Fibromyalgia & Covid Positive

[JessFM]

I tested a couple hours ago and the positive result came up instantly. Any advice?

Thankyou in advance 🌺

[Hazel_Angelstar Administrator FMA UK Staff]

Drink plenty fluids, and listen to your body. Honey, lemon & ginger are good if you have a cough or sore throat

[Yassytina FMA UK Volunteer]

I hope you don’t feel too ill with it , it seems some people had mild symptoms and others felt poorly to start, I am still dodging it so far. Rest up best you can and like Hazel says plenty of fluids, hope it jogs off soon x

[Dizzy2day]

I’ve just recovered from Covid , I have many health conditions , fibromyalgia and prolapse disc and asthma IBD. I found Covid upset many of my problems coughing caused back pain and asthma, but the big thing was tiredness for about 2 weeks. Also brain fog. Diarrhoea was a problem, all the symptoms apart from the coughing are same symptoms as fibromyalgia. So rest drink Lemsip, and don’t be hard on yourself.

[Dbry]

Try not to worry too much.

Rest and if you have them, vitamin D, C, Zinc and Quercetin.

Took me about 2 weeks to feel 'normal' fibro again, but everyone is different.

[AllthatGlitters]

I am recovering from covid, I have fibro and endometriosis and adenomyosis as well as blood problems. I was always worried about getting it even thought had all the vaccinations. For me it was more in my chest. Bad cough. You will need to rest and lots of it, I never ate much but made sure I drank plenty of fluids, keep taking your medication as normal and I hope you recover soon x

[bookish]

I'd second the need for plenty of fluids, which was what I craved. Herbal teas and water mainly. I didn't cough but had the horrendous headache plus exacerbation of all my normal symptoms, which are now starting to ease off, after 3 1/2 weeks (tested clear day 12). Your body will let you know what to eat/not eat most likely - mine certainly did! Vit C, zinc, vit D, quercetin, NAC, aspirin (Alka Selzer original is all I can take). Get plenty of rest, sleep, fresh air, and don't rush your recovery. And don't panic more than you can help - you will be fine. Best wishes x

[JessFM in reply to bookish]

Thankyou very much, difficult to rest when i have a 21month old son. My skin feels very sensitive to touch and i am aching crazily. I have a horrible constant cough with a banging headache too 🌺🌺

[bookish in reply to JessFM]

Yes that will make things more tricky! I'd try to go easy on the higher histamine foods (walnuts, spinach, bananas, anything aged or over ripe) and increase your B12 if you are already using it. Hope you soon feel much better x

[JessFM]

I had bananas yesterday too. I'm very low on vitamin D the doctor said. & thankyou very much 🌺

[bookish in reply to JessFM]

Just wondered how you were feeling - better I hope. How low was your vit D and what did they suggest? Take it gently x

[JessFM in reply to bookish]

Hi, im not covid positive now so thats good. Just Fibromyalgia pain ect as always. Thankyou for asking. My vitamin D level was 24. Below 50 is low and below 30 is very low said my gp. x

[bookish in reply to JessFM]

Sounds like you are making some progress, so that is good. 24 (nmol, I assume) is horribly low, so hopefully you'll feel a good deal better once you can get that up. I was advised some years ago not to assume that anything less than 125 nmol was ok, so I aim for that. I took tablets for years and it did go up, but only slowly, and I now use Nature's Answer liquid which works much better for me. The Better You sprays have good reviews too. I use their magnesium spray which helped with fibro pain a good deal (also helps to activate your vit D). If you are going to take a high dose vit D, some vit K2 would be a good idea (Better You do a mixed spray). Best wishes x

[JessFM in reply to bookish]

Thankyou very much, i'll do some research on it. I used to use magnesium spray for pain years ago but it never made any difference for me. All the best to you too :)x

[JayCeon in reply to JessFM]

Whilst I agree with (almost) everything bookish says, magnesium has absolutely no medical evidence to be taken up via the skin as in sprays or Epsom salts, so I always wonder if that's a placebo (or they just haven't found it yet), whilst magnesium malate and glycinate capsules do have a little evidence for them.

D3 I take 20.000 I.E. with K2-MK7 once a week, and if that's not enough I'll increase that too. B12 I use the 3 good sorts (mainly methyl-cobalamin) as s.c. injection, that boosts it sky high. Admittedly I don't feel the difference of either tho, I just know my levels need it. Same as zinc and now rather copper, which was low.

