Books About Fibromaylgia

I’ve post­ed about online resources, as well as men­tion­ing some peri­od­i­cals that are good offline resources. Now I want to share some of the books I rec­om­mend to oth­ers who are learn­ing more about fibromyalgia.

The First Year: Fibromyal­gia: An Essen­tial Guide for the New­ly Diag­nosed by Clau­dia Craig Marek is exact­ly what the title says. If you only check out one book, make it this one. You’ll get a decent overview of what FMS is and a good idea of the most com­mon treat­ment strategies.

Two of Devin Star­lanyl’s books, Fibromyal­gia and Chron­ic Myofas­cial Pain: A Sur­vival Man­u­al (2nd Edi­tion) and The Fibromyal­gia Advo­cate, are an essen­tial part of my library. They’re impos­ing books, but don’t let that intim­i­date you. They are excel­lent, ency­clo­pe­dic ref­er­ences that every­one deal­ing with fibromyal­gia should own and use. 

The Arthri­tis Foun­da­tion has some excel­lent infor­ma­tion about fibromyal­gia, which is treat­ed for the most part by rheuma­tol­o­gists despite being seen more recent­ly as a neu­ro­log­i­cal dys­func­tion. One book in par­tic­u­lar, The Arthri­tis Foun­da­tion’s Guide to Good Liv­ing with Fibromyal­gia, 2nd Edi­tion, takes the read­er through cop­ing tech­niques and includes some very mild exer­cis­es which almost any­one can tol­er­ate. Anoth­er, The Arthri­tis Help­book: A Test­ed Self-Man­age­ment Pro­gram for Cop­ing with Arthri­tis and Fibromyal­gia is a more in-depth book with a broad­er focus. It also adds an excel­lent sec­tion on adap­tive devices. 

New books are released every month, and over time I’ll be review­ing them and some of the oth­ers in my library. These books, though, should give you an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to fibromyal­gia and some com­mon cop­ing techniques.