I then committed to colonic irrigation three times per week for about three months, to help remove toxic stress and its interference. Finally, I learned to overcome any negative thoughts that could be interfering with my body’s God-given ability to heal.
To the above regimen, I added a nutritional program based on Standard Processes’ “Symptom  Survey” . I also started running on a daily basis, even though it seemed impossible and was agonizing at first. This was more for my mental well-being than anything else. Covert Bailey, a fitness expert, was a great help in motivating me to continue exercising, even though it was very painful.
Lastly, I resolved to get back into the healing arts (from which I had retired in 1995) once I had  recovered sufficiently. This was to have something to strive toward, but also because my journey had taught me so much, and I felt a desperate need to share what I had learned with others.
In 2000 I opened a new wellness center, although I had one remaining symptom, which would take another four years to resolve. I could not flex my index finger on my right hand through its normal range of motion until some time in 2004.
Fibromyalgia sufferers are often led to believe that they will “have to learn to live with it.” This is definitely a choice available to us all. I prefer Michio Kushi’s advice that illness is one of the greatest blessings that can be bestowed upon us. What we learn from it and how we grow and change as a result of it is up to us. “Learning to live with it” seems like a rather passive approach to me. If fibromyalgia can’t stir us into taking action, what can?
Most of us have been raised with the allopathic model of “disease care” (“healthcare” falls outside of this model), which is based on Pasteur’s germ theory of disease: there is something out there causing the disease. It would behoove us to recall Pasteur’s last minute recantation of his germ theory to Professor Renon from his deathbed: “Bernard was right.”(Claude Bernard, a contemporary of Pasteur, insisted that the equilibrium or homeostasis of the body was more important to the disease process than the microbe.) “The microbe is nothing, the soil is everything.” I think what Claude Bernard was saying is that the physical body already has a blueprint for health and healing. What we need to do is get out of the way and let it do its job.
By addressing the Three T’s, we can improve our terrain, or “soil,” to better deal with the three primary stressors: trauma, toxins and thoughts. Why not prevent cancer and heart disease while trying to cure ourselves of fibromyalgia? This is the true opportunity that all disease affords us. Wellness as a journey usually starts at the bottom of the pit of despair. We have nothing to lose; nowhere to go but up. What a wonderful gift.

Dr. Dale Lotter has practiced natural medicine for over 21 years
and is currently director of Adio Life Center in Tucson, AZ.

This article has been printed with permission of the
Fibromyalgia Alternative Network, FAN News, March/April 2006 issue.
pp4-5.

This article represents the author's opinions and not those of the website operator. We are not offering individualized diagnoses or medical  advice, just general medical information
Published on site 6/28/08