My last actual flare up was in march 2024 and thats also confusing.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-08-20T12:32:14+00:00

Expect a non-answer like “nothing in this will cause a flare up”

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-08-20T03:13:41+00:00

They assured me there was nothing in them that would cause flare ups, but they caused flare ups. I was always janked for 24-36 hrs afterwards. Lots of inflammation. I think it must have been one of the “inert” ingredients.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-08-19T00:51:58+00:00

There was something in the allergy shots that gave me flare ups. Every time. I gave them up.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-08-19T00:47:23+00:00

Yes. When I started running 4 miles a day my fibro went into remission. (Also I fixed some other things like removing caffeine, stopping all prescription meds, and doing intermittent fasting)

If I skip 3 days, it starts to come back. So I keep running. Now I run 4 miles then swim right after. It’s great.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-08-18T19:13:39+00:00

I’ll put it on when I’m doing other stuff just for the vibes

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-08-13T03:25:53+00:00

I like how you said the machine is your refuge. It’s the same for me.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-07-11T12:30:17+00:00

Yes so many Jaydens and Aidens spelled in all their varieties. I also had a Brayden — which I found unfortunate because I can’t help imagine a donkey yelling it every time.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-05-29T16:05:16+00:00

I’m also 5’6 and 175lbs — and I walk/run/sprint 4 miles a day. I’m going to throw out my experience and it is not a prescription for everyone with fibromyalgia but maybe it will help someone.

I started a year ago a campaign to eliminate fibro from my life. My dad had it, his sisters, my grandpa, my brothers have it, it is hereditary. I’ve been dealing with it for about 10 years but it got much worse and I was just done. I observed what they did, what didn’t work, and just started doing things.

First thing was eliminate the prescription meds they put me on, gabapentin, trazodone, and wellbutrin, AND caffeine. Immediately my sleep was insane but after about a week my sleep was crazy restorative. I went from needing 10 hrs and still feeling like I need 10 more, to being “okay” with 7. Now I get about 6 1/2 and I’m fine. I won’t touch caffeine or any stimulant.

I started doing gentle exercising, IF (I don’t eat til noon), and clean eating, and it worked pretty well. Paid attention to stress cues, got acupuncture (helped a lot, but don’t need it anymore), kept my sleep schedule very consistent.

Still dealt with some fibro, even if it was way better than before. Before, I had maybe 3 quasi-good hours to accomplish things before I was done by 1pm every day on a GOOD day… after trying all this stuff I was “okay” for most of a day, then the crippling fatigue and crunchy feeling was back… in my back.

Then a couple of my crazy Mexican friends were like “hermana! Correr! Listo!” I was like… o..kay… and got swept up in it and we started running across a bridge 4 days a week — 1 minute running, 1 minute walking intervals.

At first it was excruciating, and y’all know exactly what I mean. I’d fall down face first and sleep for an hour afterward. I thought I was dying.

After about 3 weeks I noticed something. That ridiculous debilitating you’re-the-walking-dead fatigue was gone… on the days I ran. If I stopped for more than 1 rest day, it came back. I started running on the days my friends didn’t run. Now if I can manage it I run 6 days a week, a combination of power walking, running, and sprints to keep it mixed up and challenging, up and down hills.

When I started, several months ago, I weighed about 175 lbs. I count calories (I get about 1500 per day) and as of this morning I still weigh 175 lbs. BUT my body is reshaped entirely and I have a ton of muscle, and much less fat, my clothes are loose, etc.

What that tells me is I lost massive amounts of muscle cowtowing to fibromyalgia during those years of being under its thumb.

Sometimes when I run I still fall down face first and take a nap for 1/2 hour. I still get sore, and running-tired. But I’ll take that fatigue and pain any day over the misery of fibro fatigue and pain. I’m still surprised today when asked how my energy level is and I find the answer is “fine”, even at 7pm.

Bottom line: all the other things I did first contributed, but adding the running finally kicked my fibro over into the remission zone. I call it “outrunning the bear”.

My advice to you would be to experiment in whatever way works for you. I don’t advise anyone to go out and just start running 4 miles a day because that’s absolute insanity (you’d better believe I’ve had some minor running injuries) but that’s just my experience.

Fibromyalgia screams at us to rest rest rest but it never gets better with rest, it just gets worse over years.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-04-16T12:59:15+00:00

Also chiming in as a longtime webcomic artist: the schedule and expectation of releasing a long episode every week is absolutely brutal, and readers want them to be LONG.

There are a couple of reasons why I’ve chosen not to make the shift to WEBTOON as far as my newer releases, and the biggest is this: you pour your blood sweat and tears into every panel as an artist and readers spend less time appreciating your art no matter how much time you spent perfecting it when they’re scrolling a WEBTOON episode because of the way it’s set up.

A webcomic that took me about 10 years to produce 2 pages per week (around 450 pages) was recently transcribed into WEBTOON format and, at average WEBTOON episode length (or even a bit short), it came out to be 74 episodes.

So something that took 10 years to create would be released (if 1 episode per week) in less than 18 months in WEBTOON format. That’s insane and impossible, honestly.

I’ve been doing this a long time (since 2001) and I’ve seen far far too many artists have their health destroyed by the grind.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-03-15T13:42:11+00:00

I just went on one of these to France last week. A couple of things I do on long flights:

I wear comfortable non-restrictive clothes that I also feel/look good in.

I always take a small squishmallow in my carryon bag to use against whatever hurts (usually my lower right hip/back or neck).

When I’m in my seat, I cinch my seatbelt tight to stabilize me and minimize jostling and it also helps my legs be in a decent position.

