Self-help Articles

by Miryam Williamson

In addition to the many search engines such as Alta Vista and Lycos, I'd suggest you search the National Library of Medicine's Medline database.

On the Web you can go to http://www.medscape.com/ and start from there, using as the key words fibromyalgia and any of its accompanying symptoms, such as migraine (the singular will yield better results than the plural), or depression. Medline is free online.

You can also subscribe to Medline directly, and have access to several other medical databases as well. While there is a small fee for accessing entire articles, the abstracts of most journal articles are free. Oftentimes the abstracts give you the meat of the article anyway.

There is also an online discussion group dedicated to fibromyalgia. You can subscribe by going to http://community.lsoft.com/SCRIPTS/WA-LSOFTDONATIONS.EXE?A0=FIBROM-L

The volume is very heavy (typically more than 100 messages a day), and some of the discussion is in the nature of chat and emotional support, but it is an excellent way to learn about fibromyalgia from the "owner's" point of view.

Another very good website for all kinds of medical research, including fibromyalgia is http://www.biomedsearch.com. The site is free, and perhaps the most comprehensive biomedical site on the web.

It has all PubMed and MedLine documents, plus millions more including full-text journal articles and a large database of theses and dissertations. And, you don't have to register to the website to get access to its information.

If you do decide to register, that registration will give you access to your own individual "portfolio" where you can save your own searches, including specific documents. It also allows you to share with other people, and set up automatic alerts.

Again all those services are free. I hope that this will help you find the fibromyalgia information you seek online.

About the Author:

Miryam Williamson, a contributing editor to SelfhelpMagazine, is a technical journalist and author of "Fibromyalgia: A Comprehensive Approach What You Can Do About Chronic Pain and Fatigue," published by Walker and Company, New York, 1996, ISBN 0-8027-7484-9.