Fighting the fatigue
By Melanie Haiken
Health.com

In the past year, some of the biggest headlines in pain management
have been about fibromyalgia (chronic bodywide pain in joints,
muscles, and tendons) and CFS, two conditions that strike women at as
much as six times the rate of men. After years of failing to take
these conditions seriously, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention and other groups have recently mounted aggressive public-
information campaigns alerting women to the prevalence of these
conditions and the importance of accurate diagnosis and treatment.
Experts have also made dramatic gains in finding treatments that work
by focusing on the sleep problems and physical weakness that seem to
fuel these diseases. (Could painkillers be hurting your heart? )

In studying other immune-triggered conditions such as Crohn's
disease -- which also affects women at two to six times the rate of
men -- experts have made a similar breakthrough. Instead of treating
digestive symptoms such as gas, diarrhea, and constipation (common in
Crohn's and IBS), experts realized the culprit might be an underlying
food sensitivity, most likely to wheat gluten, milk protein, or one
of several other common allergens. What happens, integrative pain
specialist Deborah Metzger says, is that an overreactive immune
system protests against the irritating foods, causing systemic
inflammation throughout the body. She says that in recent years she's
had great success by putting patients on the Sugar Busters diet,
which eliminates sugar, white flour, and other suspect foods.
Metzger's advice: Find a doctor who will analyze all aspects of your
lifestyle rather than just medicate pain symptoms.

www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/06/21/pain.remedies/