Chronic pain reaches into every aspect of your life. It affects how and even if you can work. It affects your relationships with family and friends. It affects your mood and your outlook on life. Chronic pain becomes an ever present companion, accompanying you wherever you go no matter what you do.

Many who live in chronic pain spend a lifetime trying to find the cause of their pain. Traditional medicine often treats the symptoms, addressing each ache and pain as it's own illness. Take this drug for this pain. Take another drug for another ache. You may often get conflicting advice as well. Try increasing your activity. No, you need to rest. Try ice. No, try heat. Well-meaning friends and family offer all kinds of advice and old wives' tales and maybe even accuse you of making it all up.

At what point do you give up on all the misguided medical advice and give in to a life of chronic pain?

Before you give up and give in, you need to know about a common cause for chronic pain and a problem that can be solved relatively simply. A sneaky culprit may have quietly been wreaking havoc on your body for years. Gluten.

What is Gluten?
Simply put, gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley, malt, rye and some oats. People with a gluten sensitivity often have no idea the kind of destruction this protein is wreaking on their bodies. The traditional medical community has only recently started to acknowledge how gluten can cause damage.

People with a gluten sensitivity cannot digest this protein. As the protein travels through their digestive systems, it damages the villi in their intestines, the part of your intestines that gather nutrients from your food. Over time, you lose the ability to absorb nutrients into your body leading to a host of health problems including:

Gut Feelings: System Acts as Second Brain

When you have an autoimmune condition such as Hashimoto's, or if you have fibromyalgia, anxiety or depession you must remember there is an important connection between your digestive tract and your brain.  Dr. Michael D. Gershon coined the term "second brain" in 1996 to refer to the powerful brain in the gut known as the enteric nervous system. He is one of a small number of researchers studying brain-gut connections in the relatively new field of neurogastroenterology.  Read this informative article that was printed in the San Diego Union Tribune via the New York Times News Service:

First, most people do not realize that most doctors really do not have much training on how to deal with Fibromyalgia patients. In fact Fibromyalgia completely puzzles most doctors....period! Think about it. When you went to your doctor, how thorough was your evaluation really? What exactly did the doctor examine?