SelfhelpMagazine

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 World Wide 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 on the WWW.

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 receive it by e-mail by writing to LISTSERV@MITVMA.MIT.EDU with the message subscribe FIBROM-L Your Name. You can also read it in newsgroup format at alt-med.fibromyalgia.

Messages sent to one are automatically echoed to the other, 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 mililons 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.

However 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 documents and comment on them with other people, and set up automatic alerts, where you will be sent an e-mail when something of interest is added to the website. Again all those services are free..

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. At bookstores in early June, or from the publisher at 800-289-2553.