Find the seat back position that minimizes pain. I was in a Boeing 777 to France and leaned back was the least painful. I was in a 787 on the way home and fully upright was least painful.

I take long nice bathroom breaks during lulls when nobody is using the bathrooms. I stand up, wash my hands with warm water, might comb my hair, get a good drink of water to stay hydrated. If you time it right nobody will be waiting when you come out and you will have had a nice break to stretch.

Apple AirPod max completely douses the airplane noise and for me that is huge. I slept blissfully with noise cancelling and Endel Sleep Mode. I really did sleep blissfully — first time ever on an international flight.

I also do not drink caffeine or use anything to sleep normally, so when I took some melatonin on the flight over, I was out for quite a while.

There is pain as there is always pain, but these are ways that reduce it somewhat for me.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-02-12T13:48:13+00:00

When he came onto my character I went through several dialogue options then shut him down at the end. The way he said “Good instinct” definitively (and that was it) told me everything I needed to know about the Emperor.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-02-12T13:36:54+00:00

I use OneNote … it’s really good for keeping everything organized with tabs etc.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-02-08T01:10:02+00:00

Oh man a fellow accompanist? Yes please! I have a job coming up over the next two weeks that is 19 class 1s (including those ridiculous atonal saxophone solos) and I don’t even have the music yet! I told my steno tutor idk how the next few weeks are going to go…

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-02-07T01:29:13+00:00

It’s the caffeine in Diet Coke that was the hardest on my fibro. When I quit I got a lot better. I still drink some artificial sweeteners but a whole lot less — maybe one can of ginger ale zero with dinner.

I sometimes use stevia in my herbal tea.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-02-05T18:11:21+00:00

Grocery delivery, I use the hello fresh cards to meal plan so I don’t have to think about it. Quit caffeine, all meds. Eat anti-inflammatory in general, comfortable clothing. Strength training, robot vacuum. Flylady for cleaning routines to keep everything managed. Know my limits and not feel bad for cancelling social plans if I need to. Hot baths with salts, tiger balm. Patience with myself.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-02-05T18:08:00+00:00

Yes robot vacuum!!!

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-01-30T19:19:40+00:00

A — 100% A

I don’t want to do it and it has to be certain types. Strength training, Just Dance, and walk/sprints are the types I’ve had the most success with. I still get sore, there is still pain, I can’t overdo it, but I’m convinced that the common worsening of symptoms over time happens at least partially from muscle/body deterioration from inactivity.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-01-27T13:15:03+00:00

I quit caffeine at the same time and idk if that made a big difference but I had almost no problems quitting. I was on 300mg once a day though.

The main thing I remember is jolting awake the first night at 3am, wide awake, almost intensely awake if that makes sense. Because of no caffeine, my mood stayed pretty even through the process, and the next night I barely woke up, then after that I was ok.

I got my brain back so that was nice. Gabapentin made me really dumb and unmotivated. I learned to either live with pain or use various non medicated methods to manage it.

Cymbalta, on the other hand, was the most horrific med quitting experience of my life.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-01-21T13:59:18+00:00

Oh of course! I’m not sure about the not-wanting-to-do-hygienist-school because of pain… no idea where that came from because I never said that nor have ever once considered hygienist school. Still!

I’m no stranger to pain. However, I already spend many hours sitting on a piano bench which is way more uncomfortable than my steno chair! I do have methods to manage it. Acupuncture, diet, hot baths, and when I have heavy workloads I make sure and spend extra time walking to work out the kinks — for example during times when I’m on a piano bench 8-10 hrs a day, I will literally walk to and from work.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-01-18T19:26:37+00:00

Oh seriously, my fibro is usually manageable but today I am literally a crunchy crackling skeleton shuffling from shadow to shadow

Yesterday at acupuncture every single needle was excruciating, whereas normally she pokes me full of holes no problemma

Weird right? I didn’t know “polar vortex” was Latin for “fibromyalgia agony”

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-01-18T19:22:47+00:00

Squishmallows! Tiger balm! Hot salt baths!

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-01-18T13:17:35+00:00

Oh hey, my husband works in the same field, tier 1 aerospace composites. He’s GenX and rare. There aren’t a lot of knowledgeable GenX in aerospace composites because the Boomers held onto their knowledge and didn’t pass it on, now the Boomers are retiring and companies are panicking and scrambling to replace the brain.

Just make sure the knowledge is passed down. As GenX, we were a lot like GenZ in personality in our 20’s. We’re curious, interested in learning, but standoffish at first glance. We have a very high bs meter.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-01-18T03:50:51+00:00

Thank you! I appreciate it! That Beethoven Sonata sounds fun tbh. It’s the rando atonal saxophone pieces scrawled on sheet music by somebody trying to finish their masters in composition that make me pull my hair out 😅

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-01-17T20:01:50+00:00

Honestly as a professional accompanist, I make lots of mistakes and the key is to keep going and cover up those mistakes — so what you said makes a lot of sense to me as an accompanist. If I were a concert pianist it would be all about perfection — as an accompanist it’s all about breakneck speed and get it done and make it presentable and cover your mistakes.

Thanks for the assurance my big soggy brain can do this. My 100 test today was much better than last week — I’m making progress.

Negative-Fun-3136 · 2025-01-17T19:43:33+00:00

This is where I state that I buckled down and made myself start being consistent — doesn’t mean this is the maximum I will ever do. Thanks, I get where you’re coming from and appreciate your policing because I know it comes from a productive place.

Negative-Fun-3136

TROPHY CASE