All the pain receptors in our body are controlled and modulated by our nervous system. In a healthy individual, the nervous system secretes just the right amount of neurotransmitters in response to illness or stress -- the result is healthy cellular regeneration, better sleep, healthy blood flow that nourishes surrounding tissue, and a proper parasympathetic tone that promotes a sense of control, calm, and clarity of the mind.

 

When our nervous system undergoes sustained periods of abuse whether it be environmental toxins, overly processed and unhealthy foods, or chronic stress and trauma, systemic inflammation begins to set in. This inflammation hijacks the body and causes disturbances in the central nervous system and how it processes pain signals.

 

Treatments involving opioids or other narcotic analgesics usually are not effective because they do not reduce the activity of neurotransmitters in the brain and in fact may even worsen symptoms.

 

What's more, healthy blood flow is completely interrupted. Imagine the body as a sophisticated system of roads and our blood vessels and nerves as the major highways that branch out into smaller branches of side streets and intersections. In order to get to our destination (muscles, brain, major organs) we need traffic to flow smoothly and just the right amount of cars (beneficial anti-inflammatory cytokines and neurotransmitters) on the road that are in good working condition.

 

When sickness and injury happens, it's like having multiple major crashes along critical routes -- it completely wrecks the flow of traffic which in turn begins to affect our muscles and organs in the form of dysfunctional pain signalling and damaged blood cells.

 

Smooth flow of blood is not as simple as it sounds -- because the critical aspect of this smooth flow at the capillary level is the deformability potential of the cells. Red blood cells are, incredibly, twice as wide as the capillaries they need to get down, and to do this they need to hold a specific shape that's able to fold and squash through the capillary. Red cells that can't flex either get stuck or split: bad news. Just like how phlegm is sticky, blood can become sticky too. In the case of fibromyalgia, red blood cells become deformed, sticky, and inflexible; sticky or inflexible red cells becomes stuck, clump together, and refuse to pass through smoothly, they then break and cause inflammation.