Since my jab-triggered MCAS I need to reduce histamine in foods and now take many antihistamine/inflammation supps, the sum of these gets most symptoms under control, all except the severe fatigue, for which I'm having mixed success with Chinese acupuncture. Maybe MCAS or the jab are similar to CoV-problems....

[bookish in reply to JayCeon]

Hi, I won't dispute lack of medical evidence re magnesium absorption through skin as I haven't looked for any! Of course now you've said that I had to have a look and found ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl.... Interesting. It does say that transdermal may play a role in those with sub-optimal magnesium and I certainly had that. I knew there was no point trying oral as I wasn't absorbing anything much at the time and was reacting to rather a lot. All I know is that it has made a big difference to me personally and that I clearly was absorbing through skin, first Epsom salts in the bath (very strong reaction - more than I could handle, hence change to foot bath), then magnesium chloride crystals (less drying) in a foot bath and now the Better You sensitive oil spray each night plus on particular points of pain during day as needed. Keeps me regular, helps me sleep and eases pain a treat. So it may be placebo, but I'm not going to stop!

I'd agree about mast cells and virus/vaccine. I've been using quercetin successfully for mast cell dysregulation for some time and increased it recently with the virus, but still noticed higher histamine for a time although it is the joint pain that affects me more, from other mediators. A number of friends and family noticed histamine issues after their vaccines, although mainly fairly short-term.

Taking a lot of B12 can I gather use quite a lot of copper, as well as zinc supplementation lowering copper. So many things to think about. Hope you continue to improve. Best wishes.

[JayCeon in reply to bookish]

Thanks again for your input! I doubt I'd researched transdermal Mg, I think I just accepted what a few good sites say. The sentence you've cited about sub-optimal Mg is taken up from a preliminary study about cream on isolated cadaver skin, not exactly in vivo. But what I see is that in the conclusions they conjecture a pathway, suggest that a cream put on for longer durations might be what may eventually show more evidence and they can't recommend transdermal Mg (as yet...).

What seems more helpful & interesting are your personal reactions as someone who watches closely what they're doing. Firstly not having an alternative and secondly it making a big difference. May I ask: I can't imagine why magnesium sulfate would cause a strong reaction - are you sure it was nothing else and not the bath itself? I react terribly to baths.... A foot bath would be considerably less skin contact. And again: foot baths are often good & effective for me, even without anything in them....

The Better You Magnesium Oil Sensitive (Body) Spray their site says is (only) magnesium chloride, 10 sprays give you 100mg magnesium, a third of the NRV, not exactly much. I took 250-300mg orally for a long time (with doubtful success; however as you suggest that may be due to my symptoms not having to do with magnesium. OTOH how do we ever know/find out, seeing as it is hard to measure our magnesium or lack of it. Maybe the direct application where it hurts it part of the trick, whether physical or placebo. I use an arnica complex cream for local pains, also helps a treat and I also don't care whether it's placebo or not...

I'll be getting B12, Zn, Cu and D3 checked again soon to see how I need to tweak them next.

All the best to all your endeavors too!

[bookish in reply to JayCeon]

Mmm...not a cadaver, as yet! And haven't tried creams as they all seem to contain stuff I don't fancy on my skin, although a couple of family members use the Better You body butter +/or gel and seem to think it helps them. I do my lymph exercises daily, so if it is using that route, it should be moving around nicely!

I don't think it would have been the bathing itself, which I did regularly(!) without Epsom salts and it wasn't over-hot, although in the early days I did make that mistake with my foot bath (by which I mean a bowl of warm-hot water, my pair of feet and a good book, nothing complicated...). I felt flushed, shaky, nausea/sea-sick, dizzy, palpitations, all quite odd. I do have a COMT SNP (slow function) and this is a magnesium-dependent enzyme, so maybe my neurotransmitters went a bit haywire if I got a bit too much too soon. Generally I don't even get a flavour of that reaction to the foot bath or spray, but I have been using magnesium daily for probably 5 years now. I do notice that I sleep less well without it, if I run out.

