Having been undiagnosed and a medical enigma for most of my adult life, I was eager to visit Abby’s Health & Nutrition in Carrollwood to listen to Pam Ross last week.
Ross is a physician’s assistant who specialized in successfully treating chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia in patients for the last three years. She was on a speaking tour discussing her findings.
These syndromes, once misunderstood and oftentimes ignored, have only recently been recognized by the medical community as legitimate illnesses.
Ross has created a treatment in the form of a natural supplement called Virasyl with ingredients scientifically validated over 10 years of university and clinical research.
“Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue are real,” said Ross. “These patients were being shunned. They were treated different than any other patient. They were referred to psychiatry and told, 'Sorry, it’s all in your head.' No. These issues need to be addressed and taken care of.”
To hear those words from the mouth of a physician’s assistant was a validation that I had been seeking for over 15 years.
My story started like many other sufferers. I remember waking up one morning in 1996 feeling like someone had taken a bat and beaten me repeatedly until there wasn’t a bone, tendon or muscle that didn’t ache. Getting out of bed did not feel like an option, but as a working mom to her precocious two year old, staying in bed wasn’t either.
Fast forward 15 years. My baby is graduating high school, and the flu I thought I woke up with has lasted her lifetime.
I personally identify with every patient who was considered to be a hypochondriac and told his ailment was psychosomatic, that he needed to see a psychiatrist because “people like him need special doctors he can talk to.”
I completely relate to the passage of years without answers, being so filled with hope, going for yet another blood test, MRI, ultrasound and x-ray from every “ist” and “ologist” on your insurance and several quacks not on any plan and having that hope dashed when results came back normal.
I understand the definition of “going back to square one,” and I know what it’s like to be treated with harsh chemicals - Buspar for a Persistent Anxiety Disorder that you do not have and Prozac for a depression that you are not in.
I know, firsthand, the overwhelming frustration of knowing something was wrong with you, feeling just 50 percent, looking perfectly healthy on the outside and not knowing what was happening on the inside, wondering if your friends and even your family really believed you because ‘You looked fine,’ feeling with every year without answers, you were slowly losing your mind.
Chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia presents itself in a number of ways. Sufferers often have a laundry list of symptoms like anxiety, problems sleeping, irritable bowel syndrome, interstitial cystitis, flu-like symptoms, low grade fever or chills, neck pain, shortness of breath, unexplained chest pain, skin rashes, night sweats, headaches, TMJ, chemical sensitivities, depression, acid reflux, canker sores, thinking and memory issues called fibro fog, on top of chronic fatigue and widespread muscle and joint pain.
Because doctors could not understand it, it was easier to chemically medicate a potential problem than to deal with the real underlying one. But putting chemicals in the body of a fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome sufferers doesn’t make sense. With the medicine treatment advertised regularly on TV, the side effects often sound worse than living with the chronic illness.
Ross has taken years of listening to her clinic patients’ needs to create a natural antiviral supplement called Virasyl that is at the very heart of what preventing what might be the cause of the illness, a stealthy, insidious virus.
“It may be from a ‘hidden’ chronic viral infection,” explained Ross. “Everyone has had a virus - whether it be chicken pox or a cold sore. Once you are exposed, it is with you for life. It hides in the tissues and comes out to replicate during times of stress or when the immune system is overwhelmed with other antigens or under physical or emotional stress.”
Ross said that stressors like losing a job, a car accident – stress or trauma cause the same response. Blood diverts to the heart and brain away from the GI tract.
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