Brilliant that you get benefit from the arnica. Cheers x

[JayCeon in reply to bookish]

Perfect description also of my reaction to slightly too warm luke-warm water, whether foot bath or shower. Comes in phases. Usually cold is best, but at the moment I find it hard coping with a minute of any kind of shower. First night without 2 hot water bottles last night too.I'm pretty sure also it's got to do with my neurotransmitters, but know nothing of any gene anomalies, only got a lipid gene check and that was normal.

Thanks!

[bookish in reply to JayCeon]

Not easy this, is it! I can't cope with cold water except on face when burning and find showers often physically painful, hence the bath. This winter I couldn't cope with hot water bottles as can no longer tolerate the smell, so I am swathed in blankets until I overheat and throw them all off. The neuropathy keeps getting worse so I am hoping neurologist will consider B12 injections as not sure that oral/sublingual is enough any longer. Looks like that is genetic too, so he may not, but I live in hope. One step at a time. All the best x

[JayCeon in reply to bookish]

Not sure when baths'd help me - praps luke warm for 1-2 minutes, like showers... !

I prefer the heat from hot water bottles more than any other types - but the smell is awful, I agree, but I can do the filling very quickly (10 seconds?) and quickly put it in bed under the bedclothes, where it doesn't do too much mischief. More of a problem is when I love the heat for a while, but then suddenly hate it vehemently, similar to overheating with blankets / duvets ... probably more neurotransmitters than thyroid, which seems normal. - I prefer a thick (for bottom) and thin (for top) duvet to any blankets, which I can continually adjust. And I wear more at night than pre-fibro, incl. 5 pairs of socks day & night.

Are you at the mercy of your neurologist? I get my B12 injections from a compounding pharmacy (not expensive) and my wife injects them s.c. (if not, I spose I'd have to learn to do it myself) - couldn't get any of my docs to inject either B12 s.c., or vitamin C or carnitine i.v., so I've got them lying around, wasting...

[bookish in reply to JayCeon]

Your five pairs of socks brought back memories! I used to sleep upright in bed with more layers than I ever needed during the day (even though that was a lot), plus scarf and sometimes hat, as well as three hot water bottles - quite ludicrously cold. Not sure exactly what has made a difference, because I am not as bad now and can lie down too!

This will only be my second appointment with this neuro and at the moment the thinking is that I have my B12/folate under control. I don't agree and will be trying to explain why, but because this will affect the whole family and not just me, I am trying to go through procedure (at the moment - this may change.)

[Welshcatlady]

Good morning JessFM hopefully you won't feel too bad with it. I had it a couple of weeks back, before they were stating that tickly throat, and head cold were symptoms of Covid. I only tested because I had been abroad and wanted to check I was OK before visiting elderly relatives, otherwise I wouldn't have known I had it. My symptoms were just like a mild head cold, and feeling fatigued. I was worried it might go to my chest as I have COPD but it didn't. It seems that it affects some worse than others so hope you will be OK, as others have said plenty of drinks etc as you would with a cold, and paracetamol. 🙂

[JessFM]

Good Afternoon Welshcatlady 😁 I had a tickly cough for about 2weeks tested negative on the monday then tested positive yesterday. Im very achy my muscles are really hurting, horrible headache that hurts more when i cough, very tired, lack of energy. Not much of an appetite, i've only ate a banana today. I have asthma and im currently being assessed by the respiratory team and waiting for a spirometry. I need to get more paracetemol. My little boy doesn't seem too good bless him, he is 21months 🌺

[Welshcatlady]

I am so sorry that you are feeling so ill, JessFM also with your asthma, can't be very good for you. Hopefully your appetite will return soon and you will soon be feeling a lot better. And hopefully your little boy will be better soon too. Sending gentle hugs your way.

[JessFM in reply to Welshcatlady]

Thankyou very much sweet, everyone in my house is positive now. Including my mother in law who has MS bless her. The covid made me sick physically at 4:30am. 🌸

[Madred14]

Rest and listen to your body. I thought fibro fatigue was bad but the fatigue from Covid was another level. I just let my body guide me and spent a lot of time sleeping and plenty of fluids. Hope you feel better soon 💐

[JessFM in reply to Madred14]

I had a good nap while my mother in law looked after my son, i was throwing up too. Luckily now i have some energy back, no appetite but got alot of muscle aches and pains. This morning my sons nana and my fiancé both tested positive. My son isn't well and wants to sleep alot 👎& thankyou very much 